Anyone who knows me knows how I feel about Christmas. The religious aspect of the holiday stopped having meaning to me decades ago. But, because of family and social expectations, I continued to play the game, whining and complaining every chance I got.

A few years ago, I decided that my hypocrisy had gone on long enough, and announced my decision to my family and close friends. I was most concerned about how Donna, my wife, would react, since it’s a special time to her.

Her reaction wasn’t at all like I thought it would be. She knows me better than anyone, and she was quite aware how I felt. She accepted my decision with great understanding, even though it meant we wouldn’t be exchanging gifts and sharing a time that was special to her.

But others weren’t quite as understanding. I won’t go into detail, but I will say that some people reacted in ways I wouldn’t have predicted. And it continues every year. Why does everyone feel the need to explain to me why Christmas is important? It’s not. Christ wasn’t even born in December.

The way Christmas is celebrated, at least in the USA, is to me quite hypocritical. It’s supposed to be a celebration of the birth of Christ, but Santa is the major focus. And nobody seems to see the paradox of warning kids that telling lies will result in a disappointing Christmas, yet they’ll go to no end to not only lie about the existence of Santa Claus and flying reindeer, but will continue to pile on the lies to support their original lie when their kids voice concern because their house doesn’t have a chimney, or when they ask how Santa fits everyones present in one bag, or how he can fly all over the world in a few hours when it takes a whole night just to fly from one coast to the other in an airplane, or why there are so many Santa’s around in December when he should be at the North Pole making toys.

And they conveniently ignore the admonition in the Bible about bringing trees into your home and decorating them (Jeremiah 10:2-4), or they justify it in some way, as is common with Christians when they want to do something the Bible prohibits.

In any case, I stand by my guns. If you want to celebrate “Santamas”, go ahead. But don’t come down on me because I refuse to be a party to the hypocrisy.

Happy Festivus!

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This entry was posted by Nick Bulka on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 2:48 am You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.