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The Trouble with Christmas
In The Trouble with Christmas Tom Flynn challenges America's most popular sacred cow. Alternately outrageous, satirical, and thoughtful, this rollicking critique calls Christmas to account.
How many holiday traditions are authentically Christian? (Next to none.)
Does the contemporary Christmas holiday have ancient roots? (Hardly. It was largely invented by six eminent Victorians.)
Is the Santa Claus myth unhealthy for children? (Yes, Virginia.)
Are Christmas critics discriminated against? (Is "Scrooge" an insult?)
What is the future of Christmas as America becomes a multicultural, multifaith society? (Educators should start sweating now.)
The Trouble with Christmas is not only for curmudgeons, but for citizens, parents, teachers, and freethinkers of every stripe. Anyone curious about the origins and future of one of the Western world's most celebrated holidays will find something of interest in this provocative book.
How many holiday traditions are authentically Christian? (Next to none.)
Does the contemporary Christmas holiday have ancient roots? (Hardly. It was largely invented by six eminent Victorians.)
Is the Santa Claus myth unhealthy for children? (Yes, Virginia.)
Are Christmas critics discriminated against? (Is "Scrooge" an insult?)
What is the future of Christmas as America becomes a multicultural, multifaith society? (Educators should start sweating now.)
The Trouble with Christmas is not only for curmudgeons, but for citizens, parents, teachers, and freethinkers of every stripe. Anyone curious about the origins and future of one of the Western world's most celebrated holidays will find something of interest in this provocative book.
244 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 28, 2008
If only I could give up a holiday I have no business celebrating. Alas, I am too enamored of mistletoe kisses and have too many ornaments which I still like very much... Tom Flynn has very compelling reasons, and maybe if I had kids of my own I would be more inclined to follow his lead. Do as I say, not as I do, right?
December 7, 2015
One day of Christmas is beautiful and magical. A week or two of Christmas is very nice. A month is beginning to push my patience. And when I start seeing Christmas decorations in store before Halloween, I say "Okay, enough already!"
I don't begrudge people Christmas, but in my own view, it could do with a lot, lot less Santa Claus. Every year I face the dilemma of shopping for gifts, the more difficult because many people on my list are the Devil to buy for. My mother ran a nursery school for years and years, and she said that she had to forbid discussions of "what do you want for Christmas?" because quite a few of those kids had been so fired up by commercials on TV that she thought that the Ringling Brothers Circus wouldn't have been enough.
I was interested to find that prior to Victoria's time, Christmas wasn't a big deal in much of the English-speaking world; Oliver Cromwell and his merry men had destroyed the old English customs pretty thoroughly, and John Knox' influence had done the same in Scotland.
I don't begrudge people Christmas, but in my own view, it could do with a lot, lot less Santa Claus. Every year I face the dilemma of shopping for gifts, the more difficult because many people on my list are the Devil to buy for. My mother ran a nursery school for years and years, and she said that she had to forbid discussions of "what do you want for Christmas?" because quite a few of those kids had been so fired up by commercials on TV that she thought that the Ringling Brothers Circus wouldn't have been enough.
I was interested to find that prior to Victoria's time, Christmas wasn't a big deal in much of the English-speaking world; Oliver Cromwell and his merry men had destroyed the old English customs pretty thoroughly, and John Knox' influence had done the same in Scotland.
May 13, 2017
While I agree with the premise, I don't think Flynn argued his case very well. Many of the arguments he brought up were good ones, but I don't think he used them to their full effect.
For example, when talking about the harms in perpetuating the santa lie, he didn't really address the opposing arguments. When a secularist argues that santa can be a great teaching tool for critical thinking, how does one argue against that? It would have been nice if Flynn had given more information about how few parents actually take the critical teaching approach, and the greater negative effects of believing things that are not true as a child. Though there wasn't a lot of research about the effects of santa, there is a lot of other research that could have been applied.
