Every year I’m perplexed by the way people become so prickly around the winter holidays. It’s as though the whole shebang was only about them and their personal beliefs. Each season around this time, we begin to see articles in newspapers, blogs, and other forums–not to mention all the email forwardings–reminding us that Christmas is about Jesus, or it’s not really about Jesus, it was co-opted from the Pagans by the Christians, or the ancient Greeks, or the Zoroastrians, or it was a substitution for the Jewish winter holidays, and on and on, blah, blah, blah, ad infinitum. Amen.
I have difficulty grasping the reasons for such fervor, just as I have with the Evangelicals versus Hallowe’en thing. It seems to me that a few hundred years of tradition, with no apparent harm done, establishes the right of the various factions to celebrate as they please–or, for that matter, to wish others a non-denominational “Happy Holidays!” (Of course, we need always remember that most of the world’s problems are caused by folks who won’t mind their own business.)
People have doubtless been celebrating the Festival of Light that marks the mid-point of Winter since the first hunter-gatherer noticed that the lengths of the days affected the weather and the availability of food. We Buddhists have celebrated the Enlightenment of Gautama Buddha as our winter holiday for two and a half millennia. It was, no doubt, a replacement for a Hindu feast day, but I haven’t heard any Hindus complaining that we ripped them off, nor any Buddhists, Hindus, Jews or Inuit griping about the Christian observances, never mind the Pagans’. One wonders what the militants are afraid of, that they feel such a powerful need to impress their preferences on all the rest of humanity.
Please celebrate, enjoy, and forget the history lessons and intrusions into others’ beliefs. God obviously couldn’t care less, or She would have settled the matter thousands of years ago.
Namasté
I fully expect at least one post excoriating me because I couldn’t possibly understand such things, since Buddhists worship a false god and all. Of course, the Buddha wasn’t a god and never claimed to be, we don’t worship him, and those of us who feel the need to worship tend to worship the same Gods as other folks.
It is amazing how people feel comfortable criticizing beliefs that they don’t even understand. Comes from listening to the shamans instead of learning to think for themselves, I guess.
ya know–I find myself getting fired up from time to time about this whole holiday thing. I’m tired of my fellow Atheists getting all hell bent over something that generally gives us a reason for being late to work and at least one paid holiday.
Then I get bent over fundies starting up about demanding ‘their rights’ in an area where no one has even said a word against them.
I sit and think that I must be the only person in the world who really thinks we should all just not give a damn—-until I run across a posting like yours reminding of the Pagan origins of it all…and its all entirely too funny all over again.
Have a Pagan Christmas with a slice of Solstice ham.
!
–TBAS