Readers Write
Essay 12/13/13: The Skeptic's Christmas
Billie Fenton, Concord, CA: So interesting to read you extolling Christmas traditions. I remember Christmas Eve 1962, when my husband Fred was the new vicar in Imperial Beach. We lived in a little rented house smack-dab on the beach. Our front yard could disappear during high tide. Next door to us in a ramshackle house lived Shu-Shu, a barmaid at a local place down the street. She had a German shepherd she called Hitler, "because someone nice should have that name." She wasn't a bit intimidated when she learned her new neighbor was a local "minister" but said, "It gives the neighborhood a little class." On Christmas Eve, before she went to work at the bar, and Fred off to church, she invited us for a drink with some of her friends, who had names like Dirty Dan and Carver Dave. It was the first time I had been in her house. It was furnished with make-shift furniture and old travel trunks, which she proudly opened and showed the beautiful things she had found in them; there was an exquisite wedding dress and other clothes of a 20's vintage. The public dump on the strand between Imperial Beach and Coronado Island had yielded up these treasures. I sat on a sort of futon while Fred glad-handed the small crowd. We had a drink of some kind, warmed by a wood fire and all those bodies in the small room, when someone said, "What the hell. Let's sing 'Silent Night.'" As we sang, my futon began to move; it was Dirty Dan I had been sitting on! The song was so sweet and stirring that my eyes filled with tears. Abruptly, it was time for "church." But after that memorable evening visit we would wave at Dirty Dan and Carver Dave as they scoured the shore for driftwood, and Shu-Shu became our five-year-old's good friend. She was the one he remembers having taught him to braid the hair on his troll doll! And Hitler made the neighborhood feel very safe. So, a very merry and delicious holiday to all. And, what the hell. Let's sing "Silent Night." Blanche Powers, San Diego, CA: I'm sure that you speak for many of us with your Christmas lamentation. The thing is so idealized, quite out of proportion. If people would only see the manger scene as one of abject poverty and exclusion. Thank you for your well-honed thoughts. Diane Tumidajewicz, St. Clair Shores, MI: You've done it again -- hit the mark with this agnostic. I will always feel lifted up by Handel's Messiah (I know all the verses, too), and a childlike delight as I drive my 85-year-old mother around again this holiday season to enjoy the holiday light displays. I, too, relate more to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" than to the Bethlehem myth, as lovely as it is. Thanks for another thoughtful essay. John Bennison, Walnut Creek, CA: Even while citing all the quite reasonable reasons he reasons as he does, the renowned atheist Alain de Botton has confessed he still loves to sing Christmas carols; much for the same unreasonable reason a Christmas hymn learnt in childhood can still bring tears to the eyes of mature skeptics. If there is such a thing as a convergence of deity with humanity, it is expressed in the closing stanza of my own childhood reminiscences; when throngs of Christmas Eve worshippers would conclude their annual pilgrimage in a darkened sanctuary on bended knee, singing "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." It is a "weary lament" indeed, as you put it. The slaughter of the innocents in Newtown repeats itself with numbing regularity. Who today recalls that footnote in history only four months ago when many more Syrian innocents were gassed to death. Four months later, mirth and merriment would feign to mask the terror that lurks in the night shadows of that mythic Bethlehem stable; those real shadows without which the nativity story of Jesus' birth is only a sentimental and nostalgic fantasy. Why else would those iconic figures, the ancient astrologers traveling afar to read the signs of the times, have concluded -- once they got up off their bended knees of adoration -- that there's just gotta be a better way back home? Ron Payne, Union County, OH:
Your latest piece on a Skeptic's Christmas is so very well conceived and composed. Thank you for something that speaks to me and for me! Georgia Lichtman, Bellingham, WA: Your essay suggests that there is something phony about Christmas the way it is celebrated in America. I've thought that for some time, and you have done me the favor of getting it down on paper. However it is you and yours will keep Christmas, I hope it is a good one for you. Florenz Hermanson, Columbus, OH: You prove that one doesn't have to buy into all the theological gobbledegook to celebrate Christmas. It really is a public, secular holiday. And I, for one, make the most of it without getting roped in to goofy belief stuff. Jack Lessenberry, Huntington Woods, MI: Beautiful [essay]. Ah, how much America is like Christianity. Christie Otter, Livonia, MI: Jeffery Eugenides in his novel, "Middlesex", describes Xmas as "the wounded, dishonest season." Chloe Bernard, London, W.1, GB: Delighted to read your essay on a Skeptic's Christmas. I have been celebrating them for years, and that within the shadow of a church steeple. When the sexton there rings out the Christmas bells, I celebrate with a sip or two of brandy. Cheers! Robert Causley, Roseville, MI: Speaking of the murders in Newtown. Those who died that day might live still had not a careless nation failed to summon the social and political courage to curb the spread of its own weapons of mass destruction." This nation must look at its continuous manufacture of weapons and our aggression towards the world. The tremendous monetary and human resources dedicated to the continuing conflicts worldwide must be slowed down. We make laws that are supposed to assure freedom and they actually cause incarcerations on a massive scale. We look at other societies unlike our own and forcefully push our agendas that do not fit and therefore cause more problems. Look at the media in the 50's and 60's and one can see working together was the theme and it did work! Look at the media today and you see the theme of aggression and we have aggression. Peace on earth would be a fantastic start. Not pieces of earth, buildings, vehicles, and people flying through the air as we see in the media today. Dewey Barton, New Smyrna Beach, FL: I enjoyed your essay today very much.
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