Such as, addressing the habits of thinking associated with santa and how they continue existing separate from the santa belief itself. (A subconscious awareness of always being watched, morality being judged from a universal and objective viewpoint, value being determined by material goods, etc. Even when a child knows santa isn't real, she still has these habits of mind embedded in their subconscious.) Or, the fact that growing up with "faith" actually reduces one's ability to distinguish reality from fantasy later in life. (Of which there is good scientific evidence.) Or, how most people who become religious later in life conveniently happen to discover that the "one true faith" just happens to be the one they were exposed to as a child. (What are the chances of that?)
However, most of this book wasn't even about problems with Christmas, it was about the history of Christmas. The first half was just history, and the second half would often pause and talk about history for a long time. There wasn't much meat to it. Even when he was supposedly presenting arguments against Christmas, they often weren't. When he explained the saga of the school embroiled in a fight with conservative Christians over Christmas, that whole long anecdote added nothing to his argument. That story wasn't about a problem with Christmas, it was about a Christian majority unjustly feeling persecuted at any perceived loss of privilege. That's a problem with the Christian majority, not with Christmas.
I think there is an extremely strong case against Christmas, but Flynn did not make it in this book. I doubt anyone could be convinced by this to change their beliefs about or celebrations of Christmas.
For example, when talking about the harms in perpetuating the santa lie, he didn't really address the opposing arguments. When a secularist argues that santa can be a great teaching tool for critical thinking, how does one argue against that? It would have been nice if Flynn had given more information about how few parents actually take the critical teaching approach, and the greater negative effects of believing things that are not true as a child. Though there wasn't a lot of research about the effects of santa, there is a lot of other research that could have been applied.
Such as, addressing the habits of thinking associated with santa and how they continue existing separate from the santa belief itself. (A subconscious awareness of always being watched, morality being judged from a universal and objective viewpoint, value being determined by material goods, etc. Even when a child knows santa isn't real, she still has these habits of mind embedded in their subconscious.) Or, the fact that growing up with "faith" actually reduces one's ability to distinguish reality from fantasy later in life. (Of which there is good scientific evidence.) Or, how most people who become religious later in life conveniently happen to discover that the "one true faith" just happens to be the one they were exposed to as a child. (What are the chances of that?)
However, most of this book wasn't even about problems with Christmas, it was about the history of Christmas. The first half was just history, and the second half would often pause and talk about history for a long time. There wasn't much meat to it. Even when he was supposedly presenting arguments against Christmas, they often weren't. When he explained the saga of the school embroiled in a fight with conservative Christians over Christmas, that whole long anecdote added nothing to his argument. That story wasn't about a problem with Christmas, it was about a Christian majority unjustly feeling persecuted at any perceived loss of privilege. That's a problem with the Christian majority, not with Christmas.
I think there is an extremely strong case against Christmas, but Flynn did not make it in this book. I doubt anyone could be convinced by this to change their beliefs about or celebrations of Christmas.
April 25, 2018
Some years ago I wrote a blog post expressing my own views on Christmas and the absurdity of the notion that there is a “War on Christmas.” I’ll link it here for context and get on with the review, which will be shorter as a result. That’s my Winter Holiday present to you, about four months late:
No Ho ho.
This book is well-written and represents some impressive and exhaustive research, especially considering that it was penned long before any idiot with an internet connection could access the sum-total of human knowledge while sitting on the toilet. The fact still remains that I only recently finished it a ¼ century after it was given to me by my smartass friend as, yes, a Christmas present in December of 1993. We called it a “Winter Holiday gift,” but we were just kidding ourselves.
The historical perspective on the development of the Christmas celebration over the course of centuries is very interesting, but the passionate zeal with which the author calls upon his fellow atheists to resist the red and green tinseled behemoth is a little distracting. And not very effective, at least for me. Mr. Flynn is clearly writing not just to inform and express, but also to persuade, and having finally finished it after 25 years of procrastination, I feel like I learned something, but I haven’t changed my attitude at all as a result. If anything, I’m a much friendlier, easy-going atheist than I was when I started it, but I was a very angry young man, and now I’m just a somewhat grouchy middle-aged one.
Happy (winter, spring, summer, and fall) holidays to one and all.
