It took me a while to realize just how strange and unusual the Western concept of the Christmas season is.
Like most middle-class children in North America, I spent my first seven years of my life believing in Santa Claus. Even when I learned that Santa wasn’t real, with the real point of the holiday being the birth of Jesus Christ, I continued to look forward with anticipation to Christmas..
The anticipation of the Christmas season
The first signs of the Christmas season is usually the music. There is no other genre of music that comes up just once a year, and repeats itself yearly. I find Christmas music to be some of the most joyous music. In whatever musical style it is sung in, there is a power in the Christmas carols developed, arguably, over the centuries. There is even a parallel secular culture with Santa Claus, the reindeer that go around the world, and Frosty the Snowman taking on magical powers.
For me, the weeks of anticipation would accelerate with the decorating of the Christmas tree, usually in early December. My family had a ritual of playing a certain Christmas tape whenever we started putting up the Christmas tree. The tape always started with Marlene Dietrich singing “Der kleine trommelmann,” the German version of “The Little Drummer Boy.” It sounded very much like the year it was recorded in, 1965, with the vibrating bass and the Teutonic chanteuse’s sultry contralto sounding like it was recorded in a room filled with turtlenecks and cigarette smoke. Three more songs followed from the folk artists The Beers Family, The Armstrong Family, and Odetta. All were taped from the radio from the Christmas edition of The Midnight Special, a folk show played on a local Chicago radio station. Years later as an adult, I copied the tape and added more Christmas folk music from the same show.
The video below probably captures the anticipation of Christmas in a way that many people can probably relate to. It also reflects the Victorian era in England, where a lot of the lore and narratives of the modern Western Christmas originates. It is worth noting here, that, whether intentional or not, “white Christmas” in this video seems to carry multiple levels of meaning, If you know what I mean.
Yes, it’s enough to get you go to bed with visions of sugar-plums dancing in your head, isn’t it? Though I’ve never had a sugar plum before, and am not sure how much I would like. it. After the romance of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day is less dreamy and more busy. The opening of presents, the cooking of meals, the visiting of relatives, and other chores and rituals related to this anticipated peak of the season fill the day.
Then on December 26, we wake up…
… and are reminded that nothing in the world has changed.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve sometimes felt a similar level of anticipation for the Christmas season. But nothing to meet the anticipation. Many people—Christian and non-Christian alike—hold ambivalent feelings towards the Christmas season. For people who have suffered recent losses of loved ones or are in otherwise unfortunate circumstances, the “most wonderful time of the year” might feel more than a bit hollow. It might actually feel like salt on the wounds.
The holiday reinforces an unusually and often destructively materialistic lifestyle. It also puts an incredible amount of stress on people as spiritual anticipation of the “most wonderful time of the year” meets increased demands on time, budgets, and travel. There is even a website that tracks the number of injuries and deaths that have occurred on Black Friday. People who have suffered the loss of loved ones often feel their absence more during this time of the year, especially if the loss occurred right around this time. Many people around this time of year feel something not dissimilar to the mood expressed in the video below.
Okay, so maybe singing “Carol of the Bells” in a cemetery is a little bit over the top but I think this song captures in an effective the desire for meaning and peace in our lives and the way it often eludes us.
All the chips on red in the Christmas season
When you really think about it, it seems strange that society has placed all the spiritual chips on the Christmas season. Western culture doesn’t treat any other season with such reverence and ritual. Not even Easter, which is technically the most holy day of the year. for Christians.
Apparently, Christmas wasn’t always this way. Years ago I had a supervisor of Irish descent who knew the Catholic calendar of feasts, celebrations, and holy days like the back of her hand. She would decorate accordingly throughout the year. The Pagan origins of some of those holidays didn’t seem to bother her despite her being Catholic. She seemed to be much more in tune with the calendar of the year than most Christians I knew. I really have to admire this.
But it appears that for much of the Western world, things changed at some point. Perhaps it was when the Reformation came along in the 16th century CE as a more stripped down, plain form of Christianity began to emerge and spread. The Church of Scotland might have embodied an extreme form of this. For 400 years, until the late 1950s, the celebration of Christmas was suppressed. Though, Scots being Scots, they arguably took a lot of the celebratory energy and loaded it onto the Hogmanay celebration on New Years Eve.
Christians weren’t the first people to decorate trees in tune with the seasons, but the ones in Germany were the first ones to chop a tree down, bring it inside and decorate it. The modern Christmas landscape was being reshaped in the Victorian era in Britain. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was a part of the modern development of Christmas traditions, one that increasingly involved retailers. In 1939, President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of November to the fourth Thursday of November specifically to expand the Christmas shopping season for retailers. This is arguably the most clear reference to the mixing of commerce and spirituality.
So you could make an argument that Protestantism drove away the year-round spiritual celebrations common in the Catholic Church, and then capitalism drove the Western world to take all of its spiritual energy, pile it into the last month of the year, and marry it to the busiest time of the year for retail. It’s kind of like the accusation that people go to church on Sunday and then forget about spirituality for the remaining six days. We can say “Peace on Earth, goodwill to all” in December and then forget about it the rest of the year.
A new model for holidays
It was only upon exploring other religions that I began to see how strange this really was. The Pagan world is most familiar with the 20th century invention known as the Wheel of the Year. With eight holidays per year, this was an attempt by English Wiccans and English Neo-Druids to mash together Irish and Anglo-Saxon traditions. But other Pagan traditions vary—the Norse, Germanic, Baltic, Greek and Roman traditions have their own calendar of celebrations around the year.
This model, even with its imperfections, makes more sense to me. I celebrate the four Irish and Scottish holidays of Imbolc, Bealtaine, Lughnasadh and Samhain. This means that six weeks after the Winter Solstice, we are celebrating the herald of the upcoming spring. I have gotten into the habit of creating seasonal music playlists, including Pagan music related to the season, or music that just reminds me of the season.
We are in the midst of that strange week between Christmas and the Gregorian New Year. Many people are on vacation, and many others are in slow-down mode. This period, in some ways, is not that much different than the pause felt with the Winter Solstice.
If there’s anything to focus on this Solstice season, it should be the pause. Look at it as a another meaning for “silent night.” Take in this time for renewal. Feel some “peace on earth” within yourself.
If we reframe the Winter Solstice as just one of many seasonal festivals, we take away the extreme anticipation followed by the extreme letdown or hangover. Maybe it won’t be the “most wonderful time of the year,” but it could be wonderful in its own right. The lengthening of the days bring the promise of spring, renewal, and new life, all also being “wonderful times of the year.”. Let’s gratefully accept all these gifts from the Earth, as the wheel of the year continues to turn.