Losing Christmas, Finding Christ?

I wonder what will happen to our culture as more and more people lose their ability to tolerate the forms of this holiday. I am finding more and more people, who like myself, have given up on the holiday and are searching for more authentic and less painful ways to spend the season.

When I think about it, I am forced to admit that I have no positive memories of Christmas for the last ten years. During college, I would return home to find a family dissolving around me, not willing to admit it to themselves or anyone else and in the meantime force themselves to have this empty, shiny happy Christmas. After college and grad school, I was working in a church, and got exposed to the church busyness cult. That pretty much sucked all the remaining joy at Christmas.

So here we are at Christmas again....

Mostly, though, more than the theological, philosophical and historical reasons, its the emotional reasons that drive me and end up sticking the hardest. Over the last couple of years I have been trying to shave off everything from my life that does not contribute to my evolution. When you have nothing but bad memories of Christmas, and there is just no joy left in it for you, I say GET RID OF IT. When did Christ ever say we should celebrate his birth, anyway?

I know what you are thinking. Why not make new, happy memories of Christmas? Take back what was taken from me, and reclaim Christmas for myself and my own happiness. After all, I am responsible for my own happiness....My life is like a trauma victim with a whole host of injuries, some more serious than others. I take care of the most pressing issues first, and then move on. Sadly, Christmas is the equivalent of a hangnail on a burn victim. Somehow I can't see the ER docs pulling off the skin grafts to treat the hangnail.

[via Canticles of the Unhomed, emphasis mine]