January 26, 2015
Well researched and takes a rather radical and staunch position on how the holiday season should be celebrated (or rather, not celebrated) by non-Christians. I didn't agree with his conclusions, but I found it to be an incredibly informative read, and I really enjoyed the humanity found in the author's tone.
Want to Read
June 22, 2012As heard on Point of Inquiry.
December 12, 2024
A SECULAR HUMANIST ARGUES FORCEFULLY AGAINST CELEBRATING THE HOLIDAY
Author Tom Flynn wrote in the Preface to this 1993 book, “In a society that prides itself on its willingness to call almost anything into question, Christmas is the last taboo. If we fully understood the origin of our holiday customs, are there some we might judge no longer worthy of us? What is the impact of the American majority’s way of celebrating Christmas on groups who do not share its enthusiasm for the holiday? How has the contemporary Christmas observance oppressed the religious minorities that have been here the longest: Jews and infidels? How will it oppress the new and growing non-Christian minorities: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and a world full of other faiths?... Trouble with Christmas is on the horizon….
This is not a scholarly work… Considering the scope and importance of Christmas in our culture, it is amazing to behold the broad vistas of holiday lore that have never been studied… there is some reliable information about the holiday that is available from popular sources. If challenged, most Americans know that many of their favorite holiday customs have pagan roots, that the man we know as Saint Nicholas probably never existed, that the most beloved details of the Nativity story are mentioned in only one of the four gospels and contradicted in another, and more… The problem is that people … go on with their celebration as though there isn’t a reason in the world to think that Jesus Christ might not have been born in a literal manger in Bethlehem on the evening of December 25 in the year zero. Or was that the year one? It was neither. But we’ll get to that.”
He states in the first chapter, “The trouble with Christmas is that American society is outgrowing it… [America] has become the destination of choice for peoples from all over the world. Words like ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ reflect society’s painful efforts to adjust to a new reality. For the first time, American society is not simply multidenominational or even, to use a grossly misleading term, ‘Judeo-Christian.’ Ours is truly becoming a multifaith society.” (Pg. 17)
He continues, “Christmas is amazingly adaptable… But it is also a holiday deeply rooted in Christian tradition and in the varied legacies of European paganism, from which most of our established myths and fairy tales draw their power… One of the things most Americans have forgotten is that Christmas has been controversial before. In the 1600s contention between Puritans eager to curtail the holiday and Anglicans, who were just as eager to preserve it, led to violence in both Britain and the colonies. In 1644 thousands rioted in … English towns when Cromwell’s Roundheads tried to outlaw Christmas… To prepare for the changes that may lie ahead, we might begin by striving to understand the ubiquitous holiday more accurately and in greater depth.” (Pg. 17-18)
He outlines, “Here are some of the surprising facts we will survey… Did you know… that: *The odds of December 25 being the actual birth date of Jesus are no better than one in three hundred sixty-five… the reference [in Luke] to shepherds watching their flocks by night all but rules out a December birth date. *Centuries before Christianity, ancient religions worshipped savior figures said to have been born of virgins… *An enormous number of traditions we now associate with Christmas have their roots in pre-Christian pagan religious traditions… *Clement C. Moore very likely did not write … the poem … ‘The Night Before Christmas… *… Literal belief in Santa Claus may harm children psychologically… *…Christmas often alienates Jews, the nonreligious, and members of … non-Christian religious minorities… *Contrary to popular belief, the Christmas season seldom brings literal peace on earth. Holiday ceasefires hold uneasily in the world’s trouble spots…” (Pg. 19-21)
In Chapter 2, he explains, “I do not celebrate Christmas. At all. To me Christmas is precisely just another day… I suppose that is why some people call me the Anti-Claus. Since 1984, Christmas morning has found me at my desk… I have keys, so I spend Christmas at the office… Of course, now that I work for ‘Free Inquiry,’ the nation’s largest secular humanist magazine, when I come into the office on Christmas day I seldom find myself completely alone. Even so, it is disheartening how few of my co-workers slog in. They live without religion but nonetheless celebrate the holiday… The woman I live with is a nominal Lutheran. She keeps Christmas in the usual way. She has a private study that she decorates lavishly, though we leave the rest of our apartment bare… on Christmas morning … She has to get up .. to go and spend the holiday with her family.” (Pg. 25)
