My five-year-old son has been trying to convince me, this week, that Santa Claus is real.
This is an interesting predicament that most parents likely don't have to deal with. Most parents, in this area, at least, are the ones who tell their children that Santa Claus is real in the first place. Santa Claus is the one who arrives on Christmas Eve and leaves toys under family Christmas trees - not Mom and Dad.
There are family traditions of visiting Santa at the Mall and getting your photo taken, while you're told to sit on this stranger old man's lap, and spiel the beans on all the neat stuff you want, this year, from him, while he nods, dutifully, and tells you he'll bring you nice toys, but only if you're good. (What even IS good? There's a lot of bratty kids out there I wouldn't label as "good," and I guarantee they get presents "from Santa." Empty threats, people. Empty threats.)
But I don't want to just rant about why I think Christmas is weird. Heaven knows, I've done plenty of that in my time. I want to talk about my five-year-old trying so hard to convince me Santa is real, and why that is the strangest thing to me.
He's in Kindergarten. He's learned the songs. He's taught them to his younger brother! But Santa has never been a part of his life prior to this year.
In his living memory, this boy has never had a Christmas tree. He's never celebrated anything other than Hanukkah with us, his parents. Our choice to celebrate Hanukkah instead, with our children, was a deliberate choice - one made over the course of years and many, many conversations. In the spirit of full disclosure, we stumbled into Hanukkah on a technicality. We found ourselves in a moral bind over Christmas, and, with obscure family heritage, found a solution to our moral concerns.
I am grateful to "technically" be Jewish. I was fully raised Mormon, however, and Judaism was never a part of our lives, growing up. To say that I am Jewish feels like a great misdirect, if not an outrageous feint. If you asked me my feelings on the Torah and the Law of Moses, I would confess that pork is absolutely my favorite of the meats. I don't speak an ounce of Hebrew, I didn't circumcise my sons, I've never been anywhere near a Synagogue, and I spent over thirty years of my life praying, "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."
But I wanted to understand that side of my family line. I read books, I celebrated the holidays, and I made that great heritage a matter of prayer. I found many things that I loved. The Old Testament / Torah has always been my favorite book of scripture. I found kindred spirits in those stubborn, religious folks. Frankly, the Old Testament was written by raving Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disordered individuals, and that thing SPEAKS to me. (You mean there's another rule about something, because it's "RIGHT," and if people don't do it, we can judge them for it? Count me in!) The stories were, all of them, lessons of right and wrong.
But back to the holidays!
Hanukkah became our family celebration, for the December holidays. Why? Because of my love for Jesus.
It's deeply ironic, to choose to celebrate a Jewish holiday that has nothing to do with Jesus, because you love Jesus - but so it was. I've had strong feelings about Santa Claus for decades. (My first essay in college was a criticism of celebrating Christmas with Santa Claus. I'm THAT girl!) To me, taking a "Christian" holiday and adulterating it with pagan worship and traditions was immoral. Throwing in a red-suited anti-Christ to distract young, impressionable children who really just want STUFF, was Satan's plan that would cause children to fall prey to consumerism and fall away from their Lord and Savior and the humility of his birth.
Yes, I'm aware that was some intense emotion, and I had it for a very long time, thank you very much. (Remember those OCPD Old Testament writers I love? I'm that girl. Be patient.)
Having children, I felt the double-bind of being unable to celebrate in the way that I felt was appropriate. Extended family, for one, celebrated the "traditional" Christmas, and that wasn't going to change based on Crazy Grace, Who Gets "Like That." The fact that my children would attend school with other kids - always bragging about their presents. "What did you get?" "Nothing. My mom thinks the obsession with consumerism is particularly un-Christian, so we got nothing," was an unacceptable future for my children. I had to give them presents during December. It just had to happen. So how?
Enter Hanukkah. To me, it felt like a lifeline. Eight days to spread presents out, over. Eight nights with family, celebrating miracles, and frankly, the story of reclaiming that which was holy from the ungodly pagans. (aka - traditional Christmas.) Hanukkah felt fitting, for that reason. I reclaimed "Christmas Day" for Christ, and spread out all the materialism and gift-giving over a calm, family-oriented week, completely separate.
