Is Christmas Dying?

[Emil Miller]

i ask the question because my observation of the last three or four Christmas periods has seen a marked falling off of Christmas iights, front door wreaths and other artifacts usually associated with the season.
Similarly, there was this year a definite lack of frenzied activity in supermarkets and other retail outlets. Shopping has been a doddle compared to a few years ago when trolleys full of Christmas fayre kept one waiting ages at the checkouts while Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer droned on in the background.
I think there are obvious grounds for this apparent decline, including the ongoing effects of the 2008 near economic collapse and the fact that many people are shopping on-line, as well as (in the UK at any rate) the spread of atheism that can be witnessed in media sponsored phone ins.
Millions of people who endure the ritual of overeating before watching hours of appalling rubbish on TV, are also voting with their feet and going abroad to escape the deadening ritual that Christmas has become.

[YesNo]

I assume the holiday shopping decline would be related to the coming or ongoing recession. The winter solstice can be celebrated for many different reasons besides Christianity. Where I live the community is largely Jewish. Schools are closed for Jewish holidays and my daughters went to their share of bat mitzvahs.

I also don't see as many trick-or-treaters during Halloween as I did in the past. That might be a sign of something, too, or just the fact that there aren't many children living nearby and my children are too old to get their friends to ring our house.

Most of my experience with atheism has been from Lit Net. I don't need to address it in the real world.

A taxi driver once told me that 40% of London is Muslim. That seems like a lot. Probably the only thing worse would be having 40% of London be Christian or atheist or a combination of the two.

I have noticed an increase in advertisements for yoga classes, ayurvedic medicine and general new age items such as crystals, Tarot cards, or incense. Going to the library there is a whole (free) newsletter advertising services of that sort. A couple of decades ago I don't think I saw any of it, but it has probably been around. I think the religions or spiritualities that are taking over the vacuum would be something vague like that, that don't require a text to love or hate in the case of atheism. It is something I could see myself participating in. I do yoga, by the way.

[Lokasenna]

My family and I didn't bother with Christmas this year. We've only just moved into this house, and we're only living in it until March in any case, and as part of the move with threw out all our old Christmas decorations. We all decided it was too much of a fag to decorate, and also decided not to do presents/cards either. We had a nice dinner of roast beef (my father and I both dislike turkey) in the mid-afternoon, and one of my mother's marvelous home-made Christmas puddings (easily one of the highlights of the year) in the evening, but other than that it was a fairly normal day.

These days, if you haven't got young children then it all seems a great deal of effort. Christmas is part of our cultural heritage, I suppose, even if individuals are not necessarily Christian - I did cheekily propose a toast to celebrate the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton instead of Christ - but just because the fundamental belief behind the ritual has gone doesn't mean that the ritual no longer has meaning. Perhaps next year we'll do something a bit more elaborate.

[Emil Miller]

I think agnosticism has been the main force against Christianity for perhaps 50 years and it has paved the way for atheism. It's obvious that in such circumstances other belief patterns will emerge, as is shown by a program about the rise of paganism in the UK that was aired on BBC radio recently.
It's difficult to gauge how firmly held are the beliefs of those claiming alternatives to Christianity, except in the case of Muslims where the religion is the dominant factor in their existence, and much of their behaviour may be down to faddism or exhibitionism, although some are bound to be genuine and a sign that Christian rituals such as Easter and Christmas are fading out.

[YesNo]

Here's a history of Christmas: http://www.history.com/topics/christ...y-of-christmas

I found it interesting that Cromwell "cancelled" Christmas and the Puritans even outlawed it in Boston at one time.

[Dreamwoven]

I am not sure I would agree that Christmas is dying. We still celebrate it every year.

[Emil Miller]

I am not sure I would agree that Christmas is dying. We still celebrate it every year.

True, but the alacrity with which we do so appears to be diminishing.

[Dreamwoven]

And its taken over by commercialism much more than it used to.

[Lokasenna]

And its taken over by commercialism much more than it used to.

True, that. And how many people, particularly children, actually identify Christmas with Christ? Very few, I would imagine. The hideous image of 'santa claus', who owes more to Odin than to Yahweh, is the one we see trotted out time and again. I'm no Christian, but I do find the replacement of the nativity story (which does at least superficially inspire hope and the promise of redemption) with a tawdry orgy of materialism (in which 'good' children are given material, rather than spiritual, rewards) more than a little distasteful.

[Dreamwoven]

Very well put Lokasenna! Of course, the christian festival build on the much older pagan rites of the midwinter season. But the commercialism of modern Yuletide is very much a turnoff...

[Dreamwoven]

My Jewish father told me that the carol Good King Wenceslas was about a Czech king. He was right, see this entry in Wikipedia. The Feast of Stephen in the carol refers to the Holy Crown of Hungary, the Crown of St. Stephen that represented Hungary of the Dual Monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867 to 1918. Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas.

After the First World War Hungary lost this position in the Treaty of which still today accounts for the resentment in Hungary of its demotion (see the Treaty of Trianon. The Crown of St. Stephen was intended by the Regent who ruled Hungary for much of the Second World War (Admiral Horthy) to be claimed by the successor to the crown. So he ruled Hungary as Regent, until this could happen. It never did happen. But the resentment in Hungary remains strong today, and is represented by the Orban Government of Hungary and more extremely by the political party on the far right Jobbik with 20 percent of the vote and antisemitic.

Thanks to Horthy, Budapest has the only jewish community in Europe and boasts its largest Synagogue on Dohany utca (Tobacco Street).

It is interesting how the christmas message is based on tales handed down over a thousand years and become distorted and the original message lost! Santa Claus was Saint Nicholas.

[OrphanPip]

I'll be happy to be past the Christmas music, it's inescapable whenever I go to the shops. Malaysia is particularly bad because as soon as the Christmas music ends it's replaced with Chinese New Year music which is equally obnoxious but is somewhat more palatable when shopping because I can more easily tune it out since I don't speak Chinese.

[YesNo]

By the time I've heard "last Christmas I gave you my heart the very next day you gave it away" for the second or third time, usually around Thanksgiving, I have had as much Christmas music as I can handle.

[Emil Miller]

By the time I've heard "last Christmas I gave you my heart the very next day you gave it away" for the second or third time, usually around Thanksgiving, I have had as much Christmas music as I can handle.

I agree that Christmas songs can be embarrassingly trite; the second line below is weak weak weak.



Yuletide carols being sung by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos

[Lokasenna]

When I was growing up our family business, a small supermarket, used to have piped in music - and every December it was nothing but Christmas songs. Year after year, the same bloody songs on continual repeat during the long hours of work. This perhaps goes some way to explaining my distaste for Christmas! Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree still makes the red mist descend...