He recalls, “I can page through the good and bad memories Christmas holds for me and consider them with something approaching objectivity. I remember the thrill of Christmas shopping in downtown… Those childhood excursions among the lumbering buildings and uniformed bell-ringers, counting out my nickels and dimes and darting between the snowflakes from one magical store to the next, imbued me with an abiding love of city life. The music, the lights, the toys, and family rituals filled me with a visceral joy that sometimes seemed likely to explode my little body from somewhere deep inside my chest. My childhood Christmases still hold a greeting-card warmth for me.” (Pg. 33)
He notes, “By the early nineteenth century old Christmas lay dying in the English-speaking world. By mid-century, it HAD died. The authentic English Christmas of boar’s head and plum pudding, of mistletoe and caroling, of boy bishops and Father Christmas… gave a little groan and flatlined. Had social and cultural development followed slightly different paths, today’s average American might not even know what Christmas was. The Christmas we celebrate today is a revival.” (Pg. 94)
He observes, “In 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower greatly expanded the national tree lighting ceremony, inviting representatives of twenty-seven countries to join in what he dubbed the ‘Pageant for Peace.’ The expanded ceremony would become a recurrent focus of church-state separation controversies, particularly after the addition of a manger scene.” (Pg. 121)
He points out, “Recent legal actions by infidel activists in local communities have forced the removal of religious symbols and mottoes from municipal seals, challenged Nativity displays and other religious observances in public places, and precipitated a constitutional crisis in the state of Utah… the torch of church-state activism has partly passed from the Jewish to the infidel community over the last thirty-odd years. Why might this be? It may be that assimilation, including accommodation to Christmas, has blunted the militancy of the American Jewish community… Instead of arguing for ‘equal time,’ a better goal is to strip public facilities of holiday decorations that express a link to any sectarian religion. Public life has opportunities enough for those who want to engage in religious expression.” (Pg. 185-186)
He asserts, “Celebrating the solstice is dangerous because it makes infidels invisible. Doing so may help individual infidels to make it through another Christmas without stress. But it also provides grist for the mill of Christian Right pundits [who argue]… ‘What they are doing, of course, is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.’ If Jesus Christ is not your savior, Christmas is not your holiday. Have the guts to sit it out without trying to sneak its echoes in through loopholes.” (Pg. 191-192)
He acknowledges, “As associate editor of Free Inquiry and coeditor of Secular Humanist Bulletin, I’ve gotten to know atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secular humanists, rationalists, and other infidels from all over the world. Some ignore the winter holiday. But an embarrassing majority keep Christmas or some analogous festival like the winter solstice. It is too much trouble to defy the holiday altogether, these infidels tell me. Some argue that, though Christmas is admittedly shot through with superstitions, only the explicitly Christian elements are worth opposing. After all, it is fundamentalist Christians, not Druid priests, who are electing creationists to school boards, banning textbooks, and bending the Constitution to their beliefs. So why waste energy trying to stamp out the pagan solstice? Yet if we infidels are committed to truth and critical thinking, how can we condemn CERTAIN superstitions and embrace others? Doing so seems counterproductive if we wish to be taken seriously as proponents of rational living.” (Pg. 231-232)
He concludes, “to the merchants and economists who will rush forward to warn that without Christmas spending, America will collapse: Relax!... if I am right, the downsizing of Christmas will be gradual. There will be plenty of time to adjust… To committed and nominal Christians: You can relax too. No one’s going to take your Christmas away---as if anyone could. But the realization may grow in you that Christmas is YOURS. It’s not everybody’s; it should lose nothing of its value for Christians if not everyone observes it by their sides. In an America … where people who sit out Christmas need not feel out of place, it may actually be easier to observe a satisfying and ‘spiritually’ relevant Christmas within Christian and Christian-inclined communities. Christmas may become more of what conventional Christians want it to be if they invest less energy in trying to haul everyone else aboard their bandwagon.” (Pg. 242)
This book will be of great interest to all forms of secularists and other opponents of Christmas.
