The 25 Days of Christmas: Day 24

Christmas Eve, mulled.

As we settle in for the holiday tomorrow, I want to zoom out a little. What is Christmas for? Why do we Christmas?

Before I get started, go ahead and hit play on this, but not too loud:

When people talk about “the real meaning of Christmas,” they’re usually referring to the birth of Jesus and… all that. But as I'm sure you're aware, Yule was a pre-Christian holiday, and the early Christians sort of slipped their stuff into it to co-opt it for their thing. So what was Yule about? What was before that?

Most cultures celebrate some kind of holiday near the Winter Solstice, December 21. The original meaning of the holiday stretches deep into human society’s origins, before Jesus, before Moses, before recorded history, back to the agricultural revolution around 12,000 years ago, when people were learning to farm, learning to pay attention to the cycle of the seasons. The solstice is the shortest day of the year—that’s when we’re heading into the darkest, coldest months.

Up until very recently, say 120 years ago, we didn’t have reliable, easily usable technology to preserve food well, or how to quickly and efficiently ship it long distances. We had canning and pickling and curing and such, but they were error-prone and labor-intensive. (Also, raise your hand if you want to eat pickles for three months.) Thanks to modern technology, we’ve largely forgotten that winter used to be more than a chilly, slushy inconvenience; winter used to be dangerous. You’d grow crops and raise animals and save up food all year, and then when winter came you just had to hope there was enough to last until spring. Medicine was primitive, and disease could spread through a city in no time.

If you lived back then, and especially if you were elderly, or sick, or frail, the possibility of dying before spring arrived would have been heavy on your mind. You never knew if this December might be the last time you were going to see your family. The very old and the very young were the most at risk, but really it could be anyone. 

And let’s take a moment to remember that that’s true of all of us. You, sitting there reading this, are going to die one day. So am I, and so is my wife, and so is our son. In 150 years, every person alive on Earth today will be gone forever. 

But here’s the amazing thing. Really, this is just the best damn thing about humanity. In the dark of the winter, on the shortest day of the year, when we are staring grim death in the face, we throw parties! We gather together with the people we love, the people who are most important in our lives, and we wear fancy clothes, and we eat the best foods, and we sing special songs, and we give each other silly presents just to let everyone know how glad we are to be here on Earth with them, even if it’s just for a little while.

Christmas isn’t about looking to the past or the future; it’s a celebration of the present. (That is the best pun I’ll ever make.) It’s an expression of gratitude for all the people around us, the people who make our lives worth living.

What I love most about all this is the fact that we have this great big holiday during the hard time. We don’t wait until spring, when things are OK, when we’ve made it past the danger, and then celebrate with a big whew as if we’re safe forever now. We have our party right down there in the pit, when things are grim and they’re going to get worse before they get better. We celebrate right now because we can never know how many of us will still be around in the spring.

That’s rather heroic, I think. Good job, us.

I have lots more to say on this subject, but rather than belabor it I’ll refer you to one of my favorite lines in any movie. It’s in the original The Thin Man, when Nick and Nora Charles have been out of town and return to their apartment to find a bustling party underway. One party guest is terribly drunk and sobbing emotionally over something or other. As Nick walks by with a tray of drinks, the guest says, weepily, “Oh Nick, Nick… Remember the good old days?”

Nick purrs, “Don’t kid yourself, pal. These are the good old days,” and glides away.

These are the good old days, friends. Thanks for being here. Merry Christmas to you.