The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of the year. I love the music, the movies, the lights and trees, and, of course, spending time with family. Over the last few weeks, I have been reminiscing on some ways in which the Christmas season has been lacking and could be improved upon. I have three major solutions to enhance the Christmas season and increase its splendor and joy this year and those following.
The most important tradition of this time of year that has been left to the wolves is the celebration of Christmas as a Christian holiday. Christmas is not about Santa Claus or even dinner at grandma’s house, but a rather sublime recognition that God’s only son became man through the Holy Ghost. In halcyon ages, this mystery and its awe were enough to incite anyone to happiness and pensive reflection, with the exception of some Puritanical dolts who inhabited the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It is certainly a trite expression, but Christ’s birth is truly the “reason for the season.” Without the Christian holiday of Christmas, all things that flow from this, such as our favorite songs, movies, and family traditions, would not exist. If we did not have Christ’s birth to celebrate, there would be nothing else to celebrate at this time of year, and we would simply be living in a mundane season. We must first reinvigorate the remembrance of the most sacred origin of this holiday.
Next, we must stop indulging in all of the commercialism of the season. The most rudimentary way to address this problem is to cease the constant wish to buy more presents. I am not suggesting that people get no presents or shouldn’t want to get more presents, but the acquisition of more gifts is not the purpose of Christmas. The root of this problem is greed and the only way to stop that is to encourage people to be more grateful for what they already have, rather than merely desiring more goods. There is an element of Christmas that is about giving to one another, but that is a means to reflect Christ’s gift to us, not the end of the season itself. In “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus” by C.S. Lewis, the historian Herodotus notices two groups of people: those that indulge themselves in food and material traditions for fifty days leading up to the feast and those that simply go to the temple to pay on the feast day. When Herodotus asks the high priest why the latter group endures the former group, the response is, “It is, O Stranger, a racket,” meaning a business. This season should not be merely a business but a time for repentance, love, and true self-sacrifice.
Another problem that stems from this commercialism is the use of global enterprises to get gifts for others. I will be the first to say that Amazon is convenient, especially at this time of the year. However, it should not be the only place that you buy Christmas gifts. The breakdown in localism over the last few decades has been terrible for American towns and businesses. We should try to get gifts for people that benefit our own local businesses, whether a gift card from the coffee shop down the street or even buying the bread for Christmas dinner from your local bakery. While Christmas certainly brings out these problems, they are not just problems for this season but problems that should be addressed all year round.
The final problem with this season is the need for the reinvigoration of traditions. I may be wrong, but it seems that in the last few years, especially since COVID, people have stopped practicing their traditions over this season. These traditions are important and need to be rekindled. It may be baking Christmas cookies, watching a specific movie, or getting together with family for Christmas Eve dinner, but they are all essential and need to be retained because they bring families and friends closer together and honor those who practiced the tradition before us. Traditions should be organic and unique to each family and person. Watching Hallmark movies and listening to “All I Want For Christmas is You” may be fun, but their ubiquitous nature and their triteness stop them from being true individual Christmas traditions. Christmas traditions call for uniqueness and diversity that express the beauty of this season in many ways and in the vein of many people and cultures.
At Christmas, we must remember the birth of Christ, which is the source of this season. We must be grateful for Christ’s birth and recognize that we have all we could ever need in his glorious birth. We must also remember our traditions, or what Chesterton called “the democracy of the dead,” and practice them freely during this season. While there is much that can be done to improve this wonderful time of year, it all must be rooted in the love of Christ and, as always, in the desire to bring us closer together and reflect the Father’s love at all times.
