Coming to terms with Christmas.

Well Thanksgiving is finally come and gone, so I am now comfortable preparing for the Christmas holiday season. Unlike Starbucks and Michaels craft-mart, I am not chomping on the bit at Halloween with Christmas decorations already in hand to ring in the jolly season. I mean, one holiday at a time, please!

Did I mention I only recently started to like Christmas again? Of course I loved the holiday as a kid. Lights, presents, treats, family... what's not for a child to like? Even though I felt a perennial guilty deep down that the non-custodial parent was alone that day, I nevertheless managed to have a bang-up time.

In college, something happened, though. I got some politics in me. I took issue with two aspects of Christmas then. One was a deep resentment that there were no girls whose birth we celebrated globally. "It's always the boys," I soap-boxed, and "I'm tired of a society that treats boys and men like they are the saviors of the Earth, when really they just destroy it!" Where were the girls who needed celebrating? Why weren't there any historico-religious female figures who got the world all up in a tizzy for two months? Growl growl.  Well, not that there's anything too wrong with that, but how much traction does that griping get? (Not much.) Plus, even I have to admit that Jesus was a pretty amazing person, but just not in the way that Pat Robertson claims.

But the much more substantial issue I took with Christmas, one with which I still wrestle, is the consumerist aspect of the holiday these days. Late in high school, some friends and I started to critique the commercial culture we lived in. Adbusters came onto my radar and it resonated with me throughout my teens and twenties. I started to notice and really feel upset by the way that a holiday commemorating a real and important event was being exploited for "the almighty dollar." Even though I wasn't brought up in the Christian church, I found this morally objectionable (and yes, I realize that since I am not technically Christian, some might find my celebration of Christmas morally objectionable too.). So I observed Buy Nothing Day on Black Friday (sort of- I didn't buy Christmas things, anyway) and I complained all season-long about the hypocrisy and pathetic-ness of our society. I longed to skip the holiday, but other family members were not about to let me have that pleasure. So I tried to make presents, but even I had to buy some gifts- it's time-consuming to make stuff and plastic is not easy or safe to make by hand!

Then a few years back, I made a fascinating discovery that revitalized my ability to celebrate Christmas merrily again. I was looking online to research the Tomte, a little gnome who figured in Christmas books my mother read me as a child. Her mother was from Sweden and the Tomte was a part of their Christmas tradition, as it is across Scandinavia. The deeper I dug, the more I learned about northern European Christmas traditions and their relationship to Christmas traditions across The Continent. Turns out, the winter celebration of Christmas has its roots in pre-Christian traditions. The importance of celebrating light, for example, during the darkest time of the year. Even Santa Lucia has her origin in a pre-Christian figure.

I don't consider myself pagan, but I am totally down with Mother Nature and with the need to brighten the darkest days of winter with bright lights and songs. And food. And a special present here and there. What I learned about the origins of Christmas helped me identify the parts of the holiday that I love: the candles, the shiny things, reading old Christmas books, listening to music, spending time with friends and family. And food. Presents are fun, too, don't get me wrong, but that's not the part to which I look forward.

My mom told me back when I was feeling Grinch-like that I would like Christmas again, once I had children. This is true, but only because I enjoy sharing the things I like about Christmas, not because I particularly like buying my kids presents (more things to fit into our tiny living space/for me to clean up) or seeing their expressions when they open them (which, at 2 and 13 range from mild interest, to indifference, to total disappointment). I still avoid the Black Friday crowds and try to make a lot of my presents. Those presents are more rewarding to give, for me, because they are more personal and represent my wishes for others.

This is the kind of Christmas I can deal with: Cheerful and bright, with love and light.

Amen.