This has worked very well for us.
BUT...
This year has been my year of religious wrestle. 2021 was the year I resigned my membership from the Mormon church. 2021 was the year I tried out another church - found I loved the people, but the bread and water didn't speak to me anymore, like it once had.
And so, with that, I wrestled with Jesus. (Isaac wrestled with God. I'm allowed to wrestle with Jesus.) I read his words, I studied him in context, and couldn't shake the fact that offering people his blood to drink was the most unbelievable thing I'd ever given myself permission to consider. This man was a Jew. Why on Earth would he say something so unbelievably un-kosher? There was no symbology I could pull from it, other than to look, quite seriously, at the fact that the Sacrament might have been plagiarized from Mithraism as a conversion tool for Gentiles.
I concluded Jesus never did that. Through a lot of studying, I concluded it was quite possible Jesus never said or did a lot of things I'd been led my whole life to believe. Did I love the teachings of the Gospels? With all my heart, and I always will, I think. Those words could save the world if we followed them, and the example of that character, Jesus.
But, ("unfortunately" for some), I no longer believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I think, on a technicality, again, that makes me an Ebionite, but again I fail because I'm not a vegetarian, and I'm just the worst Jew, and I don't even believe the Jewish tribes have exclusive access to God, and am I even a Jew, probably not, according to most of my family, and I'm SORRY, Grandma, but the Shamash kept blowing out this year, cause the candles were cheap and the wicks were thread, so I just took the damn lighter to the candles one at a time, and I'm SO SORRY, Grandma!
Anyway. I no longer believe in the divinity of Jesus - any more than I believe that we are all sons and daughters of God.
The Nativity.
I don't believe there were three wise men, or Magi in any number. (Zoroastrian priests? Compelling, but no.) I don't believe there were shepherds. Mark says nothing of them, and the Gospel of Mark was the first Gospel written.
I, personally, believe there was a Jesus. And I believe this Jesus was born to a young, unmarried teenage girl, who would have suffered much, from that life circumstance. "Son of Mary," they called him - a hint at the fact that his father was unknown, and that this man, this Rabbi, Jesus, was a bastard.
Jesus was a bastard, and he was raised by a woman who would have been marginalized by her society. (Perhaps Joseph, the father, entered the picture and married her, which would have made the situation much easier, and what a merciful, good man he would have been.) But Mary was still known as the unwed mother. "Son of Mary" is as much evidence as any Scarlet Letter would have been, and this, even some thirty years after the fact, was she remembered for.
And who did Jesus serve? The marginalized in his society. The prostitutes. The tax collectors. The leprous. Even if these stories are not true, the symbolism of a boy who grew to protect the marginalized, so very much like his own mother, is astounding. What love is this, that a boy would have seen the wrongs done his mother, while knowing her heart, and inviting all to consider the hearts of those around them, irregardless of whatever labels society may give.
That was my tangent on why I still love Jesus.
But I don't believe in the Nativity.
How does an ex-Christian who still loves Jesus, but no longer feels the moral requirement to defend and honor his "birthday," who has spent some fifteen years avoiding secular Christmas songs like the plague, but now has a holiday soundtrack with lyrics she no longer believes in, who also happens to be Jewish and has celebrated Hanukkah for years, but doesn't feel any real calling to keep up that tradition she was never any good at in the first place and only did it for reasons she no longer views as holy... celebrate winter solstice?
This has been a very long road, and I bought stockings this year.
Folks. I bought stockings.
Because the whole thing just feels so ironically, painfully funny, like shoving candy in socks.
I think I'm going to buy a tree next year.
I feel like I'm selling my soul, but for the life of me, I can't figure out who's buying it, why they want it, and who had it in the first place, if not just me and my own pride.
When you learn a new thing, you can move on. You don't have to be embarrassed about your past. It was part of the journey, and it will always be a part of you.
But this year I'm totally going to listen to some of those "sinful" seasonal wintertime secular songs, and I'm going to try not to flinch like I'd taught myself to do for all those years.
Just Deck the Halls. Deck them all!
