WWSD: An Irreligious Christmas

I heard that vastly overplayed song: It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. " Really?" I first thought. "Warmth fading in the absent sun, life dormant and cold, it's only wonderful if you make it wonderful. " And then I thought: "Exactly."

I'm a pro-Christmas agnostic. Good cheer is the honey and milk of life. No religion owns generosity of spirit. Like love songs, cheesy Christmas songs are screaming something of the truth, right through the commerical selfishness, and from every corner: pay attention to friendship, good times, gratitude and redemption, exactly at the darkest moment.

We gather now at the darkest moments of the year, stressed and prodded, with the beloved, shopping like sheep and drinking sometimes for delight, sometimes to cover up old wounds. We surrender to generosity, giddiness and delight, or, in our loneliness, suffer most intensely from the absence of joyful company. But it is the very fact of cultivating love at Christmas that its loss is so intensely painful now.

This is I think an echo of the very, very ancient reason: the winter always brought the deepest fears, doubts in the heart if not the head that the sun would return. We gathered to share food, to pass the time, to beg the sun, to cultivate survival from human relationships when we could not cultivate in the frozen soil. From an ancient wonder at the returning of the sun, and with the ritual of gathering, we go toward each other, when we can. And with this extraordinary side effect: to feel in our company and ourselves a reason to be.

To be merry was first an act of survival, and then of getting out of our selfish heads and recognizing the sources of our joys. We give- not things, necessarily- to recognize the debt of our measure of happiness, and so receive.

"God rest ye merry, Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay." If I do not accept the religious detail of God- I do know the wish and sentiment and belief. I can call it a sense of faith, and at my best, share it.

A result of this is that I am deeply attached to the non-religious traditions of Christmas. I revel in the trees, the colors, the lights, the parties, the tradition of travel and visiting, even the ever-repeated songs (fortunately, I never worked retail). The fringe life-hating evangelicals are right: Christmas is indeed something of a pagan conspiracy.

Awesome.

Much of what we do is much, much, much older than a celebration of Jesus, although the celebration of much of his philosophy is very well placed, as is the possibility of redemption: redemption, in my mind, not toward the ritual acceptance of Jesus, but to the cultivation of the very generosity, the very bigness of the joyful and very flawed and human spirit that is Christmas.

I can say this, with all silly-seriousness intended- if you are unsure about Christmastime, you might ask: what would Santa do? An unlimited spirit of good cheer and generosity is never a bad place to start.

I'll leave with my fascination for the song "The Holly and the Ivy," a traditional Christmas carol so traditional the origin of the words are pre-Christian. The religious lyrics and the newer music were tacked on later, but the song is really about the male (Holly) and the female (Ivy), an echo of the tree-mytholgy that are part of so many Christmas traditions. (Ivy being a sort of non-tree tree in this tradition.) It was on a hike a few years ago that something made sense: to sing this song in the woods directed you simply to notice the real flora, and why they might resonate: the Holly is green and alive in dead winter forest, the Ivy wrapped closely around. And it is the Holly's leaves and red berries that Santa traditionally wears.

And, so, dear friends, from the full heart of a faithful agnostic, I wish you a Merry Christmas!