Yet another anti-War-on-Christmas-stupidity blog post explaining the obvious

Religious-right cranks never miss an occasion to rant and whine about how there is a “War on Christmas” going on and how Christians need to “put the Christ back in Christmas”. One thing they so direly need – other than to realize that prohibiting them from imposing their religious traditions and beliefs upon others is not religious discrimination or an attack on their fetish wintertime holiday – is a history lesson. And for this, little is better than this fantastic post from Alyx Bradford over at LiveJournal, wherein the shockingly unChristian and Jesus-less origins and history of Christmas are explained. It’s a lengthy read, but it’s very enlightening. Who knows? You might just learn something. I know I did.

I feel the need to say something publicly, because this is just starting to drive me crazy. And maybe if I put it out here, people will repost the information, and it will reach some of the nimrods who need to hear it. (Not that I fool myself they'd listen. But at least they'd be well-informed nimrods instead of ignorant nimrods).

If I hear the phrase "War on Christmas" one more time, I think I'm going to scream. I am so bloody flipping sick of hearing right-wing nutjobs whinge about people trying to "take the Christ out of Christmas". Because I've got news for them. Jesus? Was not the reason for the season until about 60 years ago.

Let's ignore, for argument's sake, the fact that Jesus was probably born in the spring, when Roman taxes were collected, and when early church historians said the nativity was. Let's pretend the holiday is placed where it ought to be. I'll give you that one, out of charity.

Christmas was not even a feast day for the first few hundred years of the religion. Natality wasn't even something you were supposed to celebrate at all. In 245, the theologian Origen of Alexandria stated that, "only sinners (like Pharaoh and Herod)" celebrated their birthdays. In 303, Christian writer Arnobius ridiculed the idea of celebrating the birthdays of gods. Not until sometime in the mid-to-late 4th century did the birth of Jesus warrant celebration, and then, it was celebrated during Epiphany, which actually celebrated the visit of the Magi. And this was mostly in the Eastern church. It was fully the 9th century before Christmas actually became a big deal, and then it was more because Kings and Emperors started deciding it was a good day to hold coronations.

From the Middle Ages on, Christmas was a party holiday. It's no coincidence that it was held at the same time as the old Roman Saturnalia. This was a time to consume all the perishable goods that wouldn't make it through the winter. If you'd needed to slaughter cattle at the end of autumn, best to hold a nice big feast so everyone could fatten up on them. Special Christmas ales were brewed. Teutonic and Scandinavian traditions like caroling, lighting candles, and decorating with holly and ivy somehow crept into the celebrations. From about 900 on, the terms Christmas and Yule became used interchangeably - and we still do, never minding that Yule is entirely pagan in origin.

Christmas spent the best part of 800 years as a holiday of misrule. It was the time of year to subvert natural order. Servants were crowned and lords played fools. You were allowed to kiss and cavort and roll in the hay. Drunkenness, promiscuity, and gambling weren't just permitted, they were encouraged. You went wassailing -- what we would call caroling -- where the objective was to get someone to give you ale and bread in exchange for your song. If you got ale at every house, I imagine this tradition looking something like a medieval pub crawl. It was the time of year to blow off steam, to hit the release valve you so desperately needed. You threw a giant Yule log on the fire -- another borrowed tradition -- and skived off from work for as long as it burnt. It being the middle of winter, you probably didn't have all that much else to do, anyway, with harvest over and spring planting not yet begun. Might as well enjoy yourself. A time to gather around the fire and tell stories and sing songs.

Note that, thus far, Jesus has had pretty much nothing to do with it. Christmas wasn't a day to go to church and listen to a mass. It was, actually, pretty much what we celebrate today -- a time to get together with your friends and family, eat a lot of food, drink a lot of wine, and have a lot of laughs.

