Read The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas Online
Authors: Robin Harvie
The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (8 page)
That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
—E
MILY
D
ICKINSON
M
ATT
K
IRSHEN
I am more than aware when writing this that, for a Jew, Christmas shouldn’t be a time of celebration. In many ways, it was when it started to go wrong—the anniversary of our usurping by the shiny new upstart. A Jew celebrating Christmas is a bit like the family of Samuel Morse toasting the birth of Nokia.
In many ways, Easter should be our time of celebration, and for many years I’ve petitioned to have its name changed to “We Got Him.”
But there is much more to Christmas than remembering the birth of Jesus. There is of course food. Food is so very much the bedrock of Jewish culture, and any occasion built around the dinner table, family, and arguing is as Jewish as . . . Jewish pie?
There is, of course, an obvious problem, one that dogged me all through my childhood. A lot of the best food is non-kosher, so we could not have it in our household. All finest Christmas fare: pork-based stuffing, chipolata sausages, and even the simple act of finishing a meat-heavy dinner with a cream-based dessert (more on that later) are all verboten under the strict laws of Jewish dining. My mother, a good Jewish mother, would never allow such food on our tables, on our plates, in our house. Which is why we went to my aunt’s.
There are two ways you can observe a religion. You can either assume that everything in it, as the commandment from an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being, must be followed to the letter, or you can—you know—pick and choose bits that are convenient.
This was, and indeed still is, my family’s approach, but no longer mine, I should point out. I’ve happily shed my faith, and quite frankly, bacon’s nice. It’s delicious, and I’m not going to deny myself the tastiest meat in the world, at home or away, on the orders of a God I don’t believe in. It’s like driving below the speed limit on an empty road when you know there are no cameras.
It’s odd how hard this is to explain to friends, even ones who know me quite well. It’s remarkable the number of times I’ve been
out to eat and someone’s told me that I can’t have the bacon. Why? “Because you’re a Jew. Jews can’t eat bacon.”
It’s as if we physically can’t eat it: pork disagrees with us. Moses came down from the mountain with basic dietary advice: “Children of Israel, it’s about the bacon. You can . . . but I wouldn’t.”
My family home is kosher. No pork, no bacon would ever be cooked in our kitchen. We would leave the house and eat it, but never in the house. The house is kosher. As long as the house is going to heaven, that’s all that counts. It’s important that my parents can stand on their doorstep, gesture backward, and say, “This is a Jewish house. This house has never broken a Jewish law. No non-kosher food has touched this house.”
That’s not to say no kosher food has been in the house. It’s just never touched it. This is where it gets a tad stranger. We would happily order in Chinese food or pizzas—say, pork chow mein or a Hawaiian pizza—but we would eat it off paper plates and protect the table with newspaper. To trick God.
That’s not even the only rule as to what makes something kosher. There are loads of rules, and anyone wanting a properly Jewish Christmas would do well to learn them all, or find a sufficiently hospitable aunt. Mine is available for a small fee. Keen scholars of Judaism (or readers of the beginning of this piece) will know that, as well as the whole pig issue, dairy products and meat products must be kept separate. So, for example, if you’re eating a meat-based bolognaise sauce on pasta, you couldn’t put cheese on it to make it, well, nice. Cheeseburgers are out too, because they are
nice. Essentially the Jewish God hates the delicious.
This separation of foodstuffs stretches to cutlery and crockery too. I remember, as a child, non-Jewish friends getting that wrong: using a “meat fork” for a dairy dish. This fork is now bad; it’s contaminated. I’m sure there’s a proper name for it, and I could probably look it up, but to save time, let’s go with Jew-icky.
If you want to save that fork (and who wouldn’t?) your only choice is to bury that fork in the ground for three days, which somehow magics it better. Three days later it’s as good as when it was first plucked from the earth all those years ago. As a child I genuinely witnessed my mother, on hands and knees in our back garden, burying a fork like it was the family hamster, which left me thinking,
What the hell are you doing? Surely you either believe in God or you don’t. And if you don’t believe in a Jewish God, why are you digging for cutlery, and if you do believe in a Jewish God, what wer
e you doing with that BLT five minutes ago?
