What Christmas means to me.

What does Christmas mean to me? The question arose when I made a little speech about Christmas to some Chinese students on Tuesday. I told them that Christmas has many meanings for Westerners and that it has had many meanings for me.

In China, I have come to the realization that I am uniquely unqualified to be doing a lecture about Christmas traditions. For in fact, most of my adult life, I haven't practiced the traditions at all. Having Tony now, I will have to try to practice them, but it will have to be without the benefit of having had much practice. And this year, because Tony is so young and because of our finances, I can put off the attempt for another year.

But that won't stop me from blogging about it. This is the speech I made about Christmas to the students.

Christmas is the most important Western holiday. If you ask a Westerner what Christmas means to them, you will get many different answers.

The most basic view, they will have depends on whether they see Christmas with Santa Claus or Jesus Christ in mind. The Westerners who have given up on the religion of course think of Santa Claus. Westerners, who still profess to be Christians, think of Jesus. The split over these conceptions of Christmas can explain a lot about the cultural conflicts that now grip the West. The Santa Claus faction seems to have the upper hand these days. In fact, there is a movement afoot among them to ban all mention of Jesus altogether from what now is a "holiday" tradition.
I have been a participant in the Santa Claus faction, but my mind and heart resides in the Jesus faction. To ban Jesus from Christmas seems suicidal from a cultural point of view. The stories so define who Westerners are even if they are not religious.

Christmas, despite becoming more secular, still has a personal meaning for almost all Westerners. How you are feeling on Christmas Day says a lot about who you are.

When I was young, Christmas was about getting presents. The anticipation the evening before and the opening of presents on the morning of the 25th are great memories for me.

As I entered adulthood, Christmas became an ordeal. Not certain of where I was going and what I wanted to be, to go home for Christmas in small town, small potatoes, Brandon, Manitoba seemed a come down.

The ten years I spent in British Columbia saw Christmas being a lonely time for me. As a bachelor with few acquaintances, I had some very lonely Christmases. The ones that weren't so lonely, had me feeling like a fifth wheel.

China strangely revived the Christmas feeling in me. Being with people so far from home, I was able to find a more congenial Christmas setting.

Now being married with Jenny and having Tony enter our lives, Christmas has taken on another meaning entirely. Family is what Christmas is all about, I see so clearly. But I endured a lot of loneliness and silly depressions before I realized what I should have known all along.

So for me, Christmas is about the birth of a child thousand years ago who was the son of God, and about family that I so thoughtlessly neglected and now for whom I must "raise my game".