study its teachings, there is most often very little latitude granted towards any such lofty endeavors. Instead, most study is guided either by the groupthink of the congregation (Bible study groups) or by the bias of the church leaders (goatee sportin’ Youth Pastors) rather than by simply allowing the student’s ideas and beliefs to grow organically from his or her own studies of the church’s sacred texts. No, the common order of the day is merely dogmatic and unyielding reverence for the church’s existing outlook towards theology, and for the sacred and unquestionable doctrines to which it so passionately cleaves. Therefore, it should come as no great surprise that I, being more a Humanist than anything else, have grown to reflect upon the structured institutions of religious thought and have come to the regrettable and odious conclusion that they are, all of them, complete bullshit.I know that sounds inflammatory, probably because I intended it to. I want nothing more than to inflame, ignite and destroy slavish devotion wherever I find it – and it’s hard to not find it everywhere at this time of year. For example, good little Christians celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25 through pageantry and festivals expressly forbidden in the Bible, but glossed over and accepted by their church leaders. On the one hand, you have the sacred text itself specifically banning the practice of cutting down and decorating a tree from the forest (Jeremiah 10: 1-4) while, on the opposite hand, you have Christian churches erecting massive Christmas trees in church sanctuaries from sea to shining sea. It’s the modus operandi of any belief system that encourages obedience rather than introspection to simply say, ‘This is the way it is done, this is the way is has always been done, and this is the way it will always be, for we have told ye this and ye shall believeth it, or ye shall goeth straight to Hellith.’ Or something like that, anyway. You get the idea.
Christmas, as so many other things in Christianity, is a grossly misunderstood observance of an even more greatly misunderstood event. Jesus, the man from whom Christianity sprang, was not born on December 25th. The date was chosen after much fighting and bickering and debating amongst the Powers That Be, before finally settling on the familiar date we all know and love.
Strangely, the knowledge that Christ’s birth is celebrated on an arbitrary day is not a little-known fact – yet the knowledge does almost nothing to impact Christian observations of the holiday. People may not know the specifics about why December 25th was chosen, and many certainly know little or nothing about Saturnalia or the feast of Sol Invictus, but it would hardly matter if they did. What people know is that the church chooses to observe the date, and so it must be Holy. They may know that it’s not in the Bible, and they may understand that the date was chosen to coincide with popular Pagan holidays, but all that matters is that the church tells them to honor it, and so they do. Fastidiously. Obediently. Blindly. But this was not always the case…
In fact, in the more extreme views of Christian theology held by the Puritans (from which nearly all Protestant churches in America originate), holidays such as Christmas and Easter were entirely forbidden because such non-biblical holidays lacked a scriptural foundation and could be easily likened to the idolatry and nature-worship of Paganism. As if that weren’t enough, let’s not forget that one of the stronger contentions against Catholicism by the Protestant Reformation was the observation of Mass. And, given that Christmas is a compounding of the words Christ and Mass, it shouldn’t take a great leap in understanding to see that earlier Protestants held rather a different view of the holiday. In fact, Charles Spurgeon – the so-called “Prince of Preachers” himself – once said, during a sermon on Christmas Eve, “We have no superstitious regard for times and seasons. Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or English; and secondly, because we find no scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, it’s observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority.”
Calvinists often fail to note that John Calvin observed the holiday, or that Martin Luther himself is attributed to popularizing the Christmas tree. Of course, when the rule of law in any religion is to blindly accept and believe only that which you are told, it isn’t surprising that even someone like Martin Luther would eventually have his teaching distorted and reinterpreted to the point of obscenity, were he to witness their degradation today. After all, it was his aversion to the belief that Saint Nicholas distributed presents in December (but not on Christmas) that led him to popularize the notion of the Christkindl (Christ Child) in an effort to put the focus back on the birth of Christ, where he felt it belonged. However, after the tradition was transplanted to the New World and observed by English settlers, Christkindl became Kris Kringle, who became synonymous with Santa Claus, who had himself replaced Saint Nicholas as the mythical force du jour of the holiday season. A little research, a bit of reading, and all of this is clear to anyone who wishes to look – but far too many people would rather just accept doctrine rather than think and decide for themselves.I don’t enjoy being unwillingly recruited into participating in the reindeer games of people I neither like nor respect, simply because it is Christmas and certain obligations are expected. I dislike being completely inundated with the ‘Christmas spirit’ by every last retail outlet on the planet trying to separate me from my cash.
I hate things like restrictive and often embarrassing work parties, or socially required obligations such as enduring the insidious pain that comes from having to pretend to genuinely enjoy the suspicious tasting concoction some associate brings to a pot luck Christmas dinner. I dislike the social and professional demands requests to donate to Cause X, contribute to Cause Y, and to supply toys for one organization or another that has the word Tots in. But mostly – mostly – I despise having to endure the inescapable annoyance that comes from being constantly assaulted by offensively happy people incessantly ringing handbells located at the entrances and exits of every public building in the 48 contiguous states from Lubeck, Maine to Ozette, Washington. They are omnipresent forces during the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, and I hate being made to feel guilty about not tossing change into a bright red pot each and every time I make an emergency run to the store for pull-ups and baby wipes.
I want the Christmas tree, even though I know it is a silly and potentially hideous thing that starts out beautiful but that eventually transforms into an inappropriately festive dead thing that tends to linger in my living long after I’ve abandoned my New Year’s resolutions.
I want to go to church on Christmas Eve and listen to the sermon, watch the children badly act in a badly directed play, and cap the whole thing off by singing carols by candlelight while either sweating or shivering outside on the church lawn in the notoriously uncooperative southeast Texas weather. I want to hang stockings and eat cookies, to rip apart the beautiful paper on packages meticulously wrapped by loving family members, and then to watch in fiendish delight as they try to penetrate the ball of ineptly wadded paper and invincible tape that I’ve handed them in exchange. I want to stay up late on Christmas Eve, pretending to be Santa Claus and stomping around on the roof. I want to drive around and look at Christmas lights, eat turkey and unidentifiable casseroles at family gatherings, then sit together in silence with my wife beside me, staring at the twinkling lights of our tree while Christmas music drifts softly across the room.
For my part, I will reveal that I refuse to believe in a Creator who plays the role of a disciplinarian father busily overseeing children he never wants to grow up. This is the typical view of God in Christianity, the stern and loving father who watches over his children and, in exchange, demands their devotion, their loyalty, and their unwavering love at the threat of punishment, should they believe the Wrong Things. Instead, I take the atypical view and elect to believe in God as an image of my own interpretation, as a father who loves his children, but who does not want them to stay in a perpetual state of childhood. As any parent, He wants his children to grow up, to become independent, strong, and wise. He is a father who wants his children to find their own way, to make their own decisions and make something better out of what He has given them in this world, rather than simply accept that life is a temporary misery to fret over whilst awaiting an afterlife filled with shiny, happy things and lots and lots of singing. (And harps. Always harps.) More than anything though, He wants his children to simply love Him out of love itself, rather than idly worshipping Him out of the intrinsic fear of consequence that angering Him would bring. So, whether Jesus was born on December 25th or April 17th, it doesn’t really matter to me. In fact, none of it truly matters, not really. In the end, religious thought is only what those in power want it to be, what the people of the world need it to be, and what each of us ultimately chooses to believe it actually is. All of us, together and apart as individuals, whole and complete and thinking. Above all, thinking.
Don't you wanna be cool, too?
