so this is christmas

so it's the 23rd of december which means in a day or two it will be christmas day. because i am an atheist i will be celebrating a purely capitalist christmas. this is the best type of christmas where you get the opportunity to get lots of presents and get even more presents for other people. this is good. could this be the first year that i haven't heard everyone moan about the capitalist christmas? probably - everyone is desperate for everyone else to forget about charity and religion and goodwell and go and spend shit loads on a pile of worthless stuff or food or whatever. i fully agree. plow millions back into the economy.

its not very odd that "christmas" has become commercialised. i never know why people try to pretend its a bad thing. it started as being a chritian festival but now in our multicultural nation everyone "celebrates" it. it is one of the most important holidays of the year - it has 2 massive days of debauchery (christmas day and newe years eve) and 2 whole weeks of almost compulsory office closure. the muslims, sikhs, jews, hindu's, atheists and christians all get a well earned break. religion is irrelevant to this. Uproar that is associated with not being allowed to put on a nativity play at a multicultural school may be a dent to our christian pride but it certainly isnt a dent to our national pride. In some sense banning of the play is retarded - but in others it is perfectly fair. it purely depends on if the school is marketing the story as historical/ religious fact or if they are marketing it as a nice christmas play which is inevitably intertwined with Western tradition. The latter is perfectly legitimate but due to the sickeningly polar views of many people it is probably best to scrap the thing altogether to avoid the inevitable problems that would occur from a little jew girl wondering why the three wise men were following a star rather than a menorah. still i would be happy to have put on a play based on the festival of ights purely due the fact that even at 8 i knew it was a jewish story and didnt necessarily start rushing to the synagogue every yom kippur. Islam has an alternative story of jesus - one which i would have loved to have learned about when i was 10 after hearing the nativity playing on loop for 5 years. and on top of all of that father christmas represents the christmas of western culture and is linked to this culture as much as the religions that make it. In the same way i use to revel in food available at Eid i am sure that a jewish or islamic family are partial to a bit of kosha/ halal turkey on christmas day.

i think its got something once again to do with the inherent separation which stems from differences in culture. i dont know where it comes from - maybe as an athiest it is easier to be open and liberal to cultural and religious ideas that it is for a strong detemined christian or whatever to open their mind for once. The worst thing about all of this is that british tradition (as distinct from its modern culture) is essentially christian - we needn't sacrifice these traditions because they have remnants of religion in them - why do we (the nation as a whole) feel the need to ignore some customs yet embrace others? is this what we are trying to call multicultural integration? because i would argue that it's not.