Author Tom Flynn wrote in the Preface to this 1993 book, “In a society that prides itself on its willingness to call almost anything into question, Christmas is the last taboo. If we fully understood the origin of our holiday customs, are there some we might judge no longer worthy of us? What is the impact of the American majority’s way of celebrating Christmas on groups who do not share its enthusiasm for the holiday? How has the contemporary Christmas observance oppressed the religious minorities that have been here the longest: Jews and infidels? How will it oppress the new and growing non-Christian minorities: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and a world full of other faiths?... Trouble with Christmas is on the horizon….
This is not a scholarly work… Considering the scope and importance of Christmas in our culture, it is amazing to behold the broad vistas of holiday lore that have never been studied… there is some reliable information about the holiday that is available from popular sources. If challenged, most Americans know that many of their favorite holiday customs have pagan roots, that the man we know as Saint Nicholas probably never existed, that the most beloved details of the Nativity story are mentioned in only one of the four gospels and contradicted in another, and more… The problem is that people … go on with their celebration as though there isn’t a reason in the world to think that Jesus Christ might not have been born in a literal manger in Bethlehem on the evening of December 25 in the year zero. Or was that the year one? It was neither. But we’ll get to that.”
He states in the first chapter, “The trouble with Christmas is that American society is outgrowing it… [America] has become the destination of choice for peoples from all over the world. Words like ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ reflect society’s painful efforts to adjust to a new reality. For the first time, American society is not simply multidenominational or even, to use a grossly misleading term, ‘Judeo-Christian.’ Ours is truly becoming a multifaith society.” (Pg. 17)
He continues, “Christmas is amazingly adaptable… But it is also a holiday deeply rooted in Christian tradition and in the varied legacies of European paganism, from which most of our established myths and fairy tales draw their power… One of the things most Americans have forgotten is that Christmas has been controversial before. In the 1600s contention between Puritans eager to curtail the holiday and Anglicans, who were just as eager to preserve it, led to violence in both Britain and the colonies. In 1644 thousands rioted in … English towns when Cromwell’s Roundheads tried to outlaw Christmas… To prepare for the changes that may lie ahead, we might begin by striving to understand the ubiquitous holiday more accurately and in greater depth.” (Pg. 17-18)
He outlines, “Here are some of the surprising facts we will survey… Did you know… that: *The odds of December 25 being the actual birth date of Jesus are no better than one in three hundred sixty-five… the reference [in Luke] to shepherds watching their flocks by night all but rules out a December birth date. *Centuries before Christianity, ancient religions worshipped savior figures said to have been born of virgins… *An enormous number of traditions we now associate with Christmas have their roots in pre-Christian pagan religious traditions… *Clement C. Moore very likely did not write … the poem … ‘The Night Before Christmas… *… Literal belief in Santa Claus may harm children psychologically… *…Christmas often alienates Jews, the nonreligious, and members of … non-Christian religious minorities… *Contrary to popular belief, the Christmas season seldom brings literal peace on earth. Holiday ceasefires hold uneasily in the world’s trouble spots…” (Pg. 19-21)
In Chapter 2, he explains, “I do not celebrate Christmas. At all. To me Christmas is precisely just another day… I suppose that is why some people call me the Anti-Claus. Since 1984, Christmas morning has found me at my desk… I have keys, so I spend Christmas at the office… Of course, now that I work for ‘Free Inquiry,’ the nation’s largest secular humanist magazine, when I come into the office on Christmas day I seldom find myself completely alone. Even so, it is disheartening how few of my co-workers slog in. They live without religion but nonetheless celebrate the holiday… The woman I live with is a nominal Lutheran. She keeps Christmas in the usual way. She has a private study that she decorates lavishly, though we leave the rest of our apartment bare… on Christmas morning … She has to get up .. to go and spend the holiday with her family.” (Pg. 25)
