The Meaning
December 15th, 2011 § 4 Comments
I’m really having trouble with Christmas.
Perhaps I could be accused of over-thinking it but I’m struggling to find the meaning of Christmas for our family. G was baptised Catholic and I am supposedly Anglican but neither of us are at all religious and in fact positively eschew bringing religion into our lives. I am steadfastly against assigning F any religion, if he’d like to choose a belief system when he’s older that’s fine, but I see it as his choice.
My Dad called on Sunday night to organise an early Christmas dinner for Monday night because we’ll be in Sydney for Christmas. That left me Monday to organise gifts for everyone. Rushing round trying to find presents (ugh!) with G and F and on the verge of giving up I said to G that Christmas increasingly makes me feel sick with anxiety. Why do we celebrate a holiday for a religion we don’t even believe in? Especially when it’s so inextricably linked now with mindless consumerism.
And so many of the traditions associated with Christmas seem so, well, fake and contrived in Australia. I wrote a post about in part about some of my feelings on this at the beginning of the year. The pine tree, the Christmas cards with snowflakes and sleighs, the winter themed carols etc.
But my feelings have deepened even more since then.
I just don’t know how to feel about Christmas as a secular Australian.
Especially because if you strip all of the religious connotations from the holiday you’re just left with Santa Claus (the modern incarnation). And Santa is an even bigger problem for me right now. April Daniels Hussar wrote a good article on the topic. for the Huffington Post here.
I want celebrate the spirit of giving and thanks and valuing family and friends, but I want to do it without all the rest of the crap.
The problem for me is that my Mum was a Christian and she made Christmas magical. And I remember that feeling of magic and the excitement in the lead up. And I want F to feel that magic too.
I’ve always like the idea of the Solstice and Festival of Lights idea instead of the Christian Christmas and there’s no reason we couldn’t celebrate Midsummer. I might do some reading.
If anyone else has some thoughts I’d love to hear them.
Me too, I have no idea what christmas means to us now. It used to mean spending time with my family, bickering and eating too much. But this year? What’s it all about?
I’m right there with you. Neither N nor I are religious at all, and I come from a family that doesn’t really hang out with family, as weird as that is. Growing up, I never saw my parents’ cousins, aunts, or uncles – it was only their parents and siblings.
Having married into N’s (rather large) family that spends an inordinate amount of time together, I’m finding I definitely prefer their way of doing things.
In both families, Christmas has long been disassociated with religion, strangely enough (both sides of our family are quite religious). I used to not care either way during the holidays, but since our budgets have become so tight and I’ve seen how other families value different things, I’ve come to generally loathe the commercialization as well.
I do love giving presents – it’s something I’ve always loved to do, trying to find the perfect gift (not expensive but well-planned, thoughtful, and something they need). Neither of our families are particularly that way – it’s all very ridiculous and overwhelming and almost ruins the holidays.
I *love* your idea. Keep the food and the family, Lose the rest.
I am also a secular Australian that celebrates Christmas and Easter etc with my similarly secular family. When I was a bit younger and was trying to work out how to describe what we do/believe I decided to call Christmas ‘Usmas’, because it wasn’t about Christ it was about us! I believe my family had this discussion while filling out the census form of all things! My brother wanted to tick the ‘Christian’ box, but I disputed that as none of us believe – we just happen to get together when our society gives us holidays. A summer holiday, family time together usually with some extended relatives, a special meal, fun games and some gifts shared (we try to focus on stuff we actually need and homemade things etc and not random crap) is what Christmas means to us. We don’t still call it that though!! More recently, especially while travelling in places where people don’t understand not having a religion I now describe myself as a cultural Christian. Don’t believe in God but celebrate the holidays.Plus I am rather partial to the pagan roots of the timing of the celebrations – I guess I think of Christmas time as that transition from one year to the next – new beginnings etc – this may come from school days I guess since our school year follows the calendar year. And the start of the summer season, definately something to celebrate in Tassie…
Usmas! I like it!