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Originally Posted by MorganGrayson
I need "National Holiday" defined before I can fully participate in the actual question. I thought "National Holidays" required a presidential/congressional/whatever proclamation as opposed to "tradition."
My son-in-law the Druid is seriously anti-Christmas. My daughter the "eccentric person" snapped "FINE! Call it a 'Yule Tree' if you want...but by hell we're having one!!!" (It's white with blue ornaments, blue lights and a blue star and Mommy was very happy to kick in for the fund that paid for it. I like tradition, even oddly colored tradition.)
I'm Wiccan and celebrate Yule as well as Christmas. Yule, the Winter Solstice, is a religious holiday for me. Christmas, to me, is a secular holiday and the assigned birthday of ye olde way cool carpenter. (I know it's not the actual birthday, but I can roll with that.)
Every year, my husband does his "Happy Birthday, Jesus...Kill A Tree" speech for any remaining person he hasn't offended with it. (Those people are getting harder and harder to come by as the years pass.) If people truly wanted to celebrate "Christmas" as the birthday of Christ, they'd do it with a birthday cake and as many good deeds as they could pack into the season. All presents would go to the poor, the aged, the ill...anybody other than each other.
Eddie Izzard does a great routine on Christmas. (He also does a great routine on pagans. I like equal opportunity comedians.)
Christmas, to me, has no religious value. It never did. Santa Claus, or my preferred - because he's better looking - Father Christmas, has naught to do with the whole thing. I'm sending out Christmas cards this year because my daughter caught a sale at Barnes and Noble months and months ago and bought them for me. "I saw these and thought immediately of you" is a reason to have Christmas cards. (Impressing the multitude with how much money you can spend on cards is most definitely NOT.) I'm buying Christmas gifts for a lot of people, because I'm lucky enough to have enough people to love that I'm going broke - rapidly. I'm doing it for tradition, though. Yon previously stated religion is rather firm on the good deed doing thing being a 24/7 occupation, not because it's a holiday, religious or otherwise. I'm also hauling out my tiny menorah and lighting the candles appropriately. I figure since my sister married and I have a Jewish wing to my family, I'm entitled to the holidays. (Hanukkah also marks one of the first wars for religious freedom, and as such, I think it's a fine and dandy reason for everyone to have a party.) I also plan on thinking about Red and her family a lot that night. (I'm going to want every recipe for every dish her mother cooks, too!)
But a "National Holiday"? That would smack as "declaring a religion" IF Christmas had a whit of religious value to it anymore. The tree was swiped from the pagans; Santa Claus as we know him today came off an old Coca Cola ad; if there's any worshipping done it's at the Church of the Holy Mastercard.
Absolutely none of our holidays hold fast to the original meaning. Thanksgiving would come close if the story that's handed down wasn't such a blatant lie. The Fourth of July comes close. "President's Day" got sucked up by the "Monday Holiday Bill" or whatever it was called, so two presidents get a combined birthday on a day other than their own. Valentine's Day is a nice holiday, but so few people know that St. Valentine was pitching bags of money over the fence for dowries so that innocent girls wouldn't get sold into prostitution. That might put a damper on the chocolate and flower sales if that was widely known.
All of our holidays sell people things and drive the economy. That's IT. What it means to each individual person is left for them to figure out, if in fact it means anything. It's important to remember that nobody is forced to participate in any of this insanity.
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