I’m not much of an outsider, most of the time. Being white, middle-class, grammar-school and university educated does not an outsider make, and I’m a Londoner (suburban division) ALL the time. However, at Christmas time (say, November onwards), I feel very different.
Yes, being Jewish, even the hypocritical sort, means I approach this “holiday” with a different angle to the normal WASP – who doesn’t love Christmas songs, especially those written by Jews (including the discerning indie favourite, “Fairy Tale in New York”) – but I actively hate this time of year. Christmas is a Christian festival, celebrating the birth of Jesus, and is a perfectly valid celebration (so he was probably born in July, so what?) for Christians. I am not a Christian, and I don’t believe Jesus was the messiah, as he’s yet to come, in my book, and it’s gonna be a BIG party when he turns up – beers are on me. I appreciate that I live in a Christian country, and that this means I will see a lot of Christmas around and about, but I don’t.
I see a commercial feast of tinsel, trees, baubles and robins. What has any of this to do with the birth of a baby in a stable in Jerusalem? What have turkey, fruit pudding, snow, and reindeer got to do with the saviour of the world (perhaps) – even Santa is a product of the Coca-Cola marketing machine! St Nicholas has long been relegated to a chap on the side of a delivery truck. There is something rotten in the heart of the Western World, and I think it’s a craving for what religion used to give the vast majority of the population, before the Enlightenment and atheism kicked religious practice into the sidelines – the release of tension and the celebration of life.
Looking at Judaism, and Islam (although I know very little about the latter), there are festivals of stern, difficult action (Ramadan, Yom Kippur) but there are highly ritualised celebrations of life and God (Sukkot, Eid). The year balances the cycle out, and so you have peaks and troughs of sustain and release. The same happens in Christianity, if you do it properly – Lent feeds into Easter (don’t get me started on eggs and rabbits), and Advent feeds into Christmas (is Advent a time of restraint? Christians who don’t do things just for the pretty lights, please explain…)
For the secular, however, there is nothing like this in society (the closest parallel I can think of are sporting seasons) – and since patriotism became something to be laughed at, VE/VJ day and the Queen’s Birthday are a lot less important. The commercialisation of Christmas has filled a necessary void, and it has imposed itself on my life. In my office, different sections are competing for the most interesting decorations – one office has, I admit, done a very good job with differently hanging baubles (don’t…), but today, I was told off for not “being in the Christmas spirit”. When retorting with “I’m Jewish, Christmas means nothing to me, therefore, what spirit can I be in?”, I was informed that “I was missing the point”. As far as I was aware, Christmas was about Christ, not about tinsel.
It is only at this time of year that I wish I lived in a society that didn’t give a fuck about the commercialised nonsense this festival has become, and either properly celebrated Christmas, which I would happily ignore, or was somewhere that didn’t celebrate it all. Call me a Scrooge, call me a humbug, I don’t care – Christmas should be about one thing only, Christ. He’s not for me, he’s not for atheists, agnostics, and those completely disengaged from religion, so why should I celebrate him – more to the point, why should anyone who isn’t a Christian bother at all?
