Merry Christmas, Part I

And a Happy New Year. But that's all.

Christmas. I know I've discussed it a lot over the past month, but I've had a somewhat surprising realization and a confirmation of my thoughts. I was in the kitchen last week talking with a Jewish girl from California, who is taking a year long study abroad from Johns Hopkins. We were broadly discussing religion in England and I was commenting how being a Christian in England feels much different than being a Christian in the United States. It was then that I realized that a particular phrase has been completely absent from my day-to-day life this winter:

Happy Holidays.

To me, as an American, it's hardly Christmas without having to interpret "Happy Holidays" to suit my personal tastes. Where did it go? England isn't so different than the US. How could it then be that English pop culture seems to only celebrate Christmas? What about Hanukkah (which started last night, by the way), Kwanza, etc etc?

I asked the girl about what it was like to be Jewish in England and the response was really interesting. I'll skip the details here, erring to confidentiality, but after comparing experiences, we came to the conclusion that it is generally harder to be openly religious here than in the US. Sure, there's a spattering of churches and presumably a reasonably sized population of people practicing many different faiths, but when religion arises as a topic of conversation among friends, it is almost exclusively from an objective academic or historical context. One could say that discourse observes religion under a microscope, from the outside looking in, as a scientist or social researcher would do; never from a (subjective) personal standpoint, where much of the value of religion lies.

Consequently, what happens at this time of year for a culture seemingly lacking openly religious people? All that remains is a secular holiday called Christmas. To some extent, "Merry Christmas" is like "Happy Holidays" in England. If you happen to be a Christian, then it's convenient that the secular holiday is the same, but if you practice another faith, then you extract what little meaning you can from the phrase and move on.

I'm not sure where the best answer lies in this complicated question: is it better to have a culture in which everyone whines and complains if their beliefs are not represented adequately, or rather a culture in which one faith's greeting has been chewed up in a secular forum and regurgitated as a generic holiday greeting? It's merely complicated by the fact that Christmas itself was originally a pagan holiday to celebrate the lengthening of days and the coming of spring, only to be adopted later by Christians as their second most important day of the liturgical year.


 Who knows, but I do know my laundry is done and I need to pack so I can fly home for Christmas tomorrow. Look for a second, less philosophical blog later today as I recap a year of incredible experiences, new friendships, and unbelievable moments.