So there’s your guide to all things kosher. Well, not all things kosher. Not even close. You also can’t eat shellfish, dogs, or birds of prey. Anyone longing for a traditional Christmas kestrel woul
d be wise to steer clear of a Jewish household, where the kestrel, rather than being killed and eaten, is kept alive at the head of the table. (I’d like to think this is obviously a joke, but a small part of me really hopes it is taken at face value. Please do your best to spread this as a genuine fact. There’s little that would bring me more joy—and Christmas is, after all, a time for joy—than for it to be told back to me in earnest, by someone who claims to have seen it with their own eyes.)
From that moment on, most things can be kept the same. The cracker jokes may have to be changed, as there’s too rich a tradition of Jewish humor to be sullied with weak puns on the phrase “mince pies.” If you really want to lighten the mood, try replacing them with your favorite Henny Youngman one-liners, and see the delight on your wife’s face as you read out what a now-dead twentieth-century gagsmith really thinks of her.
It may seem odd for a Jewish-born atheist to tell you how to enjoy your Christian festival, but why not? It now seems almost trite to point out most of the trappings of Christmas have little to do with the birth of Christ. The tree is pagan, the star is pagan, and the carols are simply a way for schools to keep track of which voices have broken (it’s now illegal to check any other way).
Christmas is a festival built on the very nature of picking and choosing the parts that are convenient. So strap on your tinsel, adjust your most Jewish paper crowns, and enjoy your child’s Nativity play as you would any other piece of classic theater. Because whatever your faith, Jewish, Christian, other or reasoned, Christmas is about the same thing. A day off. And delicious kestrel.
C
LAIRE
R
AYNER
It was a blustery, gray December afternoon in the 1970s, and the woman standing beside me at the school gates said, in the way people do when they think small talk is needed, “What are you doing for Christmas? We always start the night before with midnight mass—tiring, but so special, don’t you think? Particularly for the children.”
Here we go again,
I thought, and answered as simply as I could. The children were due out in a couple of minutes, so: “I’m a humanist,” I said. “Not religious.”
She stared at me blankly for a moment and then said, “Oh, like the Jews, I suppose. Don‘t believe in the Baby Jesus and his birthday.”
“A great many Jewish people are very religious, just like some Christians,” I replied, “though some are humanists like me.”
“Really.” This time there was a clink of ice in her voice. “So what do you people do at this time of year, then?”
It was the “you people” that got to me. “Oh, the same as you do, I imagine,” I said sunnily. “Spend too much money, spoil the kids something rotten, eat and drink too much, and fight with each others’ relations. We believe in fun and revels and just being together, you see, even if we do spar a bit, just as northern people always have done in the depths of winter—and they’ve been doing it for much longer than a mere couple of millennia.”
And then, at last, the children came cascading out of school and rescued me.
I thought, as I walked home with my whooping offspring playing their “I’m a cowboy” game all around me, about the midwinter revels, and also about man/womankind’s great spring festivals, when the sun is thanked for coming back at last and bringing fertility to plants and animals. These festivals encourage humanity to join in a bit of being fruitful and multiplying (if they want to—there is no punishment for those who don’t) and recognize the re-creative aspect of sexual activity as well as the creative. (For millennia, people have used contraception in one form or another, just to have f
un without progeny. The ancient Egyptians had some interesting ideas about that.)
In many parts of Europe, girls danced round maypoles, which were undoubtedly phallic symbols seen as a little encouragement for those in need of something to get them going. I remember being taught at my infant school in the thirties how to plait ribbons round a maypole as I sang a special Maytime song about bees and flowers.
Meanwhile, poets and authors down the centuries wrote umpteen verses and yearning prose about “maying” and how, in May, it was pretty well a duty to be loving and sexy. Robert Herrick begged his Corinna to come maying with him, and remember Shakespeare’s songs?
In springtime, in spring time
The only pretty ring time . . .
Sweet lovers love the spring.
and
Between the rows . . . the lovers lie . . . in springtime.
In his day, by the way, the winter festival was given much greater weight than it is now. It lasted for a full twelve days; hence his jolly play
Twelfth Night
.
