With the holiday season upon us, I was thinking about f how conservatives and the religious right try to claim that the country, patriotism, religion, marriage, or even holidays fall within their own purview. They have done that with the Founding of the US, turning Jefferson and Franklin into religious zealots that they never were.
We see the fights at city halls around the country over displaying Nativity Scenes.
It was a Republican presidency that pushed the idea that it was our patriotic duty to shop in order to restore the 2008 collapsing economy. And that idea was never truer than at Christmas time. So I asked myself, what does Christmas mean really? is it too commercial, is it strictly a religious holiday or culturally does is now encompass so much more?
According to this website, we don’t really know why Christmas is celebrated on December 25th but it definitely looks like it has some relationship to earlier celebrations of the Winter Solstice. Before there were Christmas carols, there were pagan carols sung around the Winter Solstice. Ironically, the Puritans in England and then later after they emigrated to the US were very much against the singing of Christmas carols. They actually attempted to ban the celebration of Christmas altogether. This trend surfaced several time in the US and it was not really until the 19 century that Christmas was taken in by more conservative Christian groups that were spawned by the Puritans.
So as with all things, the history is much less cut and dry. Perspectives change. Institution change and what is conservative now would have been radical once. We can all define what Christmas means to us and none of us have to be right or wrong.
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