I absolutely love Christmas. I love the music, the decorations, the cookies, the shopping, the presents, the smiles, and the colored lights. The commercialism of Christmas just doesn’t bother me. It’s fun, and its only once a year (commercialism the rest of the year bothers me).
I can remember each Christmas distinctly going back to when I was six years old, and I have hazy memories of Christmases before that. These memories are some of my favorite memories, some of the best and most important times I have shared with my family. Christmas for me is the true mark of the turning of the year and the passage of time.
The spiritual side of Christmas has always seemed incredibly important as well. The religious side—the birth of Jesus and all it means for the world. It is amazing to me. Of all Christmas carols, I like the sacred ones the most. While I love the glitz and the sparkle and the watered-down-TV-special stuff, the things about Christmas that are really meaningful to me—really meaningful, are the baby in the manger, no room in the inn, shepherds watching their flocks by night, a new star in the sky, angels proclaiming the birth, and the three wise men. All that Christmas means, explicitly and symbolically, is precious to me. For most of my life, the sacred meaning of Christmas has been enough to hold me to Christianity even when my faith was weak and other options seemed more interesting.
Because of my attachment to the sacred core of the holiday, last Christmas was hard for me. It was the first Christmas in my life where I had serious doubts about whether or not I was a Christian, and so I was not sure what to think or feel about Christmas. We weren’t going to church at the time, so there were no Christmas services. I just wasn’t sure what to make of Christmas, and it made the holiday confusing and even a little bit painful for me. If I am not a Christian, then what is the point of Christmas? And Christmas has been so important and valuable to me, that losing it—or even losing just its sacred core, is something I don’t really know how to cope with.
So here I am, a year later, and not really any closer to figuring out what I believe—or what I want to believe. I can’t call myself a Christian and feel honest about it, and so I don’t know what to make of Christmas. But there’s something in that sacred core of the holy day that I yearn for. What do I do?
Sailing to Byzantium 