Merry Christmas.........OR ELSE!

Well, the holiday season is in full swing, and so are the tempers. As a much younger man, I actually enjoyed Christmas. Having been "raised" Catholic, Christmas was as much part of my reality as breathing. It just WAS. As a kid, even after figuring out that Santa Claus was nothing more than a made-up character, I still looked forward to those presents, the food, the decorations, even the music. Fast forward to an older, arguably wiser, and not so gullible man.......

I used to love Led Zeppelin. Then came the "oldies" rock stations and it seemed that every third song was a Zeppelin song. Now, if you work in a fried chicken restaurant long enough, you'll get sick of fried chicken, no matter how much you used to love it. Same thing with any rock band. Before long I couldn't stand hearing one more "Communication Breakdown".

Christmas probably lasted as long as it did in my heart of hearts because it only came around once a year, for about three weeks. Things change, evolve, and as the years wore on, the Christmas season began to lengthen and morph into a commercial beast that ate the whole month of December and that month's paychecks. When I grew up and was freed from the yoke of forced religious practice of Catholic dogma, I quickly became aware of other religions; other points of view, and, GASP, even the idea that their might not even be a God at all.

And so, the religious justification for celebrating Christmas was soon supplanted by the secular enjoyment of it, and at least I still had that joy of giving and getting, tinsel, blinking lights, and those silly chipmunk songs to look forward to every year. Then the beast grew even larger, as it seemed the retailers were not satisfied with just the month of December; no, they were beginning to start their Christmas promotions as early as the end of halloween! Thanksgiving was easy to gloss over as the focus of that holiday was on food, family, and giving thanks rather than buying lots of expensive gifts. By this time I had become a struggling agnostic, attempting to hold onto any reason not to become an out and out atheist. And so as we entered this new century, the fried chicken analogy came home to roost and was destroying any desire whatsoever to have anything to do with Christmas, religious, secular, or otherwise, with it's incessant commercialism, traffic, crowded shopping, and mind-numbing Christmas music.

As of late I've been content to just bear with it, doing my best to humor those who wished me a Merry Christmas, while making it known to my Christmas-to-the-max wife that I was participating in this charade under duress. Then, thank Bob, she finally got as fed up with religion and commercialized Christmas as I was....well, almost......

Humans as a whole crave structure, purpose, tradition, a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves. So, it's not surprising that my wife's determined spirituality led her to delve into Wicca, and I have supported her fully, as this philosophy does not force one to have to deal with yet another carrot-and-stick approach to enlightenment. I do not fully buy into the entire theatre of the practice of Wicca, but as a "religion", it is not based so much on saints and sinners as it is on respect for the Earth, for nature, and for all living things. There is no "our way or the highway", the highway being some form of eternal damnation. The only evil recognized in Wicca is the evil men do onto themselves. Humoring my wife's witchcraft certainly beats dodging pedophile priests or protestant holy rollers and their spiteful mockery of the teachings of Christ.

So, the pressure is off, at least within the boundaries of my own domain. That I haven't been forced by virtue of applied logic and common sense to give up the idea altogether that there might be SOMEthing greater than you and I at work in this universe, something benign, beautiful, that wishes us well, without condition, and not out to torture our essence in a pit of fire for being human, I am most thankful. To become resigned to atheism altogether would mean that THEY have won, and they haven't, and they are not going to.

Which brings me back to this brewing conflict over Christmas. Many retail establishments and secular institutions have over the past year begun to adopt a more inclusive, less focused strictly-on-Christianity approach to the season by referring to "the holidays" rather than simply "Christmas". I'm sure in their capitalistic mindset they only wanted to appeal to as many faiths as possible, who all have their own take on this time of year, such as the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah, etc. The term "holiday season" was never meant to slight the Christians, but rather to embrace everybody, because, let's get real here....they want EVERYbody's money!

Then came the Republican control of both the Congress and the White House, along with the growing power of right wing Christian fundamentalists in all things government. It started with the insistence that this is "one nation under God", that was established solely by Christians, and that we should be tacking the Ten Commandments onto every government building to show all those heretics whose God we worship around here. So now we have this ongoing battle to somehow maintain the separation of church and state, with the real possibility that this nation of ours could end up becoming a theocracy along the same lines as Iran or Saudi Arabia, the constitution be damned. Folks, as an American, that idea is scary enough. And if you don't think it could ever happen, consider that now these people are demanding quite loudly that retailers, and even George Bush's White House, put the term "Christmas" back in the forefront, getting rid of this reference to "the holidays". Under threat of boycotts, retailers are falling all over themselves acquiescing to their demands with promises to edit their advertising to make the term "Christmas" more prominent. Since this is George's last term, he may or may not give in, but hell, there's nothing he could do to save his presidency from historical ridicule anyway.

So, I have yet another reason to hate Christmas. This day was meant to celebrate the birth of a man who preached that "the meek shall inherit the Earth", that admonished his followers to "give onto Caesar those things which are Caesar's", and that "those who are without sin should cast the first stone". Hmmmm. I hear there's supposed to be a religion based on those teachings. I wonder what ever happened to THAT? I'm sure Bob knows. Maybe one day he'll let me in on that.........amongst other things.