Christmas is about joy, which has never been confined to one religion. From Dr. Naomi Wolf at naomiwolf.substack.com:
The thing is, I remember Christmas.
I mean, real Christmas.
I was born in 1962. Which means that by 1966 or 1967 or so…I was aware that something magical happened to the world, at least to our world in America, in the middle of Winter.
By the time I was in kindergarten, I had some names for what was happening all around me at these wonderful times, and I grasped the basic story outline.
All at once, it seemed, drab interiors — the grocery store, with its beige linoleum flooring and its sad walls; the institutional-green halls of my elementary school; the butcher’s shop window, which previously had only sausages and veal chops on bland display; the window of the hardware store, which had til then showcased just unremarkable containers of grout, and drill bits, and cans of paint — indeed, the intersections themselves, which before then could not have been less interesting — suddenly all erupted in a three-dimensional froth of sparkle and shine, joyous images, and radiant color.
Does anyone else remember the Christmas displays of the 1960s? Made of colored cardboard, and perhaps aluminum of some kind, or tin, and adorned with tinsel of all variations; these wall decorations, as I recall, unfolded; and could be taped or draped or hung.
And thus in a heartbeat, you had a giant smiling Santa — not scary, not ironic, not drunk; just Santa, with the red cheeks and the big grin and the fluffy white beard. You had waving fronds of yellow-golden tinsel, and of bright green tinsel, and you had red tinsel that was always the color of a candy apple or a fire truck. You had gigantic sleigh bells — two of them always, friendly and collegial, tied with a plaid bow; you had cutouts of red sleighs piled with gifts. The shop windows reveled in sparkly spray-paint that proclaimed “Merry Christmas!” Or the mottos spelled out: “PEACE ON EARTH.” The intersections themselves revealed white tinsel decor of cross-like four-pointed stars….on street after street after street hung star after star after star.
It sounds like drab Soviet Eastern bloc and then Christmas.
Older siblings told me it was parents about age 8 but I didn’t care.
There has to be some rights of passage.
One year they used their gifts of tools and rewrapped them!
Three cheers for older siblings.
Yess! Benjamin Willard emerging from river with steaming head on desktop!