That would be Jesus dying. Not Christmas. Just Jesus dying. WOOT WOOT! Not that I really know what Christmas is celebrating. I grew up in another whacked religion (narrator: They are all whacked) that didn’t celebrate the normal “christian holidays” of Christman, Easter, and Festivus.
Jesus being born. That’s originally what it was. The birth of Christ itself wasn’t even celebrated by Christians until the 2nd Century AD, and it wasn’t until the 4th century that Catholics began calling it Christes Maesse, or the Mass of Christ (since Mass was specifically a Catholic rite). The actual name “Christmas” started in the 9th Century as an Old English word derived from the original Catholic name. In the 13th century, the variation “Xmas” first appeared (using the Greek letter X, or chi, as shorthand for “Christ”).
It was put at December 25 to coincide with the Winter Solstice and the ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia, which were celebrated by pagans (such as the Norse, Celtic, and Teutonic beliefs which were adopted from the Romans) across much of the Catholic world of the time. Since so many people already had a celebration around that time, why not slip in a Christian holiday? Similarly, All Saints’ Day was set at the same time as the festival of Samhain, though today most of the western world celebrates the day before All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day, as All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween). And the pagan celebration of the Goddess of Spring Eostre became Easter, which is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus three days after his death. (The Spring festival celebrated the resurrection of the world after Winter, so it was already on theme.)
Since these Christian holidays were put in proximity of preexisting holidays, they took on aspects that have nothing to do with Christianity, like the Christmas tree, or wearing masks and begging for candy on Halloween, or hiding eggs and stories of a magical bunny on Easter. It’s quite fitting even to me as a Christian that in the modern day, the secular parts of these holidays that existed prior to Christianity coopting them are the parts that most people celebrate most commonly, with the Christian parts either forgotten or ignored. It’s like, nice try ancient Catholics!
I have a niece who has a Christian dad, a Jewish mom, AND a December birthday. She really cleans up gift-wise.
My mom has a late November birthday; growing up, she lost count of the number of times she was handed a gift and told “Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!” 
I’m relieved to hear that times have changed, at least in some families.
AFAIK, it’s all of Christmas. My aunt and her kids would not celebrate Christmas with us, despite living next door to grandpa (where we’d celebrate). We had to create a polite fiction that we weren’t actually celebrating when we ate dinner together, so that they could at least come to that.
They maybe had a meeting (read church service) on that day? I’m not sure. It may have just been when it fell on a meeting day anyway. But they definitely didn’t do even the Christian part of celebrating Christmas, like singing carols or going to a nativity or anything like that.
One interesting thing is that they had more leeway when it wasn’t Christmas. Like, they could listen to a Christmas song not on Christmas, or watch a Christmas movie.
My brother was born on New Year’s Day. He got a lot of “both” gifts growing up, and hated it.
Since my birthday and Christmas are only six days apart I loved it. I got separate sets of presents and could pile both sets of loot together. It made me feel like I got more than my sisters, and I was used to it being once a year.
Now that gifts are not an issue I like having a NYE birthday because someone is always having a party, and I like hearing the fireworks go off.
My oldest son was born on Christmas Eve. We always try to make sure he got separate gifts. We wrapped B-day gifts with B-day wrap and Xmas gifts with X-mas wrap. My hubster always pushed to open many gifts on Xmas eve (not ever my preference different traditions). So my son got lots of gifts that night and Cake and Ice cream, and pizza. That boy would live on pizza to this day.
They don’t really even do that. The purpose of sending the missionaries out isn’t to get converts (though of course they’d be happy if that happened), but to reinforce the faith of the missionaries themselves.
LDS missionaries do generally try to do good works on their missionary outings, though. I remember helping a friend move once, and there were a couple of other fellows there helping out. I just assumed that they were other friends of his, but it turned out that they were missionaries who were walking down the street and saw someone who could use some help, and pitched in. The whole time, they didn’t really do any proselytizing beyond identifying themselves as LDS.
