Down the page a little way (here) I raked ed nelson over the coals he'll be getting in his stocking this year... and I hope he doesn't take it too personally. I certainly don't blame him for what the American observance of Xmas has become - it was inevitable, in a way - nor do I blame him for the remnants of cultural arrogance that themselves are vestiges of European Christendom's blindness to any other approach to a state of grace but the "One Way". You can take a fish out of water, but you can't make it breathe...

Fact is, I was already primed for a reflection on the approaching season - today is the first Sunday in Advent, so I guess it's "really" official now - and the timing was, well, opportune. Other fact is: I feel more than a bit peculiar soapboxing on the topic, considering the plain fact that, according to the religious convictions I made a conscious choice to embrace, it is just another day of the week. But, as Mary Anne cogently reminds us in that same thread, the pop-culture immersion of us all, believers and infidels alike, in the images of Christmas make the topic both inavoidable and extremely vulnerable to comment.

In a recent email to Robert, I characterised Ursula LeGuin's Always Coming Home as the literary 'place' I have most often returned to, save one: Tolkein's Middle Earth. Shortly after sending it, I realized I was wrong. There is a time and setting I eagerly await the proper moment to revisit annually: the 19th Century London populated by Ebenezer and Fred Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Belle Fezziwig, and haunted by Jacob Marley and the Wailers. There's not another theatrical role I'd rather play than that of old Jacob's Ghost....

"Oh, captive, bound and double-ironed!"

* * *
Christmas in my family has always been exclusively secular: tree, stockings and presents, with the familiar old tunes and carols on the phonograph while decorating the tree. In those days I could sing them without thought - I still love the music, still know all the bass parts, and would love to 'go caroling'... but the lyrics give me pause now, and might stick in my throat. When I 'converted to Judaism' I didn't convert from anything, but adoption of one faith has meant, to avoid hypocrisy, abandonment of the trappings of another. Nevertheless, A ChristmasCarol has lost none of its magic, and this is why:

It is not a story about the specific religious significance of The Day. It is a story about "charity, mercy [and] forbearance", as old Jacob has it - attributes which should be universal to all Mankind and present every day of the year, not just the Twentyfifth of December. That is, after all, the point Dickens pounds home, especially during the Visitation of the Spirit of Christmas Present. (In fact, if my memory serves, the only reference to the religious grounding of the holiday is Tiny Tim's "...who made cripples walk, and blind men see", in that same section)

What irks me, to put it mildly, about the attitude expressed by pathetically antiquated cultural exclusion (not to say bigotry), especially at this time of year, is that its exponents always seem to forget that the universality of human virtue is the core of their Teacher's message. Were they to cease objecting to inclusion of other cultures long enough to hear, thay would discover the same message in the words of other Teachers - and that is the point to multiculturalism: the death of ignorance.

Pass any self-professed Christian bookstore this month and you'll see, prominently displayed in the window, the words "The Reason for the Season". While the words carry their own context, it is Dickens' contention and mine that the Reason for the Season can and should be expressed in reverent but universally non-sectarian terms; simply:

Peace On Earth, Good Will To Men

Neither the yearning for, the faith in, nor the action toward that goal is exclusively Christian. Winter Holiday Festivals are one way to learn that vital lesson, and one way to celebrate it.

Season's Greetings

E'