Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas
A note to all the ‘reason-for-the-season’ Christians that have been bugging me of late. Aside from all the pagan crap that’s gone into this holiday (as explained in The Heathen’s Guide to Christmas), there’s also this little tidbit I want to share for those who insist that I should be OK with people saying “Merry Christmas” to me:
The word ‘CHRISTMAS’ means ‘Christ’s Mass’, and is a Roman Catholic holy day whereon the mass is said in remembrance of Jesus’ birth. If you happen to be Catholic and you actually are going to mass on December 25, you might encourage people at that mass to be ‘merry’. But the vast majority of the people I hear from are not Catholics. (including the guy who said it should OK to say Merry Christmas)
‘CHRISTMAS’ is a Catholic term. When a non-Catholic says it, it makes no sense. When they say it to someone who they know will never sit through a Catholic mass to begin with, it’s even sillier.
This whole thing gets even more inane when you know you’re saying it to someone who doesn’t practice your religion. It’s exactly the same as insisting that you should have to say ‘Happy Rosh Hashana’, ‘Merry Makar Sankranti’, and ‘Have a nifty Nisf Sha’ban’. It’s not your religion, so why would you care about it?
More importantly, why would anyone try to force you to partake in their ceremonies if you’re not a member of their faith?
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As a nonbeliever in the divinity of the guy whose birth is celebrated at Christmas, I too get extremely annoyed at the “Keep Christ in Christmas” crowd, a phenomenon that makes living in the US even more of a challenge where folks feel endowed with the right to snarl that phrase from every bumper and yard sign.
On the other hand, I’ve also come to appreciate the value of ritual for ritual’s sake, and the affect that ritual has on one and one’s sanity is related mostly to the intent one carries while taking part, and not so much on how the pope would prefer it. For instance, the word “divinity” I used above brought to mind a wonderful white fluffy candy with walnuts my mother used to make when I was a kid, and not the image of the Christchild with glowing halo floating above the manger. And the tree in our living room offers the opportunity for our family to get together to decorate it, pulling out ornaments made and gathered over years past that connect us to our childhoods, pets long gone, parents and grandparents not so long gone, etc. For me it’s Nostalgiamass as much as anything, and I warmly approve of my observance.
I have the same problem with the 4th of July. Not that I crave a return to King and Country, but my own feeling is that the American Revolution was an extreme waste of energy, laying the course for the making of the violent and narcissistic culture we now enjoy. Modern Canadian civility and prosperity is due, in some part I think, to the wink and nod granted the royals over the last 200 years, while using the Atlantic and expansive territories to moderate their greed (though I get this is a chicken & egg argument). However, partaking in the same pleasure of ritual, this time for July 4th, I love a good excuse for a beer and a bratwurst on the barby shared with neighbors and friends. I always look forward to 7/4, but not because of the historical path that made it a “thing.”
I am particularly passionate about Halloween, that fabulous night when I get to scare the living crap out of small children as I hand them candy for their greedy parents. My own ritual far removed from All Hallow’s Eve on the liturgical calendar, but a long-standing catharsis for this former teacher.
But that’s just me, and that is actually the point. It’s not for the pope or the fire chief to determine how I value or express my ritual affinities, and we should all hold dear our right to frank and public grumpiness in the face of the “ritual enforcers.”
So I hope you can celebrate with a good rum toddy with us, Will. I drink to you making it your own. Happy Holiday! And thanks for continuing this great blog… it’s a gift in itself.
Heh, Will, you must really hate it when people talk about the weather too. How dare they throw their spin on things and suggest it’s too windy when clearly it’s not, or too hot? And then there are those nasty people who wish you a Happy New Year…on Chinese New Year. Then there are those clods who don’t even know you’re atheist and dare to wish that you join in their happiness by cheerfully saying Merry Christmas to you at the grocery store. Don’t get me started on those dolts who wish you a happy Hallowe’en when you haven’t celebrated it in years. I can see why all that good cheer could really bring you down.
Nobody ever decided to kill another person because they disagreed about the New Years. No one believes that I should be tortured in flames for all eternity because I disagree with their beliefs about humidity or wind chill. Something I find most religious people are oblivious to: When you preach, what you’re really saying is “You are doomed and deserve Hell if you don’t agree with me.”
It’s more like, if you don’t believe what has been revealed to us as true by Christ and his followers, and choose to defy God so vehemently, you are choosing Hell for yourself. You want to burn. It’s not that I want you to burn. I have no say anyhow since God is the final arbiter.
When you hear “You are doomed and deserve Hell”, does that make you scared? It seems to upset you. But you must see a glimmer of truth in the concept of Hell or else it would not elicit any emotional reaction.
Your hatred of Christians is so deep that a simple Merry Christmas pisses you off. Wow.
Sooner or later you’re going to have to spent time with a bunch of protestants who truly believe that the Vatican is the whore of Babylon, and that you’re scum for being a part of it. Then you’ll get how annoying it can be to have someone’s ‘faith’ constantly telling you that your core beliefs make you an untrustworthy and vile person. So yeah, it gets pretty annoying and really pisses me off.
I love christmas time, in Icelandic we still use the old pagan word jól (yule) for this time in december. This is the original celebration of that the we get more sunlight after 22th. desember, and the that spring is getting closer. Instead of Santa Claus we have the 13 mis Yule lads and their horrible mother Gryla, who eats naughty children, and her cat called the YuleCat that eats poor children that don´t get new clothes for the yule. So the question “being naughty or nice” around the yuletide, was a matter of life or death for the children, not a question about if they would get gifts or not.
Most of the stories told about Gryla were to frighten children – her favourite dish was a stew of naughty kids and she had an insatiable appetite. The ogress was not directly linked to Christmas until the 17th century. By that time she had become the mother of the roguish band of so-called Yuletide Lads. Such was the power of the terrifying creature and her offspring that a public decree was issued in 1746 prohibiting the use of Gryla and the Yuletide Lads to terrify children.