He recalls, “I can page through the good and bad memories Christmas holds for me and consider them with something approaching objectivity. I remember the thrill of Christmas shopping in downtown… Those childhood excursions among the lumbering buildings and uniformed bell-ringers, counting out my nickels and dimes and darting between the snowflakes from one magical store to the next, imbued me with an abiding love of city life. The music, the lights, the toys, and family rituals filled me with a visceral joy that sometimes seemed likely to explode my little body from somewhere deep inside my chest. My childhood Christmases still hold a greeting-card warmth for me.” (Pg. 33)
He notes, “By the early nineteenth century old Christmas lay dying in the English-speaking world. By mid-century, it HAD died. The authentic English Christmas of boar’s head and plum pudding, of mistletoe and caroling, of boy bishops and Father Christmas… gave a little groan and flatlined. Had social and cultural development followed slightly different paths, today’s average American might not even know what Christmas was. The Christmas we celebrate today is a revival.” (Pg. 94)
He observes, “In 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower greatly expanded the national tree lighting ceremony, inviting representatives of twenty-seven countries to join in what he dubbed the ‘Pageant for Peace.’ The expanded ceremony would become a recurrent focus of church-state separation controversies, particularly after the addition of a manger scene.” (Pg. 121)
He points out, “Recent legal actions by infidel activists in local communities have forced the removal of religious symbols and mottoes from municipal seals, challenged Nativity displays and other religious observances in public places, and precipitated a constitutional crisis in the state of Utah… the torch of church-state activism has partly passed from the Jewish to the infidel community over the last thirty-odd years. Why might this be? It may be that assimilation, including accommodation to Christmas, has blunted the militancy of the American Jewish community… Instead of arguing for ‘equal time,’ a better goal is to strip public facilities of holiday decorations that express a link to any sectarian religion. Public life has opportunities enough for those who want to engage in religious expression.” (Pg. 185-186)
He asserts, “Celebrating the solstice is dangerous because it makes infidels invisible. Doing so may help individual infidels to make it through another Christmas without stress. But it also provides grist for the mill of Christian Right pundits [who argue]… ‘What they are doing, of course, is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.’ If Jesus Christ is not your savior, Christmas is not your holiday. Have the guts to sit it out without trying to sneak its echoes in through loopholes.” (Pg. 191-192)
He acknowledges, “As associate editor of Free Inquiry and coeditor of Secular Humanist Bulletin, I’ve gotten to know atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, secular humanists, rationalists, and other infidels from all over the world. Some ignore the winter holiday. But an embarrassing majority keep Christmas or some analogous festival like the winter solstice. It is too much trouble to defy the holiday altogether, these infidels tell me. Some argue that, though Christmas is admittedly shot through with superstitions, only the explicitly Christian elements are worth opposing. After all, it is fundamentalist Christians, not Druid priests, who are electing creationists to school boards, banning textbooks, and bending the Constitution to their beliefs. So why waste energy trying to stamp out the pagan solstice? Yet if we infidels are committed to truth and critical thinking, how can we condemn CERTAIN superstitions and embrace others? Doing so seems counterproductive if we wish to be taken seriously as proponents of rational living.” (Pg. 231-232)
He concludes, “to the merchants and economists who will rush forward to warn that without Christmas spending, America will collapse: Relax!... if I am right, the downsizing of Christmas will be gradual. There will be plenty of time to adjust… To committed and nominal Christians: You can relax too. No one’s going to take your Christmas away---as if anyone could. But the realization may grow in you that Christmas is YOURS. It’s not everybody’s; it should lose nothing of its value for Christians if not everyone observes it by their sides. In an America … where people who sit out Christmas need not feel out of place, it may actually be easier to observe a satisfying and ‘spiritually’ relevant Christmas within Christian and Christian-inclined communities. Christmas may become more of what conventional Christians want it to be if they invest less energy in trying to haul everyone else aboard their bandwagon.” (Pg. 242)
This book will be of great interest to all forms of secularists and other opponents of Christmas.
