The True Xmas Story

I didn’t grow up celebrating Xmas. My father was the leader of a church that he started when I was about nine years old. He believed that Xmas was a pagan holiday adopted by Christians centuries ago. Before he converted, we practiced holiday traditions, but once he turned his life over to a god, radical change ensued.

I can see your looks of concern in my mind’s eye.

Don’t spend too much time feeling sorry for me. At least not when it comes to my lack of Xmas cheer as a child. Trust me, that was the least of my worries. We gave up so much as my father morphed into a genuine cult leader that the lack of Xmas presents was merely a tiny blip on the screen of transformation.

Once I left home, abandoning my faith and all other religions, I made an honest attempt to immerse myself in the cultural traditions of the civilian world, but it wasn’t as easy as one might think.

So much of what “normal” Americans chose to revere seemed shallow and random. Nobody questioned much of anything, however. They just did what their parents and grandparents did with very little curiosity. Unlike myself who had left behind probably 90% of the indoctrination gifted to me by my parents, my civilian peers seemed quite happy to carry on the traditions of mainstream culture.

Maybe it was easy for them because they were part of the majority. The more people who do things the same, the more likely that all other possibilities will appear to be strange practices to them. Thus, my civilian peers easily viewed my former life as weird while oblivious to the fact that their cultural expectations were equally strange.

Xmas became a leading example of how strange and foolish humans can be.

First of all, Christians are besotted with the idea that a virgin was impregnated by a god but after this celestial encounter her virginity was still intact.

I grew up with radical Christians.

If there was a sin that was always on their mind, it was the sex act. OMG! My virginity was diligently guarded by my father and the other men in the church. Even our sexual thoughts were deemed dangerous and of the devil. I was covered from head to toe with a long grey dress to protect men from carnal thoughts.

Maybe you can understand why this preoccupation with Mary and her immaculate conception seemed contradictory to me.

Why would a god come along and do whatever gods do to produce an offspring with such a young girl? Seriously, why? Although her age is debated by religious scholars, there are more than a few who agree that Mary was most likely twelve or thirteen years young. That was my age when my father began to set up barriers to protect my virginity. The story gets fishier by the moment.

Of course, the American tradition is centered around the virgin birth story without question.

They gather in big houses, god owns a lot of palatial homes, and listen to the stories that have been handed down from one generation to the next. They sing songs that have been written about Mary the child virgin and her baby who was the son of a god. Joseph is only in the picture as a sidekick, someone to help Mary get to her destination, apparently a stable where she gave birth. Whether she gave birth to a god in the same fashion as other women give birth to human babies was never mentioned, however. Maybe it was different, just like the conception. Or maybe she suffered enormously. There was nothing mentioned about how this young girl’s delivery played out.

There are so many unanswered questions.

Even trying to imagine the act of a powerful god having some kind of an asexual encounter with this human child virgin stretches the imagination. But nobody seems to want to know. At least nobody asks anything. They’re all sticking with the story, by gosh, no matter how bizarre it may be.

Of course, no one dares to ask how Joseph took the news that his betrothed was with child.

Supposedly he was caught off guard and may have even considered a divorce. Back in the day when two people became engaged, it was a serious step almost like being married. If the man found out the woman wasn’t a virgin, he had the right to end the betrothal, kind of like a divorce.

However, Joseph was visited by an angel who explained to him that Mary was still a virgin even though she was pregnant.

Not only that, he was told that the baby’s father was not just a god but THE God which of course, was none other than their God. Go figure. I guess if a man is visited by an angel, it would be pretty hard to resent the fact that your wife-to-be was carrying someone else’s child. He snapped out of it and proceeded to play his minor role in the unfolding of a miracle.

We tend to misunderstand the meaning of immaculate conception.

It does not refer to Mary getting pregnant with her virginity still intact but instead to her being born sinless and remaining sinless for her entire life. This was on the list of dealbreakers when God chose the perfect woman to have his child. If Mary had been an ordinary virgin she would have been born in a state of original sin but according to many religious scholars, Catholics in particular, Mary was different than the other girls. Thus she wasn’t able to taint the son of god with a sinful nature.

Today it would be hard to find a virgin let alone a sinless one.

I’m fully aware that religious scholars have spent ages studying the scriptures and debating the behind-the-scenes meanings and possibilities of the many stories found in one version or another of the Bible. I’m not a scholar nor am I a Christian, but even as a child I had questions, tons of questions, about the belief system that I was raised in. It was these questions which remain unanswered that led me to leave the church at the tender age of eighteen.

Have I managed to overlook the cultural absurdities of the civilian world since leaving the church so many years ago?

For the most part yes. I went on to assimilate as best I could even though I still found myself questioning the cultural expectations of my new life. The same rules that kept me in line when growing up in the church still applied, however. If you want to truly belong you need to conform to the group thinking. Otherwise, your life will be more difficult.

So learn to dress, eat, worship, court, marry, and strive for the same goals that were set by the culture you inherited at birth.

Fortunately, when it came to Christmas there was a secular and commercial aspect to embrace that was a little more palatable. That would be the whole Santa Claus piece. Somehow even most Christians learned how to mix the two popular traditions. The Jesus story and the Santa story merged in a very unexpected fashion, giving the commercial side of the holiday season a grand boost.

For those people like me who find the religious story too difficult to swallow, I can celebrate Xmas by decorating trees, wrapping presents, cooking specially selected foods, and mixing and mingling with family and friends. It’s all mandated by society, too, but at least it brings families together and provides the working class with a paid day off from work. I’m always for the working class catching a break whenever possible.

Lest you think that I’m picking on Americans, let me add one last thing.

I’ve lived all over the world and I can attest to the fact that every culture I’ve ever encountered is shrouded in cultural traditions, gods, myths, strict requirements to belong, and strenuous tests that one must pass to receive the benefits of being part of the club. It must be a human thing. I’m sure plenty of sociologists, historians, and psychologists can vouch for this phenomenon. So, no, it’s not a peculiarly American thing.

No doubt it serves a purpose and therefore isn’t all bad.

Yet, when you debunk the myths of the culture you inherited by the lottery of birth, it becomes easier to see the follies within other cultures as well. Assimilation can become as challenging as refusing to conform. Once done, however, you realize there is a liberating side to disentangling your mind from the trappings of indoctrination.

I don’t blame my neighbors for living their lives within the constructs of their culture. Many if not most do. I do, however, find it shocking at times how hard it is to get people to ask questions or to develop the smallest bit of curiosity about stories that are clearly fantastical and wildly impossible.

Tis the season to be jolly, I am told.

And, I will. I will enjoy good food with my family and open a few presents to boost our economy. I plan to watch a few Xmas movies with my granddaughter as well as enjoy a cozy fire in the fireplace. But there will always be a part of me that recognizes the foolishness that shrouds the entire occasion. I can’t help myself. I’ve lived without Xmas and with Xmas and it opened my eyes to the limitations that are all too often placed upon our heads from the day we’re born by a culture that is designed to keep us in our place.

If I had not dared to question the subculture that I was raised in, I might still be held down by a fanatical church. My curiosity led me down a different path. I’m so grateful. So …

Merry Xmas and ho, ho, ho!