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Christmas, To Me

© Sandy McCollum

All my life I was taught that December 25th was Christ's birthday. I went to church 'religiously' and was nick-named "the little missionary" at my Quaker church because I'd bring new friends almost every Sunday. When I was very young, I even gave Jesus his own little birthday party in my room, with all my new gifts. Imagine my surprise when I grew up and did some research and found that my Christ wasn't born in December at all!

I couldn't help it - I wondered how Christ felt about that? I remember imagining how I'd feel if I came home one day and my family was celebrating my birthday without me, on the wrong day, and everyone got what they wanted but me. Then I imagined them all thanking my father for the day! I didn't imagine my happiness, but more of a disappointment that nobody knew better, or, at least that they weren't letting on about having such knowledge. Suddenly, the meaning of Christmas changed for me, and has forever remained changed. I didn't celebrate another 'commercial' Christmas for the next 23 years.

I know it's a doctrine of Man, celebrating our Lord's birth on December 25th. In a nutshell - it came about because there were so many gods and idols being worshiped at the time, that the Pharaohs had no glory. Their day was no more or less "special" than any other days - imagine a King being celebrated with pigs and cows. So, they made a 'law' that everyone must celebrate their deity all together on one particular day, leaving the rest of the year for the Pharaohs to be more special. Suddenly, December 25th became the 'birth date' of all deities, whether or not they were the Almighty God.

That led me to wonder what other fallacies I'd lived with, believed, celebrated and embraced, and even taught to others. Oh, what a can of worms I opened! It took me seven more years before I was satisfied with what I'd found in research, and much of that just confused me even more. The only reason I was able to find contentment is because of something I learned through all of it, which was to keep an open mind. Nearly all religions will tell you that only one religion is the 'correct' one to belong to, and they all say that they are IT. One religion even will tell you that only a certain number of us will be saved, even though many more may be members of that instutution. It's hard to keep in mind that these are all speculations based on scholarly interpretations of difficult languages, and these religions all have the best of intent. Many of them worship the same God, yet claim validity over one another.

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