Merrie Agnostic Christmas

I'm really getting into Christmas this year. Last year, we didn't even put up a tree. (I stuck a wreath on the door and pretty much left it with that, since my husband and I were having our first ever Christmas alone in 35 years-- with no children or visitors. My attitude was, "Why bother?") It was the very worst Christmas I ever had. Rotten, depressing, horrible, and awful. Even the few parties we managed to drag ourselves to seemed gray and dull. Served me right. I was a miserable, selfish, self-pitying grump.

Not this year. This year I've pulled out every decoration I can find, got the tree up and decorated it the first week of December. I'm putting special food out for the birds and carry dog biscuits in the car in case I run across a stray who might need a friend. Now I'm handing out little gifts and a few $$ to all kinds of people... strangers on the street. I know I'm not doing anything important and that this is all for me and not some extraordinary altruistic thing, but it is helping to push aside the angst and sadness that has seemed overwhelming for the past several years. If only for a moment or two, there is a bit of brightness for me and for one or two of the people I come in contact with; and that is the real deal of this Christmas thing.

I remember why my mother loved this holiday so much. She was an agnostic, raised by an atheist father who sent her to a Unitarian Church in a very conservative southern city. This was extremely unorthodox (pun intended) and downright odd in the capital of the Confederacy and home of old-time religion in the early 20th century, but my mother was happy to at least be able to tell her friends that, yes, she DID go to Sunday School (just like they did), even if it was at a church none of them had ever heard of. She used to tell me that, in her Sunday School classes, she learned about Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha. There was a small leather-bound copy of the Koran on our bookshelf that had belonged to her father, and I was amazed when she told me that the Muslims believed Jesus was a great prophet. My grandfather believed that there was something worthwhile and good to be learned from most religions and spiritual leaders, and he wanted his eight children to learn about all of it. My mother had an incredible education because of her father's liberal philosophy.

She admired many of the holy and saint-like people she learned about, thought a lot of Albert Schweitzer, Ghandi, and others... but Jesus was her favorite. I think it was because he spoke so kindly of children, respected their purity, and emphasized love as the true expression of goodness. His message of giving made my mother happy, and she made it her mission to celebrate the hell out of Christmas by giving all over the place. She baked and created hand-made ornaments and crafty things for neighbors, delivery people, repair people, my father's office staff, teachers, children in the Sunday School nursery class she ran (at my father's Episcopal church-- where the minister tried unsuccessfully for decades to convert her), and anybody else she came across between December 4th and 25th. (She always waited to start the "proceedings" after December 3rd, since that was my birthday and she didn't want to lessen the significance of that for me by getting into Christmas before my day had come and gone.) This woman used her grocery money (an allowance from my father that did not increased in 15 years in spite of the increasing size of the family from 2 to 7) to do whatever she could to brighten the day for a bank teller, garbage man, or gas station attendant. She just loved having an excuse to make someone smile with a small surprise.

Over the years, in this fast-moving, technologial, insanely commercial, modern world I almost forgot why Christmas is the best... even for an agnostic.