It's (NOT) the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's getting to be that time again.

Christmas represents a lot of unpleasant things for me- rampant greed and commercialism, hypocrisy, loneliness, darkness, lack. Every Christmas is a reminder of what I don't have, and the mainstream culture to which I do not belong. And it is seemingly inescapable. Starbucks has already donned its red paper cups, even this early in November. Baskin-Robbins is already making holiday ice cream creations like Lumps of Coal and Naughty or Nice. It is everywhere, closing in around me fast, threatening to drown me.

I am not a Christian. I think Christianity can be a beautiful faith when it is practiced without hate. I think Christmas can be a beautiful holiday- Holy Day- when reduced to its simplest form, the celebration of Christ's birth. But it isn't about that anymore. It's about money and greed and trying to express love through the giving of material things. I don't think this was ever what Christmas was intended to be. I don't think Jesus cares whether or not anyone gets a Playstation or an iPod for Christmas. But that's all people seem to care about. It makes me sick.

I never have any expectations about receiving gifts. Thus, I am never disappointed. And honestly, I rarely give anyone else gifts. I object to gift-giving simply because it is expected. If the spirit moves me to get someone a gift, I will, but I'm not going to run out and buy gifts for everyone I know just because it's Christmas. I hate receiving thoughtless, uninspired gifts that were obviously given to me out of a sense of obligation rather than genuine generosity. I'd really prefer not to receive any gift at all in that case.

Christmas, rather than celebrating the richness of the spirit, serves only as a reminder of what we ought to have, and the ways in which we have failed to achieve it. Many of us, myself included, are unable to have the perfect merry little Christmas that is the ideal in our culture. I don't have much money for gifts. I don't have family nearby to celebrate with. I'm not even a Christian, but somehow I get sucked into this holiday by default. And if I say I don't want to participate in Christmas, I get called a Scrooge.

This Christmas, I'm lobbying for simplicity. Let me keep Christmas in my own way- by rejoicing in the good things I already have. Let me find my own light in the dark. May each of us remember what truly matters this holiday season, regardless of what we believe. Blessed Be.

My very favorite Hopkins poem.

Hurrahing in Harvest

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic - as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet! -
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1877.

First post...

I am posting just for the sake of posting. Just checking to see if this works!