It’s that time of year again!
Time for sugar cookies, gingerbread men, “Jingle Bell Rock,” Christmas trees — the whole shebang!
But most important, it’s time for people whining about our culture “taking the Christ out of Christmas” to irritate me out of my socks.
Before you say anything rash, let’s rewind a minute. There is, in fact, a long tradition of a festival in late December during which people get together to give gifts and make merry — it’s called Saturnalia, and it’s just what it sounds like: a Roman festival to worship the god Saturn.
That’s just one of many winter celebrations that predates Christmas. Pope Benedict XVI (who I’d argue is a pretty authoritative source for Christian scholarship) cites as the direct ancestor to Christmas an event called Dies Natalis Sol Invictus, a Dec. 25 feast that celebrated the birth of the official Roman sun god (Sol Invictus).
The birth of Jesus wasn’t celebrated as a holiday/feast day until about the fourth century CE. In fact, early Christian theologians like Origen and Arnobius disparaged birth festivals of figures like Herod and the pagan gods.
Christmas gained prominence during the Middle Ages because of political coincidences: Charlemagne and William the Conqueror were crowned on Christmas Day.
My point is that the only reason we can “take the Christ out of Christmas” is that we put him in there in the first place. People stuck Jesus in festivals and customs that were already around so they could celebrate about that time of year without being called pagan and burned at the stake or something.
I’m sure Jesus doesn’t care that “Christmas” is abbreviated “Xmas” any more than he cares that sometimes I wear torn-up sandals and a T-shirt with a picture of a cookie on it to church.
Celebrating the spirit of holiday generosity is important whether you call the holidays “the holidays,” “X-Mas,” “Kwanzaa,” “Christmas,” “Hanukkah” or whatever amalgamation of the above sarcastic a-holes are parading around these days. (For ease, I’m just going to call the whole holidays/Christmahanakwanzwatevs season thing “Christmas” for the rest of this column.)
I suspect that’s what the mourning of a Christ-less Christmas is more about anyway, although the only people I’ve encountered who complained about it were more focused on the literal morphemic substitution mentioned above.
Our problem is not that there’s not enough generosity on Christmas. America is great at holiday cheer, helping the needy and all that jazz during the Christmas season, when Santa/our neighbors are watching.
It’s the other 11 months of the year when we suck.
Maybe we should take Christ out of Christmas — and put him into the rest of the year, when there are still needy people, hungry people and people who need love and warmth.
Look, I’m not trying to be a Scrooge and “bah humbug” away your Christmas cheer with irrelevant historical facts and guilt tripping.
And I’m not trying to be one more of the millions of people saying “All you Christians are too sensitive! Jesus was born in, like, May anyway. Plus, there are Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, so let’s rename Christmas ‘Santamas’ or whatever. Yay atheism.”
I like Christmas. I like Santa, and I like nativity scenes.
Rather than spending our time engaging in meaningless linguistic and historical debates that get nobody anywhere, can’t we imitate Jesus and Santa, and give some gifts of love this holiday season? Can’t we do the same thing in January, February, March and the rest of the eight crazy months?
Because if not, we’re no better than the Romans who gave their slaves a week of freedom during the “December liberty” of Saturnalia, then spent the rest of the year beating them and generally treating them mercilessly.
If we’re no better than the Romans, then we better learn Latin. And I know how much everybody hates learning Latin.
Dallin Kelson is an English major at UF. His column appears on Mondays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
