The Reason

This entry has been percolating for a while now, since I started seeing Christmas decorations in the stores before fucking Halloween.

I'm not a Scrooge, I enjoy being around family and friends during this time, and who doesn't like presents? I love getting presents! Oh, and giving them is fun, too. Haha. However, I grow weary of the rampant commercialism, I don't like sappy Christmas music, and don't even get me started on the constant, annoying Christmas-themed commercials! ("More seasons greetings to you all from Menard's!" GAAHHHH! Someone shoot me!)

What is really rankling me, though, is the continued brouhaha about the "war on Christmas." Just. Shut. Up. There is no "war on Christmas"—it’s merely a bunch of whining fundamentalists who seem to feel that they have bragging rights about Christmas being a Christian holiday. As usual, anyone who doesn't believe the way they do is not only going to hell, they're apparently going there as a passenger in Santa's sleigh. And naturally, everyone is out to get them, and trying to stop others from celebrating Christmas as a Christian holiday. Hey, celebrate however you want to! Bake Jesus a birthday cake! Sing happy birthday to him! Knock yourself out!

There's just one problem with that, though. Christmas is not a Christian holiday, and Jesus wasn't born on December 25.

Winter solstice celebrations predate Christianity by many years, and took many different forms in different cultures, all celebrating the lengthening days and the return of the sun. (The sun…get it? The son?) The Roman winter celebration of Saturnalia is where the tradition of gift-giving began; popular Christmas symbols and traditions such as evergreen trees and branches (the Asherah cult), mistletoe and holly (Norse mythology and Druid rituals), and the Yule log (more Norse mythology) began in pre-Christian Europe. The early Catholic church was having a hard time getting people to give up their pagan holidays and embrace Christianity (go figure), so they decided to co-opt most of the pagan celebrations and hope people wouldn't notice. Such tricksters!

As for December 25, it was the last day of Saturnalia, and it was also the birth date of Mithras, the Persian sun god. In 350, Pope Julius I decided that Christ's birth celebration would take place on December 25, again hoping that everyone would fall in line and sort of get used to the Christian thing while they were singing "Happy birthday, dear Mithras." Most historians put the birth of Christ somewhere in midsummer.

Christianity also doesn't have the market cornered on the virgin birth thing, and they weren't the first to come up with it. Such legends go back to ancient Egypt with Horus the Younger, and again with Mithras. Who was also apparently said to have "healed the sick, made the blind see and the lame walk, cast out devils, and raised the dead." Sound familiar? For an eye-opening read, I recommend this great article by Tom Flynn. (Thanks to Darren for the link.)

I'm not saying that Christmas should be banned; quite the contrary. I say enjoy your time with family and friends, appreciate the joy of giving, and celebrate the fun of the season. I know that I will! If you choose to recognize it as the birth of Christ, that is certainly your prerogative—many in my family do, and everyone should certainly feel free to celebrate in their own way. But pardon me if I disagree with you when you tell me that "Jesus is the reason for the season," because that is not the case. Not at all.

Simple reasoning—and research—shows me that that is the truth of the matter.