Now, while the Catholics were promoting all this revelry and madness, the early Protestants just couldn't be having with any of that papist foolishness. Most early Protestant religions entirely refused to recognize the holiday, banning all celebrations of it -- and denouncing, by the way, the practice of bringing greens into the home as dangerous pagan idolatry. They've got Biblical evidence for this, btdubs -- so anyone fussing about "Christmas trees" vs "holiday trees" might want to take a look at Jeremiah 10:3-4: "For the customs of the peoples are false: a tree from the forest is cut down, and worked with an ax by the hands of an artisan. People deck it with silver and gold they fasten it with hammer and nails so that it cannot move." Sound familiar? Sound like that thing in your living room you're so damned protective over, despite it having nothing to do with your own religion? Yeah. So. Meanwhile, back at the Puritans -- Boston actually didn't celebrate Christmas at all for several decades in the 17th century, but eventually it had to be reinstated -- not for any religious reasons, but because people missed their feasting and their drinking. Same problem during England's interregnum -- the Puritans tried to ban Christmas, but it led to widespread rioting. I sort of love the idea of the rioters in Canterbury, defiantly going around pinning holly to doors.

But, by the early 19th century, Christmas was almost dead. A few centuries of tension between Catholics and Protestants in England and on the Continent had taken a lot of the joy out of it, and America in the wake of the Revolution disdained it as an English tradition. Y'know who brought it back? Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol is credited with saving Christmas as a holiday. If you've ever read the original, there's not a lot of God-talk in it -- no more than the offhand statements about Divine Providence that permeate pretty much everything written in that era. Certainly the spirits aren't trying to tell Scrooge he needs to go to church on Christmas Day, or think about baby Jesus. What does Dickens emphasize? The same things the medieval folk did: family gatherings, food and drink, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit. A pretty secular holiday, really -- and that was the instigation for popularizing the phrase "Merry Christmas". It had nothing to do with reminding people of Jesus's birthday, and everything to do with reminding people to be full of good cheer. A little later, Queen Victoria married a German, and Moravians settled in the US, spreading the Christmas tree outside of the Germanic territories. Someone realised what pretty pictures all these decorations made, and started selling Christmas cards. This was the time period that saw the advent of Christmas as the holiday for the nuclear family -- because the nuclear family was becoming more important in the 19th century. It became steadily a holiday for children -- nothing new there, either, however, as part of the Saturnalia had encompassed the Juvenalia, the celebration of youth.

I still haven't said much about Jesus yet, have I? That's because this didn't really become a church-going holiday until the 1950s, in the wave of McCarthy-ist fervor to prove what good, godly people we all were, in contrast to those nasty godless commies. And people managed to convince themselves, in the space of a decade, that that was how it had always been done. Before then, the important church holidays were still Easter, Epiphany, and Pentecost.

Not that I have any problem with people who do celebrate this as a religious holiday and go to church and all of that. If it makes you happy, roll with it. I am all about people doing what rings true for them. Just don't think that's how it's always been done, or even how it's always been done in America, and don't even think about telling me I'm wrong for saying "happy holidays" and merrily celebrating the return of the sun on December 21st.

So. To all those whingers who want to complain about cashiers wishing them 'happy holidays' or commercials having the audacity to mention Solstice and Kwanzaa in the same breath as Christmas, to the utter nitwits in charge of standforchristmas.com, to the holier-than-thou fussbudgets who think they're so right about everything, I have this to say:

Suck it up, cupcakes.

You don't own the season. Practically every religion since the dawn of time has held a celebration at or near the Winter Solstice. Everyone wants to celebrate the return of the sun. Plenty of those religions have sun gods who die and are reborn, if that sounds at all familiar to you. You do not have a monopoly on December. So bugger off and leave me to my pagan idolatry, and I'll leave you to your droning hymns and wooden pews. We'll see who enjoys the spirit of the season more, shall we?

[My emphasis]

Right on! So, the next time any annoying Christofascist reprimands you (or anyone else, for that matter) for in any way neglecting or refusing to show them, their religion and their traditions proper deference, resist the urge to yell at them about how they’re being a self-righteous ass and just refer them to this post, or any others like it. (Although, contrary to Alyx’s claim, they may not even come out well-informed; my experience with nimrods has taught me that stubborn idiots simply refuse to be taught anything that might actually change their minds. But, at least you’ll feel like you’ve done the right thing!)

For the record, anyone questioning the facts and claims made in this post can simply look it up for themselves (Wikipedia is usually a good place to start, no?). Needless to say, it’s all accurate. (And a very big “duh”, if you will.)

(I only wish that the fact that this information is available to anyone who knows how to read would be proper grounds for bitchslapping anyone who decried “what’s been done to Christmas”. Damn all this civility and all that.)

(via Blag Hag)
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