Christmas for Non-Believers

A friend in the Yukon seemed surprised when I mentioned to him that by the first week in December we had our outside lights on, the inside decorations out, the Christmas tree up and the stockings hung by chimney with care.
I assured him that I’ve always loved Christmas and still do. Just because I now add the nativity story to the list of mythological miraculous births and no longer believe there was a Jesus … at least not a miracle-working, storm-stopping, death-defying kind of Christ, doesn’t mean I’ve stopped celebrating.
Christians sometimes consider it hypocritical for non-Christians to enjoy a season for which Jesus is the alleged reason. They forget that Christmas is an amalgam of mostly pagan practices. Every day, in fact, we live with words and practices steeped in gods we no longer worship. Yes, the name of Christ is in Christmas. December 25th brings the Christ Mass. As Linus recites in A Charlie Brown Christmas, it’s all about the passage from Luke’s gospel. No room in the inn and so on.
But what day is it? Monday? The name comes from the Moon’s Day (Mani is the personification of the moon in Norse mythology). Wednesday came from the Norse god Woden or Odin. Thursday came from Thor. Saturday is Saturn’s Day for the Roman god Saturn or the Greek god Cronus, the father of Zeus. The month of January comes from Janus the Roman god of beginnings. March came from the god Mars, the Roman god of war. And so on. We mark such days and months without bowing to the god of their origin.
So it’s silly to suggest that if you don’t believe in the God of Christmas, you can’t enjoy the day. Put another way, you don’t have to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun at Yule (Jol) to sing modern Yuletide carols. You don’t have to be a Wiccan to deck the halls with boughs of holly. You don’t have to be a Druid to hope for a kiss under the mistletoe. You don’t have to believe in Thor or Odin to enjoy the notion of someone bringing gifts at night. You don’t have to believe in Sleipnir, Odin’s flying 8-legged horse to imagine the sound of hooves on your roof. You don’t have to believe in Saturn to decorate a tree in your house. You don’t have to believe in Mithra the Persian god-man and saviour to mark the birth of a god on December 25th. And you certainly don’t have to believe in Jesus Christ to savour the holiday season.
Over the centuries, the Christian church absorbed pagan practices and festivals. Christmas then, is much more than the story from Luke’s gospel. Anyone can enjoy Christmas in the lights and gifts and promises which make the season bright and generous and hopeful.
As Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew Fred puts it in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
So I’m looking forward to the food and the fun and the family that make this the most wonderful time of the year. Is Christmas for non-believers? Of course. Christmas is for everyone.