Christmas, Winter Solstice and Penis Day

By: The Mystic | 18December2000

Applause I was recently part of a crowd for nearly an hour, listening to two men speaking empty phrases and cliches into a microphone. Their words were disseminated via amplifier and speakers to a captive audience of hundreds, as if the amplification itself might magically add meaning to words that meant little to begin with. It must have worked, for at various times, most of the audience slapped their hands together to make a smacking sound, like a slightly annoying trick a person wouldn't have trouble teaching monkeys to do. I watched and wondered, as I usually do when people applaud. I don't ever remember feeling like slapping my hands together in that way that makes noise. It's just a behavior in which groups engage, something that people do at appointed occasions in response to a particular kind of pause or at the end of a speech or performance. Even though applause strikes me as bizarre simian behavior, I don't judge people who engage in it. I simply don't understand it and, therefore, I rarely participate. (When I do, I feel like laughing at myself.) I don't mind people clapping (even that word seems obscene), any more than I would care if everybody decided to start picking ticks from each others' bodies...as long as I am free to be a non-participant. I am not uncomfortable doing my own thing; I've done it most of my life. The Look It's 'The Look' that I have, at times, minded. That's what I call the disapproving glower I get when someone believes I should begin or cease doing something. I've gotten it when the whole room was applauding with one exception. Like many, I get 'The Look' from people whose business doesn't coincide with mine...even complete strangers. Unlike many (according to my own observations), it doesn't change my behavior. But 'The Look' from someone about whom I care stings, even if I continue to assume that I'm the best judge of my own behavior (which is usually). Abuse One person who used to give me 'The Look' quite frequently did this... Carved from a single cypress tree trunk I don't remember who was the first person to suggest that the reason I don't celebrate Christmas is because I must have been abused as a child, or that growing up in a family that didn't celebrate that particular holiday was a form of child abuse. I've heard both, sometimes combined, several times, from otherwise intelligent people, a few of whom I cared what they thought. I don't observe Hounen Matsuri either, but I've never heard anybody suggest that this is an indicator of possible abuse in my childhood. I don't look down on people who celebrate Hounen Matsuri. I don't have an empty feeling in the Spring because I'm missing out on Penis Day, but then, I'm not Shinto. If local Shintoist followers decided to carry a large carved dork down the street in front of my house, I would probably respectfully observe their festivities from my porch. I sincerely doubt that any of them would assume or insist that I should participate in the parade. Religious Holidays Don't get me wrong. I support people's right to take time off from work, the merry-making, connecting with friends and family, venerating Deity, candles, holly, exchanging gifts, feasting, and partying that accompanies the Roman Saturnalia and the Holy Roman version, Christmas. I don't mind the evergreens, although as a symbol of immortality (an attribute of Bacchus) I don't know why live trees aren't exclusively used. Cutting trees misses the point. I like mistletoe. In the wild, it only grows on the Sacred Oak. I sincerely doubt, however, that most of the sprigs available in the stores are correctly collected by a high-ranking druid priest and properly cut with a gold knife. Nevertheless, every year, when the weather gets cold (I live in the northern hemisphere), I run into the same problem. Christians and their sympathizers start dragging dead evergreens into their homes on which to hang baubles and lights. They buy gifts for family and friends who don't need them and call it charity. There's an excess of eating and that music that I find particularly annoying (probably from hearing too much of it). I fully support any person's freedom to usher in the Winter Solstice in any way s/he wants, according to his/her religious tradition, but -- over and over -- people assume that I should participate in their particular version of the Winter Solstice. Independence It bothers me, not just because it seems like an unsupported assumption, but because it often takes on the form of insistence (and I'm not particularly sensitive). When I repeat, in various forms, "I don't do Christmas", people often look at me funny (as if maybe I was abused as a child?). I'm sure there are countries/societies where a citizen could reasonably expect that the vast majority of his/her fellow citizens worship exactly the same gods, observe the same religious holidays, and engage in precisely the same rituals. Where I live, however, this is not the case. The Pagan thing Although I'm not annoyed by people who celebrate Christmas (as long as they aren't too insistent that I follow along), I freely admit to being an inordinately judgemental bastard about the few Fundamentalist Christians I've run across that -- most of the year -- would draw and quarter a Pagan if they thought they could get away with it, but when December comes around, they're wassailing and yuling along with everybody else. Everybody who knows anything knows that there's loads more Pagan than Christian tradition in Christmas, but not everybody can manage the cognitive dissonance that allows a person to simultaneously despise Pagans and engage in a version of their celebrations. I'm thinking of a family of decent, upright Christians with whom I'm acquainted. Years ago, they stumbled upon the awful truth that most of what they had been doing leading up to and