To the Romans, the spring festival was called Oestrus, hence Easter in English and Easter eggs, but they made no mention of bunnies. Maybe it is the fecundity of rabbits that makes them a good fertility symbol—and the Christians, cleverly picking up on a very ancient human view of the springtime reappearance (i.e., resurrection) of dead plants and winter-vanished greenery, added on their version of a resurrection myth, telling the story of the magical return of a dead messiah.
Did the lady at the school gates know anything of Norse mythology? Had she heard the glorious tales of a bunch of feisty gods and goddesses and their Valhalla, where dead warriors fought all day and then rose again for another day’s bout, and a really cracking festival designed to tempt the sun back when it was its lowest in the sky, because it disappears almost completely as you travel farther north?
Their festival had a logic to it—it was worthwhile for them to make the great effort to follow all the old rituals (it’s hard work dragging huge trees through the forest to get them to a bonfire) if as a result they could make the sun do what they wanted it to do. The accompanying tra-la-la, the feasting, the drinking, the swapping of gifts, and above all the sexy games were the reward for their efforts and also a way of showing the sun what great people they were and worth coming back to and how they would repeat the fun when he did come back. As he did
, of course, every spring. As primitive forest dwellers, dependent on plants’ and animals’ fertility and growth for all their needs, their actions seem reasonable enough to me. To worship the sun as the giver of life isn’t at all off the map. That is precisely what it does.
It was why they set to work to build and light great bonfires sending hot bright flames leaping up into the dark sky to show the sun in its hiding place what was required of it. It was why they burned the biggest Yule logs they could find (phallic symbol, anyone?), consumed lashes of booze and preserved reindeer meat and salmon and so forth, and then cuddled up into the warm pelt of the man or woman they fancied. (Or, of course, the same-sex person they had fallen for.)
Would the woman at the school gates have been interested in the festival’s Oak King, who ran around the forest with great energy, and the Holly King, who liked nothing better than to dress up in red and put a sprig of holly in his tangled hair and then, on the shortest day of the year (December 21), drive eight reindeer and throw a few gifts of food around? A bit like Kris Kringle, who picked up the idea from the Scandinavians. And in America, of course, Coca-Cola invented for their advertisements a modern Santa Claus by putting a jolly bearded chap into a red outfit (origina
lly green, by the way, just like the Holly King) and sending him skyward in a sleigh with—wait for it—eight reindeer.
And what about the symbolism of the Old Religion, as it was called? It is represented today, I understand, by Wicca—adherents of which are described by the uninformed as witches—and modern Druidism, which had (still has) a great admiration for great standing stones, midsummer morning, and mistletoe. The last is because mistletoe is a plant that doesn’t trouble to push itself into hard cold ground to thrive but simply perches on the forks and branches of other trees’ trunks to tuck into their sap and grow its greeny-gray leaves and those beautiful translucent white berries.
I have wondered whether the Old Religionists long ago decided that the somewhat spermy juices that emerge from a mistletoe berry if you crush it were, yet again, a male sex symbol and gave men permission to kiss under it women who might be inclined to oblige, though they might of course also be those who would much prefer they didn’t. But, well, it’s Yuletide, so why not have a try?
That is how Wiccans regard the winter revels, too. They are not in the least uptight about sex, being well aware of its value and approving of the joy it brings. Take note, fellow humanists: it’s hard to put a fun religion down.
So a pagan version of the “Christian” Christmas has been around for far more millennia than even the Abrahamic religions, and this humanist and her family have always adored it.
We put up as big a Christmas tree as possible, and set it blazing with very modern fiber-optic lights, old-fashioned tinsel, baubles galore, and an outrageously huge pile of mysteriously wrapped parcels beneath. We’re a big friendly family and tend toward lots of people on Christmas Day. We’ve had as many as thirty; the reason for this will become apparent in due course.
We light scented candles everywhere in place of bonfires and to decorate the house use lots of holly (lucky us—a bush in the garden) and ivy, chosen as a symbol for the festival by those ancient Norse people who had discovered, as modern gardeners do, that it is the most stubborn of plants and however hard you try to get rid of it, back it comes every time.
