Happy Solstice everyone!

Happy Solstice everyone!

The other day, I read something which said "Put the 'Christ' back in Christmas", and it made me think.

For me, Christmas has always been a secular day, a family day. We celebrate it with over-indulgence -- on food, on consumerism, on bad jokes, on everything. And I enjoy it. And that's what Christmas means to me. Family. Food. Fun. And presents, too of course.

But I also understand that those who believe Christmas is a religious celebration of a birth (which probably took place in the spring, but I digress)... well, I understand their angst at the trend -- which I am riding -- towards a secular (or even pagan!) celebration.

So what to do?

Well, I know one family who are very devout (one might even say "born again") Christians. And guess what? They don't celebrate Christmas as such. No madness on the morning of December 25th for them. Why, you ask? Because Christmas is not in the Bible and therefore they don't recognize the date as imbued with significance (or a holiday), according to their beliefs. Now there's religious integrity for ya' -- only celebrating what's in the Bible, in accordance with the Bible. And forego the rest.

Back on the other extreme of things is my family and many, many others. We have our pagan tree and don't attend religious services (well, most of us don't). For us, December 25th is just a mad dash for ripping open presents and eating cookies for breakfast and other fun stuff. So does it make sense to celebrate the holiday as "Christmas" when the only "Christ" in it is my sister-in-law's name (Christie) and the only "mas" is the massive amounts of gifts we exchange...? Maybe it makes sense to drop the facade of any semblence of religious piety and cut out what might be called our hypocrisy and celebrate the holiday as family time without the "Christmas" label? What mass are we attending? What Christ are we celebrating?

Now, I'm not suggesting we give up the annual ritual of exchanging gifts. No. But perhaps we could tone it down and reframe it a bit. As an alternative, we could celebrate the winter holidays such as Solstice or Festivus.

While I wouldn't impose that on my parents (my mother and step-mother are both Catholic), I'm thinking that when I have a family of my own, I may just do that.

Happy Holidays!