Cultural Christianity + Christmas

Taking the next step on my maybe-conversion journey the week before Hanukkah started has been a real fucking trip, let me tell you. I have very suddenly gained more of a perspective on cultural Christianity at the point of the year where it is most prevalent.

It definitely started with a Jewish creator on tiktok pointing out that like. Christmas can only be seen as a secular holiday bc of the pervasive nature of cultural Christianity and I suddenly realized that celebrating Christmas, no matter thr level of religiousness, is a forced act of assimilation. I’ve always enjoyed it, it’s nice, my family practices it mostly secularly (for different reasons depending on the side of the family), but if you’re a person or family who doesn’t or wouldn’t want to for any reason, you’re going to face a lot of social backlash and so a lot of the time it’s just easier to Do Christmas in some way.

This also leads to the realization that continued secularization of Christmas isn’t just a result of increased commercialization, it’s also an effort on the part of non-Christian folks to be able to enjoy this societal phenomenon in a way that makes sense to them and doesn’t feel forced. It’s a survival mechanism. I am not religiously Christian, but I’ve been listening to my grandparents read the Bible verses about the Shepards and the Star and all that good stuff since I was a wee child. Listening and sitting back and having feelings about how it wasn’t for me, but we do it anyway.

Also Christmas decorations are everywhere and Hanukkah decorations are not everywhere. Animal crossing has Toy Day and it’s not supposed to be Christmas I guess, but it still definitely is Christmas.

Idk, this was just a really poignant part of the year to start digging more into my feelings about this.