December 18, 2023
I went into to this book ultra excited. FINALLY, a book or something about Christmas negatively. I have been fairly anti-Christmas for years now and finally had something to read that could help me deal with that and honestly this book had that and more for me. To start, most of this book is a history lesson on Christmas from a fairly sarcastic secular humanist author. There is no awe for the holiday and it is all set out as evidence for his argument to quit Christmas. I found the biblical history very interesting and it was new to me as I am not Christian. He lays out ancient history or origins, which I had trouble following, but that is on me. Following that he went into the origins of modern Christmas, which date back to the 1800's-ish. I found this absolutely fascinating how everything came to be with Washington Irving, Charles Darwin, and Queen Victoria. I know that he set it out as a reason we shouldn't need to keep Christmas as it isn't even that old anyways, but I found it very interesting and more authentic than if it had been celebrated this way for hundreds and hundreds of years.
After the history lessons, Flynn goes into how different non-Christian groups handle the holiday. He calls people who do not practice a religion "infidels," which I can only imagine is what religious studies people call "nones" now (as in what people fill in when asked what religion they are in a form). For context this book was published in 1992 and it does show its age. For example, he keeps claiming Christmas will be a much smaller holiday in 30 years and unfortunately that is not the case. Anyways, what I got the most out of this book was that he clearly showed the sheer privilege that Christianity has in the USA. No other religious holiday in the US takes everyone non-religious hostage for 2-3 months as Christmas does. There is no escape. It is everywhere. While I do not agree with Flynn that we should turn Christmas into a regular day and have schools and businesses in session on the 24th and 25th (and make all Christians take a religious exception days). I do agree it is horribly unfair that Christians get the world to stop for their holiday whereas other holidays have to toe the line. Maybe we can work towards dialing Christmas back? Maybe have the Christians practice it more in the private sector so that we in the public sector can breathe without choking on tinsel? Please? I want to go back to stores and cafes and restaurants without Christmas music blasting in my ears constantly.
After all of this Flynn posits the notion that maybe us as a society have grown beyond holidays in general. That solstice is also archaic and all holidays are. Everyday should be like everyday. I think for me that is going a little too far. I do want something to mark time. To notice something outside of my headspace world. Something to shake things up. I like solstice to acknowledge nature and the world we live on. To acknowledge how far we have come from society. But, beyond all of this while I think that holidays have an important place in our lives I also think it is too much to force everyone in on it if they don't practice. As Flynn says, "You don't even get invited to Christmas, you get drafted."
After the history lessons, Flynn goes into how different non-Christian groups handle the holiday. He calls people who do not practice a religion "infidels," which I can only imagine is what religious studies people call "nones" now (as in what people fill in when asked what religion they are in a form). For context this book was published in 1992 and it does show its age. For example, he keeps claiming Christmas will be a much smaller holiday in 30 years and unfortunately that is not the case. Anyways, what I got the most out of this book was that he clearly showed the sheer privilege that Christianity has in the USA. No other religious holiday in the US takes everyone non-religious hostage for 2-3 months as Christmas does. There is no escape. It is everywhere. While I do not agree with Flynn that we should turn Christmas into a regular day and have schools and businesses in session on the 24th and 25th (and make all Christians take a religious exception days). I do agree it is horribly unfair that Christians get the world to stop for their holiday whereas other holidays have to toe the line. Maybe we can work towards dialing Christmas back? Maybe have the Christians practice it more in the private sector so that we in the public sector can breathe without choking on tinsel? Please? I want to go back to stores and cafes and restaurants without Christmas music blasting in my ears constantly.
After all of this Flynn posits the notion that maybe us as a society have grown beyond holidays in general. That solstice is also archaic and all holidays are. Everyday should be like everyday. I think for me that is going a little too far. I do want something to mark time. To notice something outside of my headspace world. Something to shake things up. I like solstice to acknowledge nature and the world we live on. To acknowledge how far we have come from society. But, beyond all of this while I think that holidays have an important place in our lives I also think it is too much to force everyone in on it if they don't practice. As Flynn says, "You don't even get invited to Christmas, you get drafted."
December 25, 2020
The history bit is quite interesting, the “trouble” bit did not entirely persuade me but perhaps if it went deeper it might, the conclusions felt a bit underwhelming imho.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews