Epiphany

So, although I'm not a trinitarian and so have (minor, in this case) disagreements with the details in the post, overall, I'm very fond of this post by Fred Clark over at slacktivist, because it's a great explanation of what's so important about this holiday, which means once again it's time for me to wonder why it is that it isn't a bigger one. Like I said last year, it would seem like a holiday tailor-made for those people who feel secular Christmas and the generic "holiday season" in December are terrible things. Yet the people who scream loudest about how their holiday is being ruined by evil liberalcommienazisecularists don't even tend to notice the holiday exists. Go figure.

It seems to me that today is an excellent day to talk about something I bet most Christians don't think about today (or, in some cases, any day): what if it didn't happen? I mean, what if Jesus was just some really nice guy who didn't even have a pipeline to God? Or, you know, if that's because there is no God? Or what if there wasn't even some guy named Jesus or Yeshua or whatever and the Gospels were the result of a really drunken bet about starting a new religion? What if today was the celebration of fiction?

Well... what if it was? What if Christ didn't exist? Would that make the message any less meaningful? Is charity and brotherhood a bad message? Empathy a bad idea? Even if it were a total fabrication, the message in the Gospels is a good one. It's not a bad way to live your life, after all: caring about what happens to people, wanting no one to have to suffer, doing at least something to leave the world a better place in however small a fashion you can accomplish. If everyone did it, the world would be a better place, and it really wouldn't matter that much why they did it at that point. Even people who give to charity so they can Be Seen Giving to Charity are accomplishing something useful. One less person going to bed hungry, or living on the streets, or being stuck in poverty because they lack education, or dying young because they don't have access to clean water... any of those things is worth a celebration.

And that's an epiphany more people could stand to have.

An Open Letter About Christmas

Dear easily offended American Christians,

There is no anti-Christian conspiracy regarding the holiday greetings expressed to you publically by commercial organizations and/or their employees.

I could stop there, or just point to last year's rant on this topic, but I'm afraid you've shown me that you're very, very thick, so I feel a need to expand on this:

When someone wishes you "Happy Holidays", it's not an insult to you or to your religion. As a commenter on a blog I read recently pointed out, it's actually someone wishing you well for basically the entire month of December and a bit of January to boot, in fact, but even leaving that aside: it's not them prejudicially choosing to use a generic greeting from some secular humanist plot, or some liberal atheist snobbery about the word Christmas. It's them choosing to use a greeting that doesn't presume to tell people what they should be celebrating. That's the opposite of prejudice.

Get this through your heads: not everyone in this country is Christian. Not everyone in this country is even nominally Christian. And unless you're awfullly ostentatious, your Christianity is not visible to people, nor is someone else's lack of Christianity. The people who aren't Christian look and dress and talk and act just like you (barring any cross you might be wearing, and be honest: you probably aren't). So those store employees? They don't know which holiday you're planning to celebrate, if any, and therefore, it has nothing to do with your religion.

(As to the random wingnut who posted on their blog that "holiday" is somehow an insulting word: the word 'holiday' derives from "holy day", as in "what Christmas is". Seriously. That was pretty stupid even for this brand of stupidity.)

As I said last year: Get over it. No one is stopping you from religiously celebrating Christmas by not making sure they use the word regularly. Or, if they are, your faith is pretty fragile.

Which, come to think of it, it must be, if you think that other people not celebrating your holiday properly somehow damages your faith.

Maybe you should be thinking more about that.

Love,

Me

Happy Epiphany

I skipped right over Christmas, but since this holiday is frequently forgotten even by some observant Christians, I figure I might as well post something today.

Epiphany, for those who aren't up on their Christian tradition, is more or less the celebration of Christ's, erm, Christliness. Interestingly, though Christmas celebrates his birth, this day also celebrates his birth, along with the revelation of his (literal or symbolic, as you will) son-of-Godness to the magi or three wise men who brought him gifts and possibly his baptism.

Since the U.S. is the major source of the complaining about secular Christmas, it's interesting that there isn't more widespread celebration of Epiphany, which would give such people a purely religious holiday. Not that it isn't celebrated here at all (if not today, at least this coming Sunday), but at this point the gift-giving is over (no myrrh in sight), the tree may already be down, and anyone who went to visit their family over the holidays is probably home. (And, of course, it's not a bank holiday.) You'd think the existence of a purely-religious holiday would be marked with more fuss if people are so upset that their Christmas is too secularly oriented. Plus at least this day doesn't seem to have co-opted any former non-Christian seasonal celebrations...

Eh, I shouldn't expect it to be logical.

In any event, Happy Epiphany! It's a day of joy for anyone who believes in Christ.