I’ve noticed that the Christmas Season has begun. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet, but decorations are going up on the malls and Main Streets and people are already buying Christmas trees and putting up lights. It seems to get earlier every year. Here are some personal reflections on “The Holidays”:

1.) The retailers obviously want the season to start as early as possible, because it’s good for sales. When people wait until mid December to buy gifts, as they did back when I was a kid, there’s more chance that bad weather will interfere and thus some gifts just won’t get bought.

2.) Because the season starts so early, it ends pretty abruptly now. I see lots of Christmas trees on the curb on the morning of January 2nd. Back when I was young, it was local Christian tradition to keep the decorations up at least until Three Kings Sunday in February. Back then, Christmas season really was a winter thing. Now, especially with global warming probably under way, you don’t get much “holiday snow” unless you are up in Maine or Minnesota. You pretty much have to settle for holiday slush and freezing rain.

3.) I think that the quick and early end to the holidays contributes to all the post-holiday depression that occurs these days. There you are on the 3rd, with a long, dark, cold winter just getting started. Nothing much to look forward to, except perhaps a Super Bowl party.

4.) As to the “meaning of Christmas”, let’s start with a historical fact: there is no credible evidence tying Jesus’s birthday to December 25th. We have no idea when Jesus was born; it could have been Cinco de Mayo or Groundhog Day, for all we know. The early Christians decided to co-opt the pagan solstice festival by celebrating Jesus’s birth, because it was such a good metaphor: the darkness had reached its peak, and light was coming back into the world. And anyway, people just needed something to cheer them up when days are short and darkness seems to reign. Still do.

5.) Even though I respect and revere Jesus of Nazareth as the most powerful of all prophets and the mediator of a “christic” epiphany on the part of his followers, I don’t believe that he was the Son of God and the Savior of Humankind. Therefore, I would be just fine with “taking Christ out of Christmas”. On the other hand, I think that the “birth of a child” aspect of Christmas is wonderful and gives the holidays their truest, most important meaning. The solstice holiday should always be dedicated to children, whatever the mythology behind it. No matter what the rationale is, every child should be given gifts and made to feel special around year’s end. But maybe it could be done more gradually, instead of through one big gift orgy on the morning of the 25th.

6.) Perhaps things are headed toward de-Christianization, anyway. In recent years, the retailers have been merging Christmas, Ramadan, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah into a generic “holiday season”. Sometimes, commerce is the great equalizer, and the marketplace is where we realize the dream of world unity. (In other words, we all share the experience of getting taken in by aggressive merchants).

7.) So, I’m all for a secularized, common-denominator “holiday season” dedicated to children and to the promise of light. It’s just that I’d like to see the festivities begin around the winter solstice, when daylight is at its lowest, and go thru late January, when temperatures reach their low point. After it was over, the days would be noticeably longer, and it wouldn’t be getting any colder. Spring wouldn’t seem so far away. (Of course, I’m being insensitive to the needs of the Southern Hemisphere; I hope they have something to celebrate in late June and July, when its cold and dark for them).