a christmas story

i'm feeling pretty defensive about christmas.

christianity is getting a bad rap these days, and christians are painted as closed-minded folk bent on pushing their point of view. at the same time, christians are feeling persecuted, boxed in. but imma say this: when a tenet of your beliefs tells you that this one way is the only way -- and another tenet tells you it's your purpose in life to convince everyone you meet that this way is their only chance -- to avoid eternal punishment... well... that's a bit of pressure right there. all that responsibility on your shoulders, last thing you need is some yahoo replacing "merry christmas" with "happy holidays". THERE ARE SOULS AT STAKE FOR GOSHSAKES!

anyway. i was raised in what would best be called a christian home. i mean, we weren't buddhist or muslim or another definable category. we didn't go to church a ton or anything, but still, during the time when i was a child, my family of origin would have identified as christian.

so.

i celebrate christmas because my family did. does. do. will have been doing.

i also celebrate because i have read the christian bible my self and taken time to understand it for myself and believe a good portion of what is stated therein. HOWEVER. i believe a lot of things that aren't in there and i believe there are connections between what i believe that's in there and what i believe that's not in there, and sometimes i see connections and sometimes i don't, but more than anything, i believe that I DON'T KNOW IT ALL.

so.

i celebrate christmas because it's a celebration of things i feel are worth celebrating.

and, i celebrate christmas because it's built on celebrations of other things, more ancient things, that i ALSO feel are worth celebrating.

so.

i am feeling defensive about christmas because i want to celebrate christmas WITHOUT HAVING TO APOLOGISE to the groups that celebrate and are offended by my not feeling persecuted OR to the groups that don't celebrate and are offended by my celebration.

so.

here's a story that explains what christmas means to me. it's a story about me and my brothers -- crown prince, descartes, and sweet baby james.


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back in the day, we kids would get gifts from santa in our stockings and the old codger would also leave unwrapped stuff sort of laying around the den. each kid's stuff would be in a separate pile. one year after crown prince & i were old enough to know better, decartes & sweet baby james were still receiving lots of santa gifts. i don't remember all the particulars of the gift situation, but i do remember that we each got a few things in our stockings and the little boys got santa gifts, too.

what they got that year was NFL gear. not the pretend uniforms with helmets, no, no. nothing mainstream and athletic like that. rather, what they received were raincoats and boggin hats, each emblazoned with the logo of an individual team that was apparently randomly selected by santa from the sears catalog based on raincoat & boggin hat size. descartes got the bengals, and he became a sort of ersatz bengals fan because of it. sweet baby james got the redskins, and promptly stopped believing in santa.

at any rate... after all the stocking-emptying and general santa gift excitement had died down, descartes came over to me and said, "what did you get from santa?" and i showed him the stuff from my stocking, and said, "this stuff here. this is what i got." but he knew that the stocking stuff didn't really count as santa gifts so he said, "no, really. what did you get?" and, i showed him the stocking stuff again, and said, "this."

now, descartes was puny and i was not. the clothes he wore on his body were significantly smaller than anything i could wear... but he looked at me, and he put his wee tiny hand on my shoulder, and he said, "that's okay. you can wear what i got anytime you want."

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