My nephew was born in late November – close enough. I would send him a small Unbirthday (Thanks, Carroll) present in late May to help get him through the desert.
Ahemm, these LDS fellows are, “Elders,” always male and always at least 18 and mostly yound though hubster says they had full adult Elders when he was young. One of Hubsters cousins wen t on his mission as an Elder when he was right out of high school. I don’t know if this still holds true, but they alwas dress in black pants, white shirts, and black ties, and they ride bycycles. No girls/women need apply.
Don’t know if it was on a mission, but I recently had two young LDS women stop by my house to talk to me about their religion.
I was at a remote location recently and saw two young men dressed like that and immediately thought LDS missionaries, though I never interacted with them to confirm. Meanwhile the Jehovah’s Witness missionaries I saw were usually older Hispanic women (though that may be a consequence of the area in which I was living).
I do the same thing!
My oldest daughter was born just after Christmas, right before the end of the year. (I called her my “tax baby” because I got to claim her all year even though she was only born a day before the end of the year.) I make sure her birthday is separate and when I send her gifts I separate the birthday and Christmas ones. I’m doing the same thing right now.
(She lives on the opposite corner of the country so I rarely see her. She’s almost an adult now.)
She often has birthday parties that take place long before her actual birthday since it’s a tough time to get friends together on the actual day. Often she’d have a birthday party, then Christmas, then a small celebration for her actual birthday with family, then New Year’s Day. It’s a very festive time of year for her, even more than it is for most people.
Ditto but I live within a mile of Arizona’s first, and for some 80 years only, LDS Temple. They’re called, “sisters.”
When I was in the navy in Keflavik there was a knock on my barracks door one evening and when I opened it there were two earnest young men standing there and my first thought, even before I looked at their name badges, was, “Mormons. Why are Mormons knocking at my door?”
Turned out my roommate had asked them to come by but he was on shift at the moment. I told them when he would be there again, they thanked me and went on down the hall.
Well, my mother in law died some 24 years ago. Most of what I know about it I knew from her and her mother. In those days women were not allowed to, “Go on mission.” Although, some women will visit local Mormons and talk about different aspects of the religion and sometimes about local members who need some sort of assistance or have died and help the families. MIL, would often run in the basement with her Coka Cola and her cigarettes when the elders or the women visited. She didn’t always skedaddle, but she didn’t want a lecture and sermon about her habits. lol
Sadly, when she died (and she did help with funerals and other assistance) She had to get the Bishop from 30 miles away to give her a, “Blessing” not exactly sure what that was. Sort of praying with her. The local guy, couldn’t be bothered. They also did nothing to assist the family either. They should have been offering food, spiritual support, emotional help. They should have been supporting a long time member of their community. So day of the funeral and the local Bishop shows up at the funeral home. Hubster sent him packing. The 30 mile away guy did the service. Hubs never was a practicing Mormon, but that sealed the deal for him.
My MIL’s mom was buried in Temple Garments (Magic Underwear 
) 'Cause she got to visit the Temple in Utah. It’s a weird religion in the middle of a bunch of weird religions.
AIUI: In LDS women have to be “pulled through” into heaven by a male. I thought it was usually a relative, a brother or father if unmarried otherwise the husband, but maybe their bishop would suffice.
To the thread’s theme - this means that divorced women have to rely on their ex-husband to do this duty.
I know when MIL’s mom died, she had one of her grandsons … guh can’t remember what they called it. Anyway, after the viewing, this grandson … son or husband? if she’d had any would pull this drawstring shroud over her face. Ugh. At this point both her daughters were dead, but they would not have been allowed to do this service for her. Everyone has to leave the room while this ceremonial thing is going on. Yes, weird and sexist. Basically religion.
Yeah, my BiL was born on Christmas Eve, so I always made a point to give him a specific gift for his birthday.
I mean, really, all funeral customs are kind of silly if you think about them too much. But you kind of need to have some sort of funeral customs, because humans are like that.