As an­oth­er Christ­mas [or should we say hol­i­day?] sea­son un­folds in first-world coun­tries such as Amer­i­ca and Eng­land, peo­ple work nor­mal hours dur­ing the month of De­cem­ber and even on Christ­mas Eve. Christ­mas trees are on­ly in­stalled on Christ­mas Eve and cel­e­bra­tions are usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to this time and Christ­mas Day.

Some of the cus­toms for the fes­tive sea­son may be re­li­gious, oth­ers sec­u­lar, but there is lit­tle doubt that many tra­di­tions are the prod­uct of hun­dreds of years of com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, which has made the hol­i­day so pop­u­lar. Christ­mas to­day is an amal­gam of dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al tra­di­tions mixed with pop­u­lar cul­ture and mass mar­ket­ing.

His­to­ri­an Ruth Mc­Clel­land-Nu­gent, an ex­pert on pop cul­ture his­to­ry at the Col­lege of Arts, Hu­man­i­ties and So­cial Sci­ences at Au­gus­ta Uni­ver­si­ty, Geor­gia, USA, be­lieves the ori­gins of the mod­ern Christ­mas, from an­cient win­ter sol­stice feasts to fam­i­ly-cen­tred gift-giv­ing and San­ta Claus myths, all the way to mod­ern ad­ver­tis­ing cam­paigns and catchy tunes, have lit­tle to do with Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy.

“Tra­di­tion is a term we throw around a lot. We have a pop­u­lar sense that things were all the same for a very long time and then re­cent­ly every­thing changed, when you dig in­to any kind of cul­tur­al cus­tom, you tend to find there are lots of changes that have tak­en place.”

In T&T, we still cel­e­brate this fes­tive sea­son dur­ing the en­tire month of De­cem­ber. Pub­lic ser­vice and pri­vate en­ter­pris­es con­tin­ue to in­vest time and mon­ey in Christ­mas lun­cheons, staff par­ties and oth­er events, such as toy dri­ves. This is all well and good when we can af­ford it, but are we sim­ply be­ing fool­hardy and pig-head­ed when we in­sist on do­ing it in the face of chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times?

Are we be­ing rea­son­able as a peo­ple when we con­tin­ue to in­sist on hav­ing par­ties at min­istries rather than chan­nelling such funds to­wards the poor and needy? Do we pre­fer to drink and fete at the work­place rather than to al­low fam­i­lies some fi­nan­cial abil­i­ty to spend qual­i­ty time and mo­ments on an in­di­vid­ual or fam­i­ly lev­el? What kind of mes­sage are we send­ing to our youths at this crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic time?

As a so­ci­ety, we should be able to “dis­tin­guish be­tween self-ful­fil­ment/grat­i­fi­ca­tion or striv­ing to­wards mean­ing and pur­pose that un­der­lies hu­man be­ings’ ca­pac­i­ty to en­gage in com­plex so­cial and cul­tur­al be­hav­iour, in con­trast to the striv­ing for sim­ply plea­sur­able ex­pe­ri­ence.”

In oth­er words, there is no use­ful pur­pose to be achieved in spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to ‘wine and jam’ whilst our hos­pi­tals are lack­ing beds and prop­er fa­cil­i­ties and peo­ple con­tin­ue to be with­out es­sen­tial liv­ing ne­ces­si­ties such as wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, hous­ing, etc.

As the hol­i­day sea­son un­folds each year, the ques­tion that of­ten stirs with­in the hearts and minds of Chris­tians - should they cel­e­brate Christ­mas? This fes­tive time of year is an ea­ger­ly await­ed oc­ca­sion to cel­e­brate the birth of Je­sus Christ, a time of re­flec­tion, fam­i­ly gath­er­ings, and acts of kind­ness. For oth­ers, how­ev­er, it rais­es the­o­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal ques­tions about ori­gins of Christ­mas tra­di­tions and whether they align with the teach­ings of Chris­tian­i­ty.

Christ­mas is a cel­e­bra­tion of the birth of Je­sus. Re­mem­ber Em­manuel, God with us, tak­ing on hu­man form to live among us for a while. The an­nounce­ment of the an­gels to Mary, Zacharias and the shep­herds. The trip to Beth­le­hem. The vis­it of the shep­herds and ma­gi. All of this is thor­ough­ly Chris­t­ian and found in the pages of the Bible. Manger scenes, Christ­mas car­ols and Christ­mas Eve ser­vices all help to re­mem­ber and cel­e­brate Em­manuel.

Is it true that some of what we see at Christ­mas is pa­gan in ori­gin? The ac­tu­al date of Je­sus’ birth is un­known. Most schol­ars sug­gest that it was not in the win­ter, but more like­ly in the spring. This is based on the shep­herds hav­ing the flocks out in the fields near Beth­le­hem.

So why do we cel­e­brate his birth on De­cem­ber 25th? This was in­deed a date al­ready on the cal­en­dar for many peo­ples. Many of the Ro­mans cel­e­brat­ed the birth of Mithra, [Me­di­a­tor, the Sun God] on De­cem­ber 25th.

Co-opt­ing the date pro­vid­ed Chris­tians with a cel­e­bra­tion of their own to re­place the pa­gan cel­e­bra­tions.

To­day, Christ­mas is es­sen­tial­ly two dis­tinct cel­e­bra­tions. One is for the Chris­tians to cel­e­brate the birth of Je­sus Christ. The oth­er has be­come thor­ough­ly sec­u­lar, which is slow­ly erod­ing any men­tion of Chris­t­ian ori­gin.

It’s a time when re­tail­ers make one last at­tempt to make a prof­it be­fore the end of the year, a time for giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing gifts. “Mer­ry Christ­mas” is re­placed by “Sea­son’s Greet­ings” or “Hap­py Hol­i­days.”