including December 25th each year had come from religions that, in many cases, predated Jesus of Nazareth by hundreds or thousands of years. Acting responsibly on their enlightenment, they quit doing Christmas. Cognitive Dissonance Unfortunately, there were children in the family attending public schools where Christmas activities each year are assumed to be as normal as is a lunch break each day. The kids felt left out while everybody else engaged in -- and referred to -- that evil Winter Solstice. Unlike previous years, they didn't get presents on the same scheduled day as everybody else. They were outcasts in their own society. After two or three years, that nice Christian family had to give in to the forces of Satan -- but it was for the children, you understand. If the patriarch and matriarch had come to some kind of mental compromise...if they had decided that their preconceptions that pagan=evil=threat=anti-God might be based on misinformation, they would have ended up near the world where most other educated Americans live. Most have probably heard (and have no reason to doubt) that Christmas is as pagan as Halloween. (The primary difference is that there's no Bible story on which to hang pagan Halloween practices.) Most know it, but they don't know much about Paganism, don't want to know, and they really don't care. It's just a holiday they enjoy celebrating. This nice Fundamentalist Christian family continues to maintain their anti-anything-that's-unChristian philosophy, while observing a holiday that they know to be Pagan (so their children won't feel abused?). It discredits their religious beliefs. Even more than judging them, I'm embarrassed for them. I hate to see any belief system followed half-heartedly. It makes more faithful followers look bad. Bias Crimes? In Brooklyn, someone has been burning Christmas wreaths. The police are saying that the fires are possible bias incidents, motivated by anti-Christian hate. The problem is the assumption that Christmas wreaths have anything to do with Christianity. Of course, hanging wreaths for the Winter Solstice is a tradition older than Christ, but there's another legal problem with labeling these actions as hate crimes. For years now, in apparent violation of the First Amendment's establishment of religion clause, various government entities have sponsored Christmas displays (while public schools have engaged in Christmas programs, etc.). As the US finally began to become as religiously diverse as it was designed to allow, some citizens began to take offense. A case concerning Pawtucket, Rhode Island's Christmas display finally made it to the Supreme Court in 1984. The Court ruled that Pawtucket's specific display did not violate the Establishment Clause. Their reasoning was that since the display included -- along with a nativity scene -- a Christmas tree, reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, etc., it wasn't Christian. So, by adding a few features that are not mentioned in the Gospels, government may now legally support a religious expression. Another Supreme Court decision in 1989 confirmed how it's supposed to work. A Nativity scene at the Pittsburgh county courthouse was rejected, while a menorah at the City-County Building a block away was given an OK. The menorah was next to a Christmas tree, which nullified whatever sectarian message it might have sent. In 1994, the ACLU complained about Jersey City's display of a nativity scene and menorah in front of City Hall. In 1995, a US District Judge ordered the city to quit erecting that display, but OK'd it after a plastic Santa, Frosty the Snowman and wooden sled were added. If I were going to torch Christmas displays, I'd make sure and take out a few Santas along with the Nativity scene, just so it wouldn't be labeled an anti-Christian hate crime. Merry What? For me, one of the best things about the secularization of Christmas is that the phrase Merry Christmas is disappearing, in favor of Happy Holidays. I've never known what to do with merry christ-mass. (Let's not pretend the word come from something other than Christ mass.) I know who Christ is. I sorta know that the mass is a sacrament in which some Christians participate, during which they 'eat' the body of Christ). But I don't understand what's supposed to be merry about it. When I hear it, I think (usually to myself), Happy consumption of a human sacrifice? How do I respond to that? I'm not going to say it back, in effect wishing it on somebody! I've known for years that people often make noises that approximate words, while hoping the listener won't apply the actual meaning to the words. So I usually respond (for lack of a better idea), Yeah, thanks. It probably sounds lame, but I know the merry-christmasser means well, so thanking him or her for meaning well is the best I can come up with. Come Spring A Matsuri Sake Set Because this is that time of year, at work there's little electric lights and other decorations, Christmas dinners on the schedule, and little baggies of candy being handed out. I'm OK with all this holiday stuff going on around me, but -- for all the years I've been around it -- I can't help feeling like an anthropologist from elsewhere observing a local custom. It's freedom of religion, freedom to have a good time, freedom to celebrate for whatever reason or excuse a person wants to celebrate. I'm all for it. But last week, while sitting at my desk, I wondered what would happen if -- come Spring -- I brought a carved erect penis to set on that desk, and claimed I was celebrating a common Shinto fertility holiday. I wonder if other people are as tolerant of religious diversity as I am tolerant of them. But I won't do that. I could no more pretend to celebrate Hounen Matsuri than I could pretend to celebrate Christmas. For me, they are both completely devoid of meaning.

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