What has Christmas become?

I have been asking myself the title's question for quite some time. Do I have an answer?

Of course not.

It's just one of those things in life. I'm not sure what it has become, but it sure isn't what I remember it being. I'm sure you can relate, at least to some degree!

I work in retail logistics. To tell you the truth, I have very little to do with Christmas per se in that capacity. I have a relatively specialized role, dealing almost exclusively with groceries and extraneous materials disposition. It's all organizational: I don't stock the groceries, I just get them from the store's receiving department and place them near where they go so the stocking team can come along and put them away. I don't perform disposal of the copious amounts of cardboard and plastic modern retail generates, I organize the trash so others can efficiently dispose of it, mostly through recycling; hence my use of the word disposition. I'm rather proud of that aspect of the operation!

I work a lot of days during the Christmas season, but only a few more than I normally would. I work four to six hours per day, five days per week at this job. It's more a hobby than anything else, although ten dollars an hour, paid vacation, a 401(k), and a few other perks don't hurt. It's a great way to start the day as it involves several hours of steady, reasonable physical activity. The people I work with can be hit or miss, lately more miss than anything, but I work around a lot of other people who, while not my coworkers, are still great to be around. A grocery store is a busy place in the morning. Bread, soda, beer, and snack vendors are early morning people and a delight to see every day. Delivery drivers are usually all right folks, too. The bakery is up and running before the sun is up, and the aroma wafts over to the grocery department. Many regular customers are morning people, and the same ones always seem to be waiting at the door when we open. They almost to a person have sunny, cheerful dispositions. In December, we get general merchandise trucks six or seven days per week, instead of the usual four or five. In the chain I work for, most of our dry grocery inventory comes through our own distribution center, so it comes on the same truck most other products we carry arrive in. Naturally, grocery items are going to be fit into any truck that's sent to us since the grocery department represents half of our revenue!

Although I seldom touch or handle any holiday season items, it doesn't mean that I don't have to see them every morning for a few months, usually right after Halloween. I get 'Christmased out' by about Thanksgiving or so; an occupational hazard of working in retail!

My neighbors probably think I'm an atheist. I have no lights, no Christmas tree, nothing. Seldom does anyone ever come over to my house, so it doesn't make any real difference. I get my fill of holiday decorum at the store!

Still, there are plenty of atheists and agnostics who celebrate Christmas. It's as much an American holiday as anything. It isn't just for Christians. In fact, so much of the Christmas we've come to know is a tradition that's anything but Christian!

Something many are shocked by when they're told is that Christ was probably not born in December. If that was the case, the shepherds wouldn't have been out in the fields with their flocks since it was in the midst of the rainy winter season, which starts in about October in the mid-east. Those who have tried to determine the time of Jesus's birth have generally deduced that it was in late March or early April.

At the time of Christ, December 25 had been celebrated for centuries. It was the winter solstice, and people, especially the Romans, partied in an effort to appease their sun god, hoping he'd decide to reverse the early withdrawl of sunlight, which, imagine, imagine, always happened! Since December 25 at that time was the solstice, the shortest day of the year, the days progressively got longer until the end of June, when the cycle reversed again. Several thousand years later, through calendar irregularities and other reasons, the solstice is currently December 21st, also the start of Winter.

Not having been around in those days, we can only speculate that the solstice party tradition was kept, just as laws that are passed are seldom ever repealed. Solstice festivities gradually faded away, just as laws do when they go unenforced for enough years. I'll bet I'm the only one in the store I work in who is aware that we're supposed to call the BATF should someone purchases twenty or more pounds of sugar at once. That one's been on the books since the early 1920's! Somehow I doubt any BATF inspectors on Uncle Sam's payroll today have ever taken one of those calls, either. We don't celebrate like was once done, though many of the paraphernalia still exists. Those round ball ornaments you hang on the tree? Originally, they were orbs that represented the sun. Holly, mistletoe, and other accoutrements also had symbolic functions. I've never been entirely sure where the tree came from, other than perhaps northern Europe. It seemed to merge with other aspects of the tradition and through the ages has become homogenized with everything else.

One story I've heard more than once is the influence of the legendary King Nimrod. He supposedly was the world's first tyrannical ruler, who incited the Tower of Babel, in Mesopotamia, which we now know as Iraq. It is said that depictions of the despot show a white bearded King Nimrod with a slain deer beneath each arm. While some biblical scholars insist Nimrod's name signifies that he was a rebel of some sort, the rest of the world who uses the word 'nimrod' generally is referring to an expert in some field or subject, or a skilled hunter. Not that you or I ever hear it used that often! According to some legends, Nimrod was killed in battle, and a tree was planted either over his grave or in his memory. Allegedly, every year on the anniversary of his death, gifts appeared beneath this tree. This would have all happened several thousand years B.C. Hmmmm.......

