Broomstick, I am sorry you were subjected to mandatory gift exchanges. I never had that experience, it was always optional. I am sure the folks who didn’t participate felt like outsiders, but for that event, that’s really what they were.
Chastising someone fasting to have “just a little bite” is way beyond it, though I have had more than one person encourage me to break my lenten fast, or at the very least tease me about it. Of course, in Christianity, we’re told to turn the other cheek, and that resisting temptation shows strength and character, so I really just chalk it up to a greater reward awaiting me.
As for your beleif system’s disdain for evangelism, I can understand that, and as someone whose religion finds many of today’s society’s conventions to be intolerable, I share some of your frustration with it. However, as you say, it is the burden of a free society, and it’s one that we all share, just for different issues.
Whatever the reason, I am always more cheerful in this season, and when I wish you happy holidays I sincerely hope it comes across as general hope that whatever the next few weeks bring you, it finds you happy and well cared for. I mean, at least the season isn’t all about greed and consumption…a huge portion of the charitable contributions and volunteer activity that happens during the year comes around this time as well.
Look, I’m agnostic myself, but the thread is “in the USA, generally speaking, as I am not from there or living there, what are the relative cultural importances of these holidays?”
I also work in engineering and have always had Friday off. Perhaps Dopers who do not are over-represented in this thread - the rest of us are out shopping.
If most people had to work Friday, Black Friday wouldn’t exist, right? Lots of places think it is pointless to open for only one day - so many people would take the day off anyway, nothing would get done. This does not count retail and those in critical jobs, of course.
Nope. For us, since colleges are closed for between Christmas and New Year, and often beyond, our kids can come home for Christmas but not Thanksgiving. Our younger daughter went to her sister’s for Thanksgiving this year since they are fairly close. When I was in college in grad school, far away from my parents, I never went home. Too much hassle. I almost always went home for Christmas, even though my family didn’t celebrate it.
My current company shuts down between Christmas and New Years. My older ones did not, but I usually took the time off when I had the vacation. Before I did, I got tons done since no one was there, practically.
We do turkey on Thanksgiving (of course) and ham on Christmas. Once we had capon and it was really good, but I think it was because the local butcher was having some sort of deal on it.
We have ham and turkey for both. It’s a big event and between two meats everybody has one they like. Why would you want two turkeys anyway. Sometimes it’s a combination of two that are not ham and turkey, but usually it is ham and turkey.
In my family, Christmas was bigger when I was a kid, but Thanksgiving is bigger now. My parents are both atheists, so Christmas was never religious, and my dad is Jewish and doesn’t seem to care one way or the other. My mom, however, was raised Catholic and has a lot of childhood associations with Christmas and gifts and a special family time, so we did a lot of that when I was a kid. It was a lot of fun. But since my sister and I are both adults now, and I don’t do Christmas and my sister seems to be at about my dad’s level of apathy toward it, my mom doesn’t put forth the effort she did when we were kids. Thanksgiving, though, is something we all enjoy.
We don’t do Jewish holidays, either, fwiw, except when my mom gets it in her head that my sister and I need to experience our “cultural heritage”. Which she doesn’t know much about. My dad doesn’t actually know much more than she does (let’s just say that my great-grandparents feeling toward religion was that it was an opiate of the masses) and just kind of goes along with whatever my mom has decided we should do. He does approve if she decides we need to celebrate Hanukkah by eating latkes.
Wow, it blows my mind that there are atheists that won’t celebrate Christmas, even in it’s secular form with the Santa and the reindeer and the snowmen and the falalalala, because it’s ostensibly rooted in celebrating the birth of Christ, yet have no problem celebrating a day ostensibly rooted in the giving of thanks to God. Thanksgiving’s no more secular than Christmas, unless you make it that way. (And if you do make it that way, more power to you, but there’s really no reason you can’t do that with Christmas, too.)
We have a roast Christmas day. We have a turkey Christmas eve. The benefit of this is that there is no cooking required for quite a few days afterward. We also have a tradition of several rounds of snacks while opening presents - butterhorn crescents in the morning, and then shrimp, cheese, pepperoni and sausage later. And champagne. And celery and carrots.
You don’t see a difference between
a) a holiday created by a specific religion, that commemorates the beginning of that entire religion, and whose celebration is one of the most universal practices of that religion because it is one of its holiest days
b) a holiday created by a nation-state, that commemorates, at most a moment of generic thankfulness, of which members of several religions were incidental participants?
Well, I’m Jewish, and I do. You can’t “make” Christmas be “secular” that’s just laughable, from a Jewish perspective. Only a Christian could say there’s nothing religious about Christmas LOL!!!
Just because Christmas was started as a celebration of Jesus’ birth does not mean it’s purpose stayed static for 2000 years.
Christmas in America in 2009 is secular, if you want it to be. Why would you believe otherwise? Because of the crazies who shout “Jesus is the reason for the season!”? I’m (lapsed) Catholic and most other Catholics think they’re nuts.
I think Thanksgiving is bigger as it’s the start of something more, that is it’s the start of the Christmas season. Christmas is over well that’s that. Thanksgiving signals the start, Christmas signals the end.
Because it’s a religious holiday. Whether you’re a lapsed Catholic or not you’re still nominally a Christian and haven’t experienced how ostracizing it is to be outside the Christian camp at this season, or how pervasive the pressure is to join in whether you want to or not.
I may want it to be secular but the larger society around me does not. If it was, we wouldn’t have communities going to court over whether or not to display manger scenes.
Memorial day and the fourth of July are secular holidays. Christmas is not.
My POV: I do think it’s possible to celebrate Christmas without religion (this is for Hello Again) because my own family did it when I was a kid. However, this really only works if you’re a child unaware of religion in general, or live in a vacuum, because once you grow up and celebrate Christmas, you are declaring an affiliation with Christianity, no matter how tenuous. That is the societal implication of celebrating Christmas. Even though my own family’s celebration of Christmas was totally secular, there’s a reason I stopped celebrating it when I started to consider myself Jewish. I felt it was important to cut that tie to Christianity, even though it was barely there to start with.
TLDR: even if you ignore Jesus completely and have a tree and give gifts, it is still a Christian holiday. How obvious that is might only be clear to those of us on the outside.
But the holiday is focused around Santa and Frosty and trees and tinsel and presents. None of those things are Christian.
I ask again, is it possible to celebrate in a normal, traditional, American way without invoking Jesus? The answer is absolutely, yes, Jesus does not play in any part in a normal Christmas unless you want him to.
Mostly, it’s just that it’s a relatively inexpensive meat that’s easy to prepare for a large group of people. If you’ve got a whole bunch of relatives coming together for Christmas dinner, you’ve got to feed them something. It’s not universal, though: In my family, the big get-together is on Christmas Eve, not Day, and we eat party food (cheese and crackers, chips and dip, cold-cut sandwiches, etc.) all day, then on Christmas Day we have what might be called a Sunday dinner: Fancier than usual, but not like a holiday feast.
As for the question of whether Christmas is religious or secular, if you don’t like the religious underpinnings, then just put up a tree and stockings and lights and say that you’re celebrating Yule instead of Christmas. The trappings are all the same, but that way there’s no baggage about Jesus.
