Obligatory Christmas Post

Christmas Eve is tomorrow and I, for one, am thrilled.  Coming from a Cuban family, Noche Buena, the Night Before Christmas and all through the house is traditionally a bigger celebration than The Day itself.  Living in Miami, it's pretty well understood that the 24th is the night everyone's going to be cooking an entire pig in a box in their backyard (or a pit, if they're really traditional).  You cannot argue with the awesome that is this way of cooking pig:

Yum. And the skin is so delicious.

There will be family getting together and probably someone drinking too much and jumping in a pool. There will be Too Much Food and stories of other 24ths passed in just this way.  It's a night to be with family, enjoy some good food, and just Be for a culture that didn't have Thanksgiving until we came to the 'states.

My church insists on having a Christmas Eve service every year at 6 pm and every year they ask me and my mom (part of the choir) if we'll be singing.  And every year we tell them "no, it's noche buena."  Americans. Am I right?  :)

But even though Noche Buena has some of the best food of all time I'm sorry Thanksgiving, and I'm gonna let you finish it's always been about family and love and laughter first and foremost.

Arguably, the entirety of the Christmas season is about this: getting back to our roots and remembering the people we love who love us.  But for me, there's an entire other element that I cannot remove from the celebration of the holiday.

I'm speaking, of course, of Jesus.  I am a practicing, believing, and happy Christian, and it is impossible for me to remove the story of the Nativity from my understanding of this season.  Which is why articles like the one I read today just tick me off a little.  Quoting the American Atheist's website, CNN journalist Katie Glaeser says that "“Christians don’t deserve a monopoly on holiday cheer,"" and "It turns out that traditions associated with Christmas have morphed into social norms adopted even among nonbelievers." 

At the risk of sounding like a crazy person, I am not, in any way, going to even insinuate that I don't think anyone who wants to is allowed to celebrate Christmas.  Sheesh, what a silly thing to say.  The holiday is celebrated with love and laughter and being with family and no one has a monopoly on that.  

What I am willing to comment on is the erroneous belief Atheists seem to hold where they make sweeping generalizations about Christians and what we think in the same way we supposedly make generalizations about them.

The comments for this article seem to be pretty well-mixed between Christians attempting to defend their right to the holiday and atheists jumping on the "Religion is a crock and you're an idiot if you believe it" boat.  (not all atheists do this, just like not all Christians send all caps GOD LOVES YOU replies to everything)

So. Some quick tidying up so we can all get back to our eggnog:

1. "Christ was born during this time. While there is a debate about whether the 25th was the actual date, no one debates it was called Christ-mas to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ of Nazareth"

A: False.  Due to all the shepherds wandering all over the place and the whole thing with the census, Jesus being born on December 25th is pretty much an invention of some incarnation of the early church.  However.  Like pretty much everything else in Christianity (I'm going purely off protestantism here, since it's the branch I pertain to) it is an accepted and beloved symbol of something great.

Well-informed Christians pretty much all agree that the early church took over the old festival of Saturnalia to keep their most recent converts happy with a mid-winter celebration.  Most of our Christmas traditions stem from here. The evergreen tree, lights all over, gifts, the day...all old Saturnalia stuff.

Hug it. Squeeze it. Call it George.

Like the Lord's Supper, Christ's birth being celebrated in mid-winter serves as a reminder of the things we believe.  It's a time to talk about the Nativity, remember the miracle of the virgin birth, and go back to where it all started, something we tend to forget during our normal-year sermons.

2. "“Exchanging gifts and donating to charity are not religious statements but more of a chance to stop and show people you care.”

A: Great. Go ahead.  I will not stop anyone from donating or doing what they like during the holiday season.  But. An understanding of where the Christians are coming from here would be nice.  We use this time to remember the birth and subsequent life of Someone who came to Earth with the express purpose of saving us (humans) from our sins.  Grateful doesn't even begin to cover it.  And with most of Jesus' teachings centering on how we should provide for and love our fellow man regardless of who what where they are, Christmas (symbol that it is...we went over that) is a time where we remember this and act accordingly.

So while I think it's fine that people feel the holiday is a time for spreading good cheer regardless of their beliefs, there has to be an understanding of why we as Christians espouse the season as we do.  July the 4th, for example, isn't the only time we remember our troops or how much we love our country, but it's a day set aside for doing it.  So it is with Christmas as per the Christian tradition.

3. "How arrogant and passive aggressive is that pastor for assuming that putting up a tree and leaving cookies for Santa is "embracing" Christ? Clever marketing may have the common man trained to refer to the holidays as "Christmas" but informed people see through it and realize that the Winter Solstice gimmick is not owned by any one religion; yet we see blowhards over and over again trying to make it true with their army of ignorant lemmings spreading the word and rallying under the threat of the "attack" on their "beliefs"."

A: I am not a lemming. kthxbai

Peace, love, and joy to you all. Goodwill towards men. 

Merry Christmas, Internets.  Love you.