Christmas day is lovely. A warm, fuzzy, festival of stuffing things in my face, playing with toys and not giving a toss about anything vaguely unpleasant. It's like Sundays would be if we'd thought them through properly and organised an extra day of the week after them to recover. The normal rules of time don't apply and we drift through the day on warm currents of satisfaction and consequence free bliss.
I mean, yes, there are a lot of people for whom it is a miserable reminder of their poverty and of the harsh realities of their horrible lives. And there's a lot of depression, and suicide and stuff. But for me, in this lovely warm house with a load of alcohol and nothing to worry about beyond how long it is until Doctor Who starts... it's great. Let's just forget about those other guys. They were probably evil in a past life or something. That's how it works, isn't it? Yeah. Pretty sure.
Anyway, I think Christmas Day is a genius idea. I mean, quite apart from the fact that I got a cool zombie T-shirt and some Lego. And the way everyone drinks so much it makes me look normal for a bit. I think Christmas is really, properly lovely and good.
Naysayers like to protest that the festival isn't very Christian any more, and that it's a shame, and that we've lost the true meaning etc. Well, to some extent, I suppose, but also... no. There's no point saying Christmas isn't very Christian any more. Why? Glad you asked:
Firstly, Christmas was never particularly Christian in the first place.We nicked most of the trappings from the pagans when we nicked everything else off them, including their sweets. Saying it's not very Christian is like going into a building that was originally an Odeon cinema, and was then turned into a Gala Bingo hall, and then converted into a Cineworld cinema, and complaining that you can't play bingo there. It is. It's exactly like that.
Secondly, it's quite easy for your Christmas to be Christian without someone else telling you how. And by 'Christian' here I mean an all embracing, behavioural concept which is as much about being nice to people as it is about formulating a doctrine of belief. Avoiding basic human decency because it hasn't been state sanctioned is a pretty poor response to a season that is meant to be about indiscriminate goodwill.
Here's a good thing we can do at Christmas, and it's not necessarily to do with belief, or even social justice (although both those things are dead good). We can take the space given to us on Christmas Day and use it to be really lovely to those around us. We can relax and enjoy each other, and really see what we're all like once the shackles are off. Look - I'm not at work! I don't have to bore you about the day to day nonsense that constructs my self image! I can be a simpler, easier me for a bit.
The homeless and the lonely need support and love, and hats off to those who devote their time to that. But perhaps for some of us charity really does begin at home. Maybe the people around us look comfortably off, and have money and warmth and a house and oh so many DVDs, but rarely have a moment to be free of all that and just... exist. Souls need healing too. The Bible calls it sabbath. Time out from the nonsense. Time to be in the present moment, and remember you have a soul.
Merry Christmas, you lovely people. Now get me some Bailey's.
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