While surfing through the hundreds of channels available to me in languages I both do and don't understand, I stumbled across one of those let's-see-how-dumb-most-people-are segments about Christmas. I know, I know, we only talk about "holidays" anymore, but for all you politically-correct folks: pound sand.
C'mon. I know that Hanukkah is always celebrated around this time, and I'm a big fan (they do daily presents and have special things to eat everyday ... now, who's against that?). Unfortunately, our Moslem brethren don't have anything to celebrate themselves, and our Buddhist and Shinto friends have to wait till February to get their New Year going. Christmas is, I'm afraid, the biggest game in town, and I'm all for everyone joining in and celebrating for whatever reason they can find, but I also believe that it's not a bad idea to know why there was a reason for all this chaos in the first place.
I am fully aware of the fact that historically, the reason for celebrating may be a bit divorced from what we've got today, but if it comes down to partying and having a good time and adhering to history, well, the party wins out every time. We don't get bothered by movies that are loose adaptations of actual events, so let's not get all bent out of shape because of a few historical details. If I didn't know when I was born and decided 1 April seems like a good day, and then I invite you all to a party ... what? you're not going to come because it's probably not really my birthday. Get real. There's free food and drink and you're going to stay home on principle ... right.
So, once more, for those of you for whom all of this has been moving along too fast: Christmas ... which is the holiday that's coming up ... the reason that civilized people in the West are going to get two days off ... is because at some point in time somebody decided that this is the day we would set aside to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus (whereby, had he been born an adult, we would have just had another myth to deal with that we didn't understand).
Over the last few posts, I've been trying to get behind who this character is. Obviously, he's had a tremendous impact on our culture, how we think and what we believe. There are various theories and there are a whole lot of people who claim to know exactly what he was thinking, what his Father was thinking and how this all fits together, but that's another issue we need to address at another time. (I personally think most of these know-it-alls have it all wrong, which is another reason why we'll deal with it later, OK?)
Look, I'm as amazed as many of you that it is not clear why there's even a holiday season, but the fact remains, as I learned from TV: not everybody knows. So, the next time, let me see if I can put it all as simply as possible ... just so we're on the same sheet of music.
Who would have thought? Till I saw the show, I didn't even know we were singing.
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