I celebrated Christmas Eve this year by going to a vegetarian Hare Krishna restaurant for a wonderful Indian food buffet with my Mom and my friends and my boyfriend, and then we all went back to my house, ate cookies and drank eggnog, and played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City into the wee hours.
My mom can kick the shit out of hookers with the best of them, I learned. But she’s still no good at drive-by shootings.
Merry Christmas, indeed.
Perhaps honest was the wrong word for me to use. I don’t see anything dishonest about secular Christmas traditions. Only in the rampant commercializing and IMO, perversion, of some of those traditions. And at least one of those tradtions (gift exchanges) makes me really uncomfortable.
For the same reason that millions of little kids celebrate All Hallow’s E(v)ening without paying any attention to the Feast of All Saints for which it is the prelude.
For the same reason that people celebrate the Feast of Saint Valentine (in odd ways, to be sure) despite little knowledge of his life or the celebrations of the eve of Lupercalia that coincided with his feast day.
For the same reason that a great many people who cordially detest (or detest not so cordially) organized labor are quite willing to relax on Labor Day, giving no thought to the office or shop where they are employed.
For the same reason that people who never vote, never communicate with their elected officials, and try to avoid paying their taxes still go out and admire the fireworks on Independence Day.
For the same reason that an inordinately large number of people celebrate Memorial Day with the Firing of the Grill without any thought given to the service personnel who have died defending the country.
People like to celebrate. They are quite willing to adopt the rites of celebration that is customary for the feast, regardless of their beliefs. (And, as has been noted by several previous posters, there are secular aspects of Christmas (whatever the name) that resonate among people even when they do not share the religious beliefs. Would you be willing to allow them to celebrate family and friendships as long as they wore a badge that said “I am not celebrating Christmas!”?)
What is it about exchanging gifts that makes you uncomfortable? Are you uncomfortable buying someone a birthday gift? An anniversary gift? A Mother’s Day gift? Are you just generally uncomfortable buying things for other people? If you’re buying people things because you feel you have to, then you’re going about it all wrong, and I feel sorry for you. I buy presents for the people I love because… well, I love them. Christmas is a time when I can justify blowing a thousand bucks to do nice things for people, as opposed to taking that money and paying bills, or dropping it into savings, or other (ick) responsible things.
Jeff