Every
year during the month of December an elderly neighbor of mine goes around the
neighborhood with a very happy smile, accosting all passers-by with the same
question-and-answer riddle:
“Are you, friends, aware of the reason for
this wonderful season? Lord Jesus was born on Christmas Day!”
Is
December 25th indeed the birthday of Jesus? Please, let us not engage
now in such silly trivia as, say, the fact that Jesus’ Birthday is an
extra-Biblical stretch, appropriating the pagan Roman holiday of Saturnalia for Christian purposes, or
that the celebration of Christmas as we know it is of a fairly recent German
origin (dating back just a couple of hundred years). Let those who see it in
purely religious terms keep enjoying it that way.
I
celebrate December 25th in America not because this is the birthday
of Jesus, which to me it is not. For any Russian Orthodox Christian (which I am),
and for most of Eastern Christianity, the religious
holiday of Christmas does not arrive until January 7th, which makes
December 25th religiously meaningless.
To
me, Western Christmas is certainly the greatest cultural event in the Western
world, and traditionally in America as well. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men, what can be more uplifting
and unifying for a nation than celebrating Christmas together? I applaud all
Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Shamanists, atheists, and, yes, my fellow Orthodox
Christians, who appreciate the huge cultural significance of this day, and do
not allow themselves to be drawn into a religious dispute over the “reason for the season.”
Unfortunately,
there are powerful forces in America, which are tearing this society apart, as
if determined to turn it into a multitude of cultural ghettos, having nothing
in common among them, rather than the look of their passport. It is a crime
against American society, in my judgment, to attempt to seduce the historically
Christian American Black community into celebrating Kwanzaa as a cultural
alternative to Christmas. It is an unfortunate narrow-mindedness on the part of
those Jews who ignore Christmas looking at Hanukah not as a nice Jewish holiday
in its own right, but as a Jewish substitute for Christmas. It is great folly on
the part of all other Americans who fail to see American Christmas as their holiday.
The
broadly defined “reason for the season”
is a coming-together of the whole nation to celebrate her oneness in goodwill
and self-appreciation. Although historically it may have started as a Christian
holiday, it is a public, rather than religious holiday, properly intended to be
celebrated as such in America and elsewhere. Without Christmas, it is all diversity and no nation. A
perversion of the Marxist paradise…
Merry
Christmas, dear readers, and may the spirit of the season be with you, regardless
of the reason.
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