Christmas, anyone?

I would guess that everybody's in a festive mood inside their homes or somewhere out there since yesterday. Enjoying the holidays with family and relatives, opening and giving gifts, treating Christmas like some special time of the year when everybody is obliged to be happy for some reason, whatever that reason is. Like, "find any reason to be happy because it's Christmas." Sending greetings here and there, eating and filling up their tummies, spreading joy, blah.

In contrast to that, nothing is stimulating me now, save for writing this blog post. I'm done warming up and tinkering away with the digital piano that my cousin's family have here at their house, and I don't wanna touch it anymore. I'm supposedly finishing my paper writing (oh yes, I am still in the middle of my paper writing!) but I suddenly lost the mood for it. ESPN TV's blaring out in the living room, and the basement's all about Super Smash Bros. There's too much noise going on around. So here I am, sitting in a sofa in a (not-so) secluded part of the house, typing away as the early afternoon dullness brings me nothing more than boredom. Looking out the window, I see the gloomy, cloudy sky and the almost lifeless neighbourhood with the trees swaying along the freezing December breeze. [I'm getting so drowsy that I forget now why I'm writing a blog entry.]

Oh, right! Christmas. I'm supposedly writing about Christmas. But I won't write about why we should celebrate Christmas. Rather, it will be the opposite: why I am not so excited about Christmas.

Christmas is supposedly about remembering Jesus' birth, but it has been commercialized and hyped up to the point that it just seemed like a random point in a calendar year when we should celebrate "something." Somehow, it just feels like Octoberfest or even just being out in the summer, celebrating "something." I would say that it came to a point that people just celebrate "being happy": celebrating celebration itself. We've made an idol out of Christmas day, of the "Christmas spirit" (whatever that is), of the "yuletide season" (again, whatever that is). People go Christmas shopping, buy gifts to give and expect gifts in return, and spread joy and happiness just because for the sake of it. Oh of course, people would still say that it's all about Jesus, and I have nothing against it. But that celebration of "something" seems to be imposing itself to everyone, that there isn't any room for people to rationalize and make sense of the celebration itself. I've always remembered myself as a kid getting excited about Christmas: I get to hear Christmas songs that stir up my heart (read: manipulate my feelings...for what? I don't even know, now that I think of it), receive a gift (read: selfishness), eat good things (read: greediness), get excited about Christmas parties and stuff that doesn't even relate to God and Jesus himself. The celebration just seems so detached from what is actually being celebrated: it's like people partying and making a big deal about my birthday without even including ME and how I want that day for me to be. A regular reader of my blog would certainly remember that birthday blog entry that I posted a month ago.

And so when I matured later in life, I came to realize that Christmas suddenly seemed too random. To be honest, I've gotten sick of replying "Merry Christmas" to people because "being merry" at a random commemoration of "Christmas" doesn't mean anything to me (but of course, I still have to do it as an obligation in nurturing relationships with people). It doesn't connect to what Christianity is actually teaching about life in Christ. In fact, I remembered these Bible verses that just resonated inside me:

A good name is better than fine perfume,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
It is better to go to a house of mourning
that to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart. [Ecclesiastes 7:1-2]

Of course, this has nothing to do with Jesus' birth and death, as this refers to our lives as mortals on earth. I guess it's because remembering death makes us sober-minded and keeps us grounded to our feet. Birth reminds us of the joy with the beginning of a new life, but in a Christian's life, what matters is how it all ended and will end. In the end, are we all clinging on by faith to what God's plans have for us? I think that's a more significant question in my Christian life rather than repeatedly remembering Jesus' birth as if a CD player suddenly had gone wacko.

So maybe I'm a Scrooge of some sort (and if I'm gonna have a family of my own, I definitely have no idea how to handle that alienation), but my idea of Christmas is totally not what Charles Dickens had in mind. In fact, I believe that it is just a superficial one: something that is only seen above the surface of a raging ocean. In the end, that superficiality will just be swept away. What will matter is what God has done in my life, and that I can always think of reasons to remember it anytime, Christmas or not.

For now, I have to put up with my boredom. Ice skating, anyone?