Yesterday, I came back from a cottage in Sussex with my family and a few close frends. We were in the middle of nowhere. We lived together, ate together, drank together. We made merry each day and each night. We ate obscene amounts of the finest foods. We drank obscene amounts of the finest of alcohol. We sat and talked and laffed by the burning fire. We gave gifts to each other. We enjoyed each others company. And huddled together, in the warmth, and away from the harshness of Winter raging outside, we reaffirmed our bonds.
To me, that is what "Christmas" is about. It is almost obscene, to me, a non-religious person, that Christmas should have anything to do with Jesus or God or any of that rubbish at all(!). I agree that Christmas has become "too commercialised" (altho, let's define the meaning of that another day). HOWEVER, the idea to me that Christmas has anything to do with God at all is, frankly put, ill.
It turns out that, back in the day, before Christianity, and before Christmas was so-called but was rather "Yule", that *IS* what Christmas was all about. Drinking and eating large amounts of food, singing songs, playing, talking, laffing, making-merry, and basically having a great time. Many of these old Heathen traditions are still with us. Mistletoe, holly, burning of the yulelog, the Christmas ham. There were also tales of the fiery old Gods Woden and Frey. These tales have been replaced by positively dreory ones about a little baby, his craddle, and a few visiting asses.
For Christians, this story is amazing. It's the story of the birth of mankind's savior. For those of us who are not at all religious- but who do not frown upon its existing, either, I must say- then it is nothing to do with Jesus, and he and the church are merely intruding on our ancient midwinter festivities. It's just that we've forgotten all the old tales about Woden and co.
So, to sum up, I use the term "Yule" to refer to the celebration that I have each winter. That re-affirming celebration of life, in which folk sing, dance, huddle together for warmth, companionship, and love, drink and eat copious amounts of fine food, and generally feel inlivened and help Winter be less a hard piece of depressing drudgery, and more a time of life and energy. Oddly, at my Winter cottage, some of us did not celebrate that festival. They celebrated the, supposedly reaffirming, but in reality superstitious and unfulfilling festival of the baby Jesus. But they kept that to themselves (including discretely going off to various masses). And I my religous views (or lack thereof) to me. And we celebrated heartily together.
It does tire me, tho, that Christians have to hijack this festival of life for their own, claiming that most people have forgotten the "true meaning" of Christmas. As far as I'm concerned, people may have just begun to remember.