Views About Christmas Time Review Essay

Introduction

• Christmas is a celebration that includes two different perspectives. For many it is a religious celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. For many more it is a secular celebration that includes Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and exchanging of gifts.
• Ted Byfield and Almas Zakiuddin share their thoughts about the celebration of Christmas and how people change during that time of year. Byfield is Canadian and writes about his experiences with secular Christmas. Zakiaddin is of Bangladeshi origin and writes about her discovery that Christmas can be celebrated by everyone in Canada. Both authors write about the changes they notice happen around Christmastime.
• You do not need to be a Christian to celebrate or feel the effects of Christmas. Christmas is both a secular celebration and religious celebration. Christmas is about people changing. People who would not normally communicate with each other during the rest of the year find themselves greeting strangers with “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays”.

Christmas and How People Change

Christmas: Secular or Religious

1. Christmas for many is a religious celebration that may, or may not, include gift giving or Christmas trees. People in this group are Christians who celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ at Christmastime. These people go to church at Christmas time to attend special services that are conducted during this time of year.
2. Those who celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday follow traditions that include giving of gifts, Christmas trees, and watch shows that are traditionally shown at this time of year. Some of these shows include ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ and Charles Dickins’ ‘A Christmas Story’. In many parts of the world sledding and ice skating are associated with Christmas. In some countries, such as Australia it is summertime at Christmas time.
3. Some would argue that the best time spent during Christmas is attending parties at work, school, or at home. At these parties people exchange gifts, eat traditional foods, and share drinks. Some Christmas celebrations include the arrival of Santa Claus (a man dressed up as Santa) who hugs everyone, listens to to people about what they want for Christmas, and hands out gifts.

People Change During Christmas Time

1. Zakiuddin tells about how she notices that people change during the holiday season. A young woman that has never spoken to Zakiuddin when she normally arrives at the corner store is greeted by the counterwoman with “and what are you doing for Christmas then?” (Zakiaddin, p1). The author is surprised at the greeting and stumbles over her words as she attempts to reply. Byfield tells a story about a man that inadvertently picked up the wrong hat. The hat belonged to a Salvation Army Officer. He quotes the story:“No sooner does he remove his hat than people begin putting money into it. Nowhere is all the world, he marvels, has he encountered such a magnificent spirit of Christmas giving as in San Francisco.”
2. Many people exchange gifts at Christmas time. Children traditionally receive gifts from Santa Claus (really from parents). Some employees get Christmas bonuses from their bosses. Teachers receive gifts from their students.

Canadian Christmas

1. In Canada Christmas involves everyone. Christians still celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday but are still part of the secular celebration of Christmas. In Canada there are a lot of different parties to attend. The spirit of the season brings everyone, even strangers, good feelings and greetings. Christmas is one thing that many Canadians have in common.
2. In Canada Christmas is a combination of many traditions and cultures from around the world. Zakiddin mentions in her account of Christmas that in Canada you don’t have to be Christian to celebrate Christmas. The uniquely Canadian Christmas includes the feast (pagan), the tree (German), sleigh and reindeer (Scandinavian), and Santa Claus (Nordic). Byfield points out in his article that Christmas is “not just religious people, but pretty well everybody” (Byfield, p. 1).

Conclusion

Christmas in Canada is for religious people as well as those who celebrate the secular version of Christmas. You do not need to be a Christian to celebrate Christmas. The secular Christmas includes traditions from around the world. In Canada, people mix all the traditions together to have a uniquely Canadian Christmas that includes gift giving, special greetings, parties, Santa Claus, and the Christmas tree.

Christmas is also about people changing. People greet each other with “happy holidays’ and ‘merry Christmas’ during Christmas. Normally these people would not say a word to each other.

So, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (Canadian style)!

References

American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Byfield, T. (1996). If you think Christmas is about giving, then take a closer look. Alberta Report / Newsmagazine, p. 44.

Zakiuddin, Almas. (1999). Refining reading writing : essay strategies for Canadian students. Rediscovering Christmas Dasgupta, Geri an Jennifer Jianghai Mei. Toronto : Thomson Nelson.

Appendix A

If you think christmas is about giving, then take a closer look

You would have to be as ancient as I to remember Guy Gilpatric’s comic short stories about Colin Glencannon in the old Saturday Evening Post. Mr. Glencannon was the chief engineer of the Inchcliffe Castle, a rusty tramp steamer that plodded the seas. He pretty much lived on whisky–not just any whisky, but ‘Duggan’s Dew of Kirkintilloch,’ a rare elixir he never ceased to extol. But what brings Mr. Glencannon to my mind is the Christmas he spent in San Francisco.

