Christmas greeting

Since I have absolutely no money right now, I'm feeling even more alienated or left out or separated, anyway, from mainstream America than usual this particular Christmas. So many firms, from department stores to car dealerships to jewelers, are desperate to keep from going bankrupt that the Christmas sale ads are harder to ignore this year. Always incessant and ubiquitous, but louder and more glaring.

I haven't been religious most of my life -- that is, since I epiphanied myself in church at age 4 by thinking, "What if the Bible is just a book of made-up stories?" In my 20s, I dabbled with celebrating the winter solstice, not because I was a pagan or Wiccan believer but because it felt neat to participate in a young, suburban white person's backlash against Christmas, to shock or at least surprise the family and neighbors.

A very dear atheist friend of mine hangs a few lights on his balcony and gets a small tabletop Christmas tree every year. It's out of habit, clearly. I don't even do that kind of decorating any more. I have a shoebox of Christmas ornaments that I haven't displayed for years. I should donate them, or maybe give them to my friend.

When people ask (and they generally don't, because it's not a polite question, really), I've learned to say only that I'm not religious. If I say, "I'm not Christian," they look at my hair and understand me to be saying that I'm Jewish. Then they wish me a happy Hanukkah or Passover, and I have to say, "I'm not Jewish, either," which usually makes the other person uncomfortable, and since I know that's the way the conversation always goes, it's not polite for me to let it go that direction. If I say, "I was raised Catholic," an evangelical Protestant will kind of nod, knowingly, though I'm not sure what they know; another ex-Catholic will offer me a drink. So that's often a wise move at parties, but the first answer is still generally, "Oh. I'm not religious."

But I do note the end of the calendar year, with everyone else. The choice of date is arbitrary, not even coinciding with the physical solstice any more; but I think I'm a practical person and it's practical, once a year, to step back, look at one's accomplishments, think about goals, and consider how to implement long-term plans and strategies to accomplish new things. It's useful to use the near-universal down time that society experiences at the end of December to do these things. For the past several years my life has been eventful. It's nice to mentally close the book on one eventful twelvemonth, and then conceive of the next twelvemonth as a blank calendar to fill.

Also, I like to stand on a balcony or in a street intersection and sing "Auld Lang Syne" with other people and pass around a bottle of champagne. I even rehearse it for a few days before New Year's Eve so I have the words right.

For the peoples who created the dead-of-winter seasonal traditions that carry on to this day, this time of year must have been terrible. Cold, dark, full of wolves. Not too hungry; "starving time" was early summer, when last year's food had mostly run out, but this year's food wasn't yet ripe. But I think about short, damp days followed by long nights crowded in smoky, drafty dwellings, and of course there's little to do but to think of rituals and ceremonies to perform in an attempt to convince the powers that be to bring back dry, warm, sunny weather. And then to celebrate your success with the gods, which you didn't know to be inevitable.

Here's to wishing that "peace on earth, good will toward men" weren't merely a platitude for this single day.