What's Christmas without Christ?

Be good, not godly

The theory is great: No matter what you do for the holidays, just be a good person. I completely agree. We should all be good people this season, reaching out to the needy and checking our consciences before flipping the bird to someone on the thruway.

But, this quote from Fred Edwards, spokesman for the American Humanist Association, had this to say, and I am a bit bewildered:

Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of nontheists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.

Well, last time I checked, Christmas was still about Christ. It is inherently about religion, Mr. Edwards. Spell it out and tell me what it says. Don't let the commercialism fool you: There are still folks out there who take Advent seriously. I honestly feel that all folks should feel loved and not lonely during the holidays, but you bet I'm going to leave you out in the cold for 90 minutes while I celebrate Christ's birth on Christmas Eve.

I hope this holiday season can include everyone on its festive spirit, but at the end of the day, agnostics, atheists and nontheists chose not to believe. That's part of the Christmas spirit: The belief that a Savior was born, the hope for all mankind. You make the bed you lie in; you chose not to believe in God. They don't deserve persecution from a human, to be sure, but saying that the holidays are associated with traditional religion is like saying the sun is associated with warmth or water is associated with being wet: You can't have one without the other.

Christmas and New Year Greetings

Well, the joys of traveling to the East Coast include those of having much to do, so I apologize to my dear readership for being away for so long. Between the San Francisco Zoo tiger maulings and the lady who flew into the Bay Area with a particularly resistant strain of TB, the news has kept the West Coast on pins and needles. Not to mention that we enter into 2008 without Benazir Bhutto, who died earlier this week after a bombing in Pakistan.

I sincerely hope that those of you who celebrated Christmas had a very merry and blessed holiday, and a joyous New Year to you all. I will be flying back to the West Coast on January 4, so look for some fresh 2008 posting after then. I will, however, leave you with some information that is proof that there is a generous person with the last name of Hilton still alive. See you in the New Year!

Santa is a Double Entendre

So, you've probably heard it by now. Political correctness has reached into the folds of every religious, political, social and ethnic scenario, but it hits especially hard when the Christmastime standby for children, Santa Claus himself, is caught in the crossfire.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Westaff, a firm who recruits - well, among others - Santas, has instructed Australian Santas to replace "ho, ho, ho" with "ha, ha, ha," citing that the firm is fearful that the former term will scare kids and even imply a derogatory phrase to women. What is interesting to me is that news.com.au reports nothing about the derogatory undertones, and even the BBC has relegated this story to their children's version of their site, with no mention of women of ill repute.

Oh yes. But in America, dear readers, someone saw the words "derogatory" and "ho" in the same sentence and, while perusing CNN and FOX news, it seems that the fact that Westaff has mentioned its PC fears are being gobbled up greedily by our equality-crazed society.

The fact that I just wrote "equality-crazed society" makes me laugh, because not to mention the fact that no one has dared venture into the realm of a white guy saying "ho ho ho" was derogatory, or the fact that black rappers get away with it (and the women in their music videos seem to even like it!), we are indeed a long way off from everyone being "equal" here. But, there is a story for everything, so where does "ho, ho, ho" even come from?

From Wikipedia, a note about Santa Clause's American origins:

Later popularization was L. Frank Baum's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, a 1902 children's book. Much of Santa Claus's mythos was not set in stone at the time, leaving Baum to give his "Neclaus" (Necile's Little One) a wide variety of immortal support, a home in the Laughing Valley of Hohaho, and ten reindeer which could not fly, but leapt in enormous, flight-like bounds.

This probably doesn't explain the origin of ho, ho, ho, but I thought it interesting nonetheless. In fact, I haven't been able to find where the phrase comes from yet.

What is most interesting, however, is that Santa himself based on several different stories and figures, but primarily based on the Christian figure St. Nicholas. Earlier parallels of similar figures from German and Dutch folklore also can be seen in our modern-day Santa. Even according to the Dutch, we're pronouncing it wrong: It should be Sinterklass, which in turn is a further different pronunciation from Sint Nicolaas. (Reference)

The fact remains, then, that the term "ho, ho, ho" is likely very much a modern take on Santa Claus, something that has not been around for ages. In fact, Santa's elves, his reindeer and his handmade toys in his shop are very modern ideas. It's all part of the Santa evolution, so to speak.

I do want my kid to know about Santa, but I also want to learn where Santa really came from, his roots in history and not just learning about him from Christmas cartoons and commercials. Maybe that makes me a spoiler of the Christmas spirit... but I disagree. Who really knows the spirit of Christmas? I mean, how did Christmas become the secularized poster holiday of the year? Anyone look into the origins of Valentine's Day? How about St. Patrick's Day? Even Easter has been bitten by the consumerism bug.

Look, as much as it will pain people for me to say this, there are a lot of "secular" holidays that we celebrate that do not have secular roots. Before we jump into the huge debate pool about why we're stealing away "ho, ho, ho" from Santa Claus, maybe we should figure out everything else we've stolen away from him in the past first. And that's about, oh, two centuries' worth of origins and folklore to get through.