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Please Do Not Tell Me Merry X-Mas

This is a repost from last year, but I was going through my archives, and think that the sentiment is still valid.

missmlady:

If you take Christ out of Christmas, then what’s the point? Right?

Well, it’s really the next step, isn’t it? I mean really, Christmas has been so sanitised over the years. Am I really supposed to believe, as the carols suggest, that Jesus didn’t cry? Jesus cried, in fact he wept later in life, why would he not cry as a baby? The events of Christmas (which historically didn’t even happen in December) were not at all sanitised. An unwed teenaged mother had a baby in a stable. Probably not the nice clean type of stable we’re used to either.

When you sanitise Christmas, you really do take away the meaning. It was only a matter of time before the meaning was sapped out to the extent that people felt it was time for the main character to be written out of the story. It’s not like his replacement hasn’t been primed enough. Good old Santa has been spreading the message of commercialism for long enough and now he’s ready to take top billing.

We’ve sanitised Christ right out of Christmas.

This year, we didn’t have a tree. We had a star. I don’t know whether or not Jesus was born under a star, but a star is much more associated with his birth than any tree which doesn’t even natively grow in Bethlehem.

I’m going to re-iterate the theme of the video which I posted last night love compelled Christ. This holiday should be, if it’s going to be about anything, about love. Not romantic love, not even brotherly love. Unconditional, I-would-die-for-you type love.

Even if you don’t believe in Jesus, I think that kind of love is the kind of love that would move you. It’s the kind of love which flows through all the great epics, and it’s the kind of love that captures our heart. So at this time of year, that’s the kind of love I hope we can show to each other. Maybe not to everyone, but I hope that you can express to someone that deep love.

If you sanitise Christ out of Christmas, then you sanitise real love out of Christmas.

</rant>