A Different Perspective

First, a history.  I grew up in a traditional nuclear (my parents are still together btw, a rare and beautiful thing in this day and age..) southern baptist christian family.  We celebrated every holiday with gusto!  and Christmas was the biggest and most special 😀  Growing up, I loved Christmas…setting up the tree as decoration, baking cookies and a birthday cake for Jesus, giving gifts to each other to celebrate His Birthday, and oh the lights, I always loved all the Christmas lights!  One year, as a young teen, I think I was about 14 years old, I used some of my babysitting money and bought a 2 foot tall fake Christmas tree and decorations and decorated my room all up for Christmas in October! 😆

Then, around The Christmas Season in 2005, when I was 22 years old, I discovered some articles online about the pagan origins of Christmas and how it wasn’t really the Birthday of Jesus and I was shocked!  and then dismayed and then annoyed…because, you see, I really did think that it was His Birthday.  Living in a family of 4 kids, birthdays were always a big deal at our house and having been trained  from a very early age that birthdays are special and require big celebrations, I naturally took the birthday of my risen Lord and Savior as a VERY BIG DEAL!   Then when I found out that it wasn’t really His Birthday, my next thought was “then what’s the point??  why bother??”  As I have said in previous posts, I have a very hard time in playing along with a lie, if it’s not true then it’s not for me.

I then brought all of these articles to Nathan’s attention and he was like “yeah, I already know all that, it’s all true.”

“WHAT!?  Then why didn’t you tell me??  Here we’ve been married for 3 years and celebrated 3 Christmases together and yet you never told me!”

“I thought you knew, everybody knows that…you don’t know that?? and besides you look like you really enjoy Christmas, I didn’t want to spoil it for you.”

“But if it’s not HIS Birthday, then there is no point!”

“That’s exactly what I’ve always thought too.”

And that settled it.  We still finished out Christmas 2005 since it was already upon us, and we halfway celebrated Christmas 2006 for the sake of family who were visiting us during The Christmas Season in our new home in West Virginia after we moved from Maryland, we didn’t want to spoil their holiday…but, since then, we have not celebrated Christmas or Easter…this year will be our 6th year not celebrating Christmas.

Now, this is where you wrongly assume that I am going to tell you about all the EVILS of Christmas and rant and rave and I have done that in the past and the response I got was always very telling …”so what?” people would say “we like it, don’t ruin it for us!”….and again, shock, dismay, annoyance…all these feelings would envelope me.  I could not understand why people who profess to be His Followers would want to invest so much time, and energy, and money and resources into something that wasn’t even true!!

My Birthday is on May 11th, if someone came up to me on July 11th with a birthday cake and presents and balloons and said “We know that it isn’t really your Birthday but, it’s the thought that counts right?? Happy Birthday!” would I be happy about that?  Frankly, NO.  The person’s willful and blind ignorance would reveal that they really had no love for me, they would have been better off not remembering My Birthday at all.

Look, I don’t really care what other people do, I’m not trying to ruin people’s holiday.  I understand, it’s your culture…your ways, and they are different from my own culture and ways of thinking and doing…it’s always been that way, all of my life, even when I did celebrate Christmas.  It’s like going to China or India during the midst of some celebration completely foreign to my own culture, I’m not going to be an ass and hate on it, and if you wish me a Merry Christmas I’ll wish you one right back because I know it’s important to you.

Yesterday I took a trip into “da big city” to do a bit of shopping, it was soooooo busy, with all the Christmas shoppers and the music and the decorations and the toys, oh the toys!  And I was waiting in line behind an old grandmotherly type lady who had lotsa toys in pink boxes stacked up on the counter for purchase, most likely for a grand daughter or two and she held up a toy and showed it to me and said “do you know if this is the right toy?” speaking of some actress/singer on some TV show…and I replied “I’m sorry but I really don’t know…” pointing to 2 of my sons that were with me “…I’ve got boys, so I really don’t know what the girls are into these days”  and she sighed and said “well, I really hope it’s the right thing cause she’d be really upset if it isn’t and I’d hate to waste all this time and energy for nothing”.

And I was so sad!   At that very moment I just felt like crying!!  Because here was this older grandmother lady so badly wanting to relate with her grand daughter and please her and receive her love, and spending all this time and energy and money, which she most likely doesn’t have much left of…and most likely she probably bought the wrong thing and the girl will not be pleased and all the grandmother wanted was some love and to make her happy…and for what purpose is it all?  Just to make people feel like they are never good enough? and can never do enough? . . . I was depressed for the rest of the day…