In about the fourth century, Saint Nicholas gained notoriety for his charitable giving to the poor, and after his passing, others continued the tradition in his honor. I don't remember the exact significance of it, whether it was the anniversary of his death, or something else, but for probably a thousand or twelve hundred years it was December fifth or sixth that the gifts were given to those who would otherwise go without. The actual festive holiday was still December 25th, which Christ himself, as a devout Jew, would've not especially wanted to have much to do with. In fact, it was Easter that the church consistently celebrated, not Christmas. That's only come around in the past few hundred years.

In early America, Christmas just wasn't celebrated. Puritans were the early settlers in the New World, and they were very, very strict in their beliefs. They were not highly esteemed in Britain and continental Europe because of this, and that's why they 'escaped' to what would someday become the United States. Have you ever wondered why General Washington and his 2400 soldiers of the Continental Army crossed the Delaware River on Christmas Day in 1776 to launch a surprise attack on the Hessians at Trenton, New Jersey? The German mercenaries (paid about twenty five cents a day by the British) were celebrating. The colonists were not! This is not a whole lot different than the Arabs attacking Israel on the Jewish holidays, such as Yom Kippur in 1973.

As imported to the New World, Santa Claus was an elf who really could fit through a chimney. In England and Ireland, stories of nymphs, fairies, leprechauns, and other small, magical humanoids had been big for a long time. Santa Claus in a red and white suit didn't come up until roughly the American Civil War. As we now know him, the jolly, rotund Santa we're familiar with showed up in the early 1930's in, of all things, a Coca-Cola ad! Rumor has long had it that the painting in the Coke ad was based on the president of the company at that time.

I enjoy Christmas. I usually have a gift list of around twenty people, but I make most everything I give. Barring that, I give books. My rule is to spend an average of five dollars per person, so I never spend more than $100 for those 20 people on my list. I've done this for years, and the way it works out is simple. Know the person you're giving to! That, and plan ahead. If I'm out and about and I see something I know someone will enjoy, I act on it. If it's a five dollar or less item, I buy it and toss it in the 'gift box'. This is especially true with books, which I can often pick up in like-new condition for between twenty five cents to three dollars, depending on where I browse. For some people, I'm stocked up several years ahead. I've got enough books of interest to give to my uncle Al for at least the next five years! If I see something that would be more than $5, I make notes and draw some sketches. If I can make it, super. It might, however, be in miniature. Or it could be a pencil drawing or a painting of whatever it was I saw. One person on my list loves light houses. She's received architectural models of lighthouses I've built for her, lots of pictures, and this year she got a mint condition hardcover edition of a novel with a picture of a lighthouse on the front. I hope the plot is good!

Christmas is one of the few days of the year I kick back and take it easy with no regrets. Nothing around here is open for business, which makes a difference! That keeps me from doing anything where I might need to make a parts run. Today I've done a lot of reading, and I also finally got around to cleaning a few firearms. Once upon a time, that was something that absolutely HAD to be done right away, back when mercuric primers were the order of the day. In fact, you had to scrub the bore out with hot, soapy water for three consecutive days even if you only fired one shot. Otherwise, the mercury fulminate salts would corrode the barrel! Now you can let it sit for months, even years, with no problem. But, sooner or later, it should be done. I finally got around to it this afternoon. My pistol wasn't any big deal, but my WWII vintage Enfield No. 4 Mk1 was a different story. I shoot standard .45 target and service loads in my Smith and Wesson and they burn pretty clean. The Enfield is one of the rifles I use for my experiments with ultra light loads, which involve a light cast bullet, a light charge of fast burning propellent, and lots of ballistic analysis. These loads aren't noisy and they don't kick, but they are absolutely filthy! After five minutes of scrubbing I still was dripping inky black (dissolved carbon soot) solvent from the muzzle and I'll bet I pushed at least two dozen patches through the bore before before they started emerging even somewhat remotely clean! A great project for a day at home without much else going on. We all need those from time to time; I sure can't claim too many! I'm sure I can find a few other things to do which I normally wouldn't even think about on an average day...boredom isn't one of my problems in life!

Christmas has come a long ways from the days of drunken revelry it once represented. I hope yours has been worthwhile, no matter how you've spent it!

May your time be merry,

the TiGor