Finally, a socking great wreath of holly, ivy, red ribbon, and tinsel is put on the front door to encourage passers-by, and we settle down to the overeating, some overdrinking (not fond of that myself), and the blissful swapping of presents.
And in our case, very few arguments. I found a way that prevents it for our family, which I will now offer you. And there are a couple more ideas you may find useful.
ARGUMENTS
There are several reasons for arguments on Christmas Day. Some are obvious. Too much to drink is well up the list. Alcohol, contrary to popular belief, is a depressant, and too much too early in the day can cast guests and hosts into existential misery, which can be picked up by children, even babies, and make them fight with each other and bawl and generally make a very unfestive noise. Lack of exercise is another bad thing that can turn a temper sour. A joint walk by the whole crowd can be fun and very helpful if you’re feeling stuffed. Or play vigorous games in the garden, if yo
u have one. And there’s a lot to be said for opening up family bedrooms and letting the older people snooze. They’ll love you for it. There is also a special system of my own which works like a dream, as you will see later.
ALCOHOL
If your guests must have a drink as soon as they set foot in your house, then make sure it’s not too potent. I opt always for bubbly; Champagne if we’re flush, cava if not. Such nice people at Waitrose; they always have a vinous bargain or two at the end of the year.
And it is never offered plain. Guests can have it neat if they like, but in my experience offering freshly squeezed (no concentrates!) orange juice to make Buck’s Fizz goes down well with almost everyone. Or try black currant syrup—a kir not so royale. Children given orange juice or black currant in the same glasses as the grown-ups feel no en
d of posh. No one gets unpleasantly drunk on Buck’s Fizz—just agreeably merry. (Having something to nibble on with their bubbly also helps, by they way. Not too much, though; ruins their appetites for the big feast.)
Now that children have been mentioned, a necessary warning: however late it is when all the guests have gone, and whatever mess you leave to deal with in the morning, always collect all the bottles and glasses, especially half-empty ones. Children can poison themselves by drinking the dregs when they come down from their beds while you sleep blissfully on Boxing Day morning. Small amounts of alcohol are strong poison in small bodies.
BIG FAMILY FIGHTS
And now, the biggest discovery I ever made about avoiding unpleasant confrontations of the sort that can, at their worst, lead to family breakups with siblings refusing to speak to each other ever again and in-laws storming out of your house forever, even before the turkey gets out of the oven.
If you have relations you absolutely loathe and always have, and there is no hope of reconciliation, and if failure to invite them to all your festive events sets up a hissing and a gnashing among your nice relations as well as some friends, there is only one answer.
Treat them like grains of sand in an oyster. Grains of sand so domiciled will be covered by the highly irritated oyster with layer after layer of (I must be honest here) somewhat snotty goo. It may take a long time and lots of layers, but in the end, there it is. A beautiful, opalescent, lustrous, adorable pearl with a grain of sand deep in its heart.
The first year I tried it, inviting as many people as I could seat at the table, adding card tables and such to the dining table proper, fifteen or so in all, I didn‘t have to speak to the unwanted guests at all. Just a brief “hello” and “goodbye” and the day had been wonderful. Even the work wasn’t too hard. It didn’t cost a great deal more in viands; it did in vino, of course. But it’s the festive time! And cooking for twenty-five creates the same amount of labor as cooking for ten, truly, and not so many leftovers. I’ve been doing it for years.
When we had to move because the kids kept growing and the walls started to bulge, I increased the number of guests I invited and included a couple more unlikeables. Great pearly parties, every time.
OVERSPENDING
Frankly, I refuse to discuss this at all. What right have I to tell other people how they should use their money? If they choose to go into debt to have a glorious Christmas, that is their affair. If they have lost their jobs and want to spend their redundancy money on just one day of hip hip hooray and buy their children hundred-quid presents, then that
is their business and not mine. I do resent the gloomies of this world telling more cheerful people how to live their lives and complaining about our spending too much and forgetting the Deep Meaning of the time.
Pooh to Deep Meanings as far as I am concerned. All any of us have is the here and now, the lives we are living at the moment. We cannot know when we will die, and as a humanist, I know my universe will die with me and there’ll be nothing to do and no one to have any fun with. So, eat, drink, and be merry. And have a very humanist pagan Yuletide.