Merry...Winter Solstice?

Well, Christmas is practically here, and I don't have any Christmas spirit. I don't mean to sound like a Scrooge, but Christmas is almost just another day to me, and not just because this will be the first Christmas without Daddy. I haven't had any Christmas spirit for years, and I think I know why. I don't feel any connection with the religious aspect of the holiday. Yes, I know that Christmas is supposed to be the celebration of Christ's birth, but that never had much significance for me.

When I was a child, Christmas was anticipated because of the presents. Santa Claus, not Christ, was the "reason for the season". My family was nominally Christian and we sang all the religious carols, but Jesus never figured prominently in our celebration of the holiday. A nativity scene was never part of our Christmas decorations. If Christmas fell on a Sunday, we didn't go to church. I'm not saying that the holiday was meaningless for my family, or that the meaning was only materialistic. I'm just saying that the religious importance of Christmas wasn't emphasized.
For my family, Christmas was for the kids and when the kids grew up, Christmas "grew down".

Now that I'm grown I have a hard time taking Christmas seriously as a religious holiday. I strongly oppose the efforts by secularists to erase Christmas from our culture, whether in the name of "diversity", separation of church and state, or what have you. But I oppose them because they're trying to commit historical genocide by wiping Christians out of America's history as thoroughly as racists wiped out Blacks. I don't oppose them because I'm personally committed to Christianity.

Would this time of year be easier for me if I was a committed Christian? No, because then I'd have to deal with the consistency problem. In fact, I'm dealing with it even without being a Christian. And just what is the consistency problem? It's the problem of why an originally pagan holiday like Halloween is rejected by many conservative Christians, but equally pagan-in-origin Christmas isn't. That's right, Christmas is pagan! It was a celebration during the winter solstice meant to ensure the return of the sun. Every Christmas tradition, from the carolling, to the gift-giving, to the very date itself, was practiced by pagans in the worship of their false gods. If a Viking, a Druid, or an ancient Roman were to come back from the dead during Christmas, he would instantly recognize the holiday. Yet tv preachers like Pat Robertson happily immerse themselves in Christmas while sanctimoniously disapproving of Halloween.

This inconsistency really, really bothers me! I expect more from people who claim to take God and His Word seriously. If God said His people are not to be "unequally yoked" with darkness, are not to learn the way of the heathen, are not to worship Him the way the goyim worship their idols, didn't He mean it? Isn't syncretism, the mixing of false with true religion, supposed to be anathema to Christians? But Christmas is different, some will say. Halloween is about occultism and Satanism; Christmas is about the birth of Christ. No it's not. Christmas is about the rebirth of the sun, period. It is totally, 100% pagan. Just like Halloween. So if Christians reject one, they have to reject the other; accept one, accept the other. If the Roman Saturnalia, the Viking yule log, and the Druid evergreen tree can be Christianized, then so can the carving of faces into pumpkins.

It's time Christians took a long, hard look at themselves to see just how much they're really following Christ. Jesus told the Pharisees that they had made God's Word null and void by their tradition. Are His followers doing the same thing today? I fear they are. And that's why I don't have any Christmas spirit.

Merry Winter Solstice.