It’s Christmas. Eve. Again. Naught but Santa and stress-jolly housewives are stirring. Fatty foods and decorated trees and rampant consumerism is jostling for our every waking moment. And have you ever considered how very Christian all this Christmas music is?
“Of course Christmas music is Christian, you northern pagan”, some traditionalist curmudgeon in the back is grunting. “Is this SJW piece of shit trying to take Christmas away from good Christians?!”, some MAGA piece of shit is slurring as he’s nursing his latent white supremicism.
Well, what if I told you that Christmas time actually has very little to do with Christianity?
Christmas didn’t use to be about some “foretold” toddler saviour borne into a sheep shit crusted manger. It used to be about something much older than that. The return of light to a darkness a blasted landscape. The clan and tribe and all those close to us. Christianity and the Church just sort of plastered the pagan celebrations of Yule with the birth of their son of God. Just appropriated other peoples’ traditions with their crosses, angels, saints, and their peace on earth. All for Christianity to keep colonizing its way across the northern hemisphere.
I mean, fuck, Christ wasn’t even born in winter! At least not according to the nativity myth, where a shepherd with hillside-grazing sheep watched stars alit over a messiah-riddled barn in the dead of night. You see, no shepherd worth his salt of self-preservation would take his flock out in mid winter like that.
It’s all a sham. A PR-coup. Cleverly designed to convince gullible pagans that all their solstice festivals and their fertility rites were really Christian all along. And it succeeded, didn’t it? We’re all still rooting for that little boy Jesus to be squirted out by a married, grown-ass virgin in just about the least sanitary place available in ancient times. With all our Little Drummer Boys and our glories on earth and child-kings and lamb of lambs.
So what? Fuck it, believe whatever fairy tale you will. People are filled to bursting with ill-conceived notions and untrue preconceptions. What does a little Christmas caroling hurt?
Nothing, really. But it’s always worthwhile to be aware of your presets. There’s intrinsic value in understanding your cultural prejudices. Just keep your misguided notions from where your traditions came from away from me. Because just like you may tell me to stay away from the delicate little child-Jesus in your colonialist Christmas, I’ll let you know that you can bloody well keep your donkey-dropped saviour out of my Yule Tide.
/Sebastian Lindberg 27/12-2019
WastedWords 