With the Inchcliffe Castle loading a cargo of hides, or some such thing, Mr. Glencannon sets forth into the city in search of Duggan’s Dew. Somehow, I forget the exact circumstance, he inadvertently exchanges his peaked chief engineer’s cap for another man’s peaked cap, the other man being a Salvation Army officer. As Mr. Glencannon proceeds onward from one bar to another, an extraordinary thing keeps happening. No sooner does he remove his hat than people begin putting money into it. Nowhere in all the world, he marvels, has he encountered such a magnificent spirit of Christmas giving as in San Francisco.

I was thinking of Christmas because I realized we were unfair in last week’s ‘Orthodoxy’ column to our old friend Ken Whyte, editor of Saturday Night. We chided him for putting forward an ‘explanation’ for the Christmas phenomenon which didn’t explain anything. But then we didn’t explain anything either. Why is it, you have to wonder, that people behave as they do at Christmas? Not just religious people, but pretty well everybody. The Glencannon story, after all, is funny because people actually do act this way–spontaneously giving to the Salvation Army and scores of other beneficiaries among family, friends, enemies, customers, competitors, and anything representing ‘the poor.’ Why?

A sociologist would likely contend we that are culturally programmed to give at Christmas. Like so much in sociology, however, this sounds reasonable only until you actually consider it. In fact, it completely misses the point, for all the great secular Christmas stories are not about people giving. They are about people changing.

Take Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The Grinch, as almost anyone under 45 will tell you, was not a nice person. While ‘every Who down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot, the Grinch who lived just north of Who-ville, did not.’ Therefore, posing as Santa Claus, he steals all the Christmas gifts and food–but then is appalled to discover the Whos, although giftless and hungry, celebrating anyhow. ‘Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small, was singing! Without any presents at all…’Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.’ So the Grinch returns the gifts and joins the celebration–but the story is not about theft and restitution. The point is that the Grinch ceases to be Grinch-like. He is, if you’ll pardon the expression, ‘born again.’

This can happen to children too. Consider Valentine Davies’ touching fable about Kris Kringle, department store Santa Claus, which in 1947 became the Academy Award-winning movie Miracle on 34th Street. Kringle doesn’t just play Santa; he insists he is Santa, much to the disgust of the disillusioned and divorced Maureen O’Hara, who has taught her small daughter that all such myths are false. However, Kringle’s magnanimity works an astonishing revolution in department store merchandising, and when a resentful psychologist tries to have him committed, a politically paranoid New York judge rules that Kringle is indeed Santa Claus. The real story, however, is the change wrought in mother and daughter as they discover the power of the imagination.

Nor need the change be from evil to good. In Gian Carlo Menotti’s magnificent Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, the impoverished crippled boy offers his crutch as a gift to the Christ child, and instantly discovers he is no longer crippled. ‘He walks!’ sing the awestruck onlookers, while the audience (this part of it anyway) fights back tears.

Similarly, in O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, the young wife who can afford no gift for her beloved husband decides to sell her beautiful long hair, to buy a chain for his treasured heirloom watch. But her gift fills him with dismay. Wanting a worthy Christmas gift for her, he has sold the watch to buy combs for her beautiful hair. But then a great change takes place and they fall into one another’s arms, each realizing the other was willing to part with his dearest possession. This, not the gift itself, was what mattered. Thus their Christmas is not ruined but fulfilled.

Which leaves the most enduring secular Christmas story of them all, of course, the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, so brilliantly portrayed by Alastair Sim in the 1951 film version that it has eclipsed the actual Charles Dickens story. But since Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843, for more than a century and a half people have envisioned that ‘squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner–hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.’

But then, after he experiences with painful clarity the visions of himself conveyed by the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and the last spirit ‘dwindles down into a bedpost,’ we behold the change: ‘The bedpost was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own. ‘I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future!’ Scrooge repeated as he scrambled out of bed…’I don’t know what to do! I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!” So radically is his life changed that he begins to change the lives of those about him and, concludes Dickens, ‘he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.’

Changed values, changed lives, changed people. This is the message of Christmas, and this the secular world divines. However feebly, however tenuously, it knows there is something strange and joyful here–indescribable and incomprehensible, yet able to transform and redefine us all. Perhaps the Christian explanation is the only one that makes sense. The Word or Expression of God, writes St. John, ‘became flesh and dwelt among us.’ That is what Christmas is all about. So have a merry one.

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Ted Byfield

By Ted Byfield

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