What is Christmas?

I haven't seen a million Christmases. I'm only 37. But already, I feel like I've been through the whole "Christmas enchantment / disenchantment" cycle.

The Christmas Enchantment / Disenchantment Cycle
Stage 1:  It begins with enchantment. You're a kid and Christmas is special because you're off school for three weeks, you get presents and eat sweets, and maybe, depending on your family, you attend a church where you are, for once, trusted to hold fire (primal, Eureka!). You sing songs about Jesus the cute baby and, thank God, he doesn't get in Santa's way. Christmas is great.

Stage 2:  As a teenager into your twenties, Christmas loses its luster. To participate in the rituals, you have to start buying presents for people, and this is hard because you are broke. You wonder about the callowness of this custom of buying things for people to express our deepest feelings; Santa morphs into a tool of corporate hegemony. You realize that Christmas means spending time with people (namely, your family) who you don't actually like. You don't want to go to church because, well, they're all hypocrites and don't really follow the actual Jesus. Christmas is a charade.

Stage 3:  Then you have children, and all of a sudden, Christmas is enchanted again. The kids are out of school and you have a few days off and are excited to spend time with them. You get presents and eat sweets. You attend church and love the glow of candlelight on the faces of the people who matter most to you in the world, even the ones you don't like. You sing songs about the baby Jesus and, in a moment of "second naivete," you realize that Christmas is pure fabrication anyway, so why not just roll with it. The meaning of Jesus doesn't depend on what others say. You become Santa. Christmas is just fine, thanks.

In the past, I have been concerned to properly "define" Christmas. I've been sucked, unwittingly, into the Christmas wars. As a liberal, I was quick to get behind the anti-corporate critique. As a liberal Christian, I loaded my critique with moralizing about the "essential meaning" of Christmas being simplicity and charity.

It's not that I disagree with those positions now, but having found myself in Stage 3, I realize that Christmas is one, big, hot mess. There is no way to distinguish anything "authentic" in Christmas. It is a bizarre religious holiday with no actual center that holds. Christmas is a practical, secular holiday--a winter "break," an amalgam of family and consumer rituals that all have the rough purpose of focusing our attention on our human relationships.

Christmas is great. Christmas is nothing. Christmas is a charade. Christmas will always be bigger than you. Christmas is what you make of it. Christmas is fine, thanks.