Christmas is yet to come

 

 

It doesn't really feel like Christmas to me.  Though I think I have forgotten what Christmas is supposed to feel like. When I was a kid it the feeling was fueled by anticipation, mainly of presents. But there were feelings. There was a bit of magic. I liked the traditions. I liked the lights. I liked the Christmas shows like Charlie Brown's Christmas, the Grinch and I sort of liked Rudolph. The music, too. 

The religious part of Christmas was never a big thing to me. I think it was a dilemma for my mother. Her Christian Scientist beliefs leaned towards minimalist trappings. The Christian Science church building we went to was very plain and unadorned. The services were simple. None of the trappings of a Catholic Christmas Eve mass with the candles and ceremony. Not that I experienced any of that in my youth. It was later in life that I found out that other churches were a bit more dramatic.

I knew even then that December 25th really wasn't the actual birthday of Jesus. But I liked the stories, the myth, the magic. I didn't really buy most of what they told me in Sunday School.  Eventually I didn't really buy most of what I was told in non-Sunday school history classes, either.  Religion and popular history taught in schools is a large part propaganda. 

And I mean that in a non-judgmental and conspiracy theory way. We didn't have the Internet or social media back then to fact check. Even books you could find at the library had to be trusted without much collaboration. And who went to that trouble? For the most part, as a child, we just wanted to believe.

Unfortunately just wanting to believe in things no longer works. Despite all of our resources now, we still have to figure things out for ourselves.