How Christmas Has Changed

I think that it goes without saying that as we grow older, Christmas changes significantly.  It's no longer what it used to be when we were kids, and for me I know that it isn't now even what it was twenty years ago.  There are many things about it that stay the same, but all in all, it's a different holiday for me these days than it ever has been before.

It's not just about gifts, for that's something that goes without saying.  When I was young, that's what Christmas was about--what kinds of gifts I would get.  It was a day of receiving, with a little bit of giving thrown in for good measure.  As time went on that balance shifted so that the giving became more and more prominent, eventually becoming much more important than the getting.  I still love receiving gifts, but now it's more because they act as reminders of the people who have given them to me than it is because I have more material goods to take care of.

I think that the most important shift for me has been that Christmas Day has become a day of reflection, of focusing on peace and joy and hope.  And that, of course, is the Christian message behind the day--the birth of Jesus, who was to bring peace and joy and hope to the world.  But I have to say quite honestly that the feelings I have don't follow the traditional Christian message, for I find that message to be far too exclusive if it applies only to Christians.  The message should be one to all human beings, and that's the way I see it--we all are deserving of peace, hope and joy in our lives no matter what our particular religious faith may be.  And I'm pretty sure that Jesus wouldn't disagree with me.

But those are changes for me.  There also seem to be broader changes in the world around us.  They have to do with us as members of our society becoming more divided, more suspicious of people of other faiths and cultures.  As we do become more divided, we're also becoming more likely to focus only on our own--we seem to be losing the ability to reach out and embrace people of different origins than ours.  Christmas should be a holiday of inclusion, but we seem to be pulling away from that ideal..

I have absolutely no problem with people seeing Christmas as the day they celebrate the birth of their savior (even though he wasn't born in December, of course), but I start to have a problem when the birth of that savior interferes with treating other people well.  There should be no mistaking that Jesus was a loving man, one who spoke the truth as he saw it and loved the poor, the destitute, and the broken.  And his love didn't end where his religion ended--a person didn't need to be Jewish to receive his love and compassion.  Whether one is Christian or Buddhist or Hindu, one never should use one's religion as justification for showing bias or prejudice, or for excluding others from one's love and compassion.

And it seems that Christmas is becoming more and more exclusive, limited more and more to our homes where we share gifts and a meal, and expanded less and less into the communities in which we live.  We're more willing to share the spirit of the season with those whom we love already, but seemingly more and more fearful of sharing that spirit with strangers.  This is a change that's a shame, for Christmas has the potential to be the time of the year during which we show the most love and compassion to others.

Part of this division seems to be happening because more people feel that sharing Christmas has become "politically incorrect," but that's more a feeling that justifies not sharing than a reality.  Yes, there are more groups making us aware that they don't have a Christmas tradition, and more groups that are making us aware of their own holidays that fall in the same season, but that's by no means a justification for not sharing our own holiday with others.  If someone gets upset because you're sharing joy and hope, so what?  We used to have much thicker skins and take things much less personally, and we used to be much more resilient.  Let's not let the reactions of others change the ways that we act.

Because the fact is that Christmas is worth sharing.  As an adult, I now see Christmas as a beautiful chance to share and to give.  It's a chance to spread goodwill and not make others suspicious of you for doing so--just try to do some of the giving that you do in December, in July, and see how people react.  If Christmas is about love, then we can share our love.  If it's about hope, then the love that we share can be a sign of hope for others.  If it's about joy, then we can try to bring joy into the lives of others, even if it's a small amount, and even if it's not necessarily lasting--joy is something that comes from inside, and what we can do is to give people a taste of it so that they know it's possible.

Christmas is changing because our world--and our relationships with our world--is changing.  We do many things now and we act now often out of fears that we didn't seem to have before, fears that may be baseless, but that are nonetheless very real.  If Christmas is going to remain the celebration of love and hope that it originally was, then it's important that we make a conscious effort to keep it so in our lives, so that others may see our examples and have the courage to do so themselves.  It's too beautiful a celebration to allow it to die a slow and miserable death like so many other good things seem to be doing these days.

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