AGAR: Christmas means many things to many people

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Merry Christmas.

You can say it. Christmas is not under attack.

We have indeed seen a difference in what used to be the traditional Christmas concert and/or play at school.

For many people, Christmas is merely cultural and cultures change, but that isn’t you. Your Christmas is your Christmas.

If you don’t get to see a costumed gaggle of five-year-olds playing out the nativity scene, with some lucky tyke getting to be the donkey, and a plastic doll representing a remarkably silent baby, how does that change things at your house?

If it is all about Jingle Bells, a tree and secular decorations in the city square, you were only celebrating a cultural event in the first place.

People of all religions and no religion are getting in on the gifts, the meals and the time off. That hasn’t changed.

In that regard, it is just another, bigger Valentine’s Day. A celebration of love and giving but not of the main point.

Cultural Christmas is everywhere. You can’t escape it even if it isn’t all over your school in December.

Every retail outlet in Canada is pumping out a steady stream of Holly Jolly.

But Christmas is a Christian event.

Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus and no one is stopping Christians from singing religious carols and going to church.

“Here Comes Santa Claus” is a fun song and who doesn’t love Santa?

But it is “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem” that captures what Christmas really means.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

Gathering with others in a church, with the electric lights off, passing a flame from candle to candle — person to person — while singing “Silent Night” is a spiritual event. And that is the point.

The everlasting Light.

In many nations, authorities have tried to put it out and failed. It is still the world’s brightest religious beacon, with 2.38 billion people calling themselves Christian.

Here in Canada, not only can you not be stopped from celebrating Christmas, neither can you be forced to do so.

But you are quite welcome to dabble.

Many agnostics, atheists, and people of other religions experience the warmth of family around a tree, the lights, the gifts and the love.

And the food. Food is love.

That’s fine, but Christmas is not about that.

It is Christ’s Mass, not Santa’s Mass.

Again, you do you. I don’t have the right to tell you how to live your life.

I don’t tell Jews how to celebrate their holidays and ditto for all religions.

In most cases, I am not aware of what those holidays mean.

Some people say, “Most Jews/Muslims/atheists, etc. I know love Christmas.”

No, they don’t.

They love the cultural trappings of Christmas. Jesus, not so much.

To each their own.

But here is an explanation from a Salvation Army web page.

“Jesus’ birth and life is a message of good news for us because it means we are never alone. It doesn’t matter how hard or hopeless our situation may appear to be, God is there for us. We don’t have to journey through our challenges and struggles alone. He understands them. He walks them alongside us.”

Merry Christmas.