Is Christmas meaningless without Christ?

Some of my most cherished childhood memories are with my family at Christmastime. Baking cookies, decorating the tree, putting up lights, singing songs by the fire, attempting to create the longest paper chain, attending the candlelight service… It was a magical time full of fun, togetherness and deep spiritual meaning. My parents worked hard to make the Christmas season special and they succeeded. Their only crime was their misguided sincerity and loyalty to a high-control religion that sprinkled the season (and our entire lives) with toxicity.

Christmas is meaningless without Christ, I was reminded over and over.

It is silly for non-Christians to celebrate Christmas, I learned. Non-Christians only celebrate Christmas for the gifts or as an attempt to co-opt and sabotage sacred traditions that don’t belong to them. Non-Christians are lost, confused, and attempting to distract themselves from their own emptiness.

Intended or not, the message many Christian children receive is that there is no value in celebrating friendships and family or warmth and light during a cold, dark season, because nothing matters except Jesus. The implication was that happiness and pleasure and love and generosity are not worth appreciating on their own; you need to tack Jesus onto everything to make it worthwhile.

Fearful outcries warned that any celebration of Christmas not within the confines of Christianity was an attack on Christian values and truth itself.

A narrow meaning of Christmas was drilled into my head from an early age, and I now argue it is a shallow one.

“Apart from Christ, what’s the point of Christmas?”

Now I can confidently say that sometimes just celebrating being alive is enough. Life and love and being together is plenty to commemorate and set aside as sacred and holy.

The relationships that warm our hearts throughout the cold winter bring meaning and purpose I never felt while in the church. Dedicating time in our busy schedules for those who have our backs fosters a hope we only talked about in Christianity. The carefree bliss of the holidays spark a happiness I never knew when burdened with religious obligation and shame.

The holidays are ripe with meaning for me. We too, are celebrating light in the darkness. The only difference is where we believe that light comes from – oppressive rules or warm relationships? Pious duty or radical hospitality?

I believe the simple beauty of life is worth noticing and focusing on. That’s what makes ordinary things transcendent and extraordinary. Bright red holly berries against sparkly white snow, children’s faces lit up with glee, tasty food crackling over a fire, lending a helping hand to those in need – our response to the call to pay attention determines whether or not miracles exist.

There is so much to love about life even in dark and uncertain times; there is always hope if we are willing to nurture it. Isn’t that what the Christmas Story is all about? Choosing to seek out, interact with and celebrate the existence of light and love and hope no matter the circumstances. This is innately human and sacred and good.

And to me, that is the beautiful meaning of Christmas.

I stopped believing in God long before I stopped believing in Christianity.

Though I didn’t possess the self-awareness at the time, I no longer believed God was good, or that God believed in me.

It wasn’t a choice as much as a natural consequence of what I experienced, and it came to fruition some years before I fully left.

To believe, or not to believe… honestly, it’s an easy question.

Safety in the church had only ever been possible through extreme hypervigilance and precise showmanship.

It had been consistently demonstrated to me that God was someone to fear, to appease, to flatter even, in hopes of being spared.

After all, the very foundation of Christianity is built on the idea of being undeservingly saved from the wrath of God.

For two and a half decades my prayers were carefully crafted and recrafted, fervently offered and recanted. My prayer life was ruled by the terror of having said the wrong thing, or the right thing the wrong way. Or maybe I said it too many times or not enough.

I agonized over finding the sweet spot between praying faithfully with the persistence of the widow, and babbling on like the pagan. Pray without ceasing – I had better intercede once more. But what if I seemed desperate and cynical? What if my motives were wrong? Did I have to want something purely out of selfless altruism? Did I have to prove my request a noble cause? Or was it okay to want something just because it made me happy? What if a fleeting thought angered God and I was given the opposite of what I asked for, as a punishment?

Spiraling into panic became a spiritual rite, a holy ritual.

My faith mentor in college once asked me during a season of particular desperation: “Do you believe God wants to give you good things?”

I think she meant it more as a rhetorical question, an attempt to help ground me in a place of trust.

Praying fervently through a vulnerable housing situation with terrifying potential outcomes had worked me into quite the frenzy.

“Do you believe God wants to give you a good things?”

Suddenly, that’s when I knew.

“No. I don’t believe God wants to give me good things. At least not reliably.”

Why would he? Out of some cosmic goodwill? On a whim? Feeling particularly chummy today? Why would I believe God wants to give me good things, when I don’t have the track record to show for it? Why would God want to give me good things when his people were stingy users who made me earn my right to exist? Why would I believe God wants to give me a safe, stable and affordable housing situation where I can thrive, if I’m so sinful, bad and broken that I don’t even deserve love?

If I’m just filthy rags, why would I deserve anything more than mere survival? Actually, why would I even deserve that? Apparently I am entitled to only death and torture in hell. Why should God give me good things while turning a deaf ear to the grieving mother whose child is dying? Why should God give me a nice place to live but ignore the pleas of families who are starving? No, I really don’t believe God wants to give me good things. I think the best I can do is hope my prayers somehow hit the magic combination, because as an evangelical that’s all I know how to do.

My mentor seemed very surprised by my response, but thankfully gracious. She urged me to choose to trust that God wants to give good gifts to his children and to rest in that reassurance.

But it was too late at that point. I couldn’t undo my epiphany. However, in obedience I mustered up my courage to believe anyway. Interestingly, my prayed-over housing situation ended very poorly despite my due diligence in every place I had agency, and the consequences still negatively affect me financially today – a decade later.

I was beaten down by the adversity, but not shocked. As a faithful congregant I learned long ago I don’t deserve good things. God gives and God takes away – seemingly nonsensically – and I need to be grateful regardless. God uses extreme suffering to make us more submissive and loyal, so logically good gifts aren’t in line with that goal. “Blessings” make a lot more sense as a result of chance and privilege than divine favor, unless God is an asshole playing favorites.

As a good Christian girl I dutifully accepted I am nothing apart from God. I’m damaged and worthless, I don’t deserve love or mercy or to live in ease. God chooses my fate based on my holiness not my happiness. This was drilled into me incessantly since infancy.

If I don’t deserve heaven, why should I have an abundant life on earth? If I don’t deserve God’s love why would I deserve a person’s love? Why would I expect to be adored by a partner or valued as a friend? Abuse makes way more sense. Why should I expect to receive respect in the workplace? Standing up for myself seems silly in that context. If God brings hard times to make us more like him, why would I ever expect to be given joy and good things? Wouldn’t that undermine the cause? With so many millions of people suffering and dying in the world, why would I expect God to hear my prayers and not theirs? And if God did, is that something I could really feel good about?

Oh wait, that’s right, “God works in mysterious ways” and supposedly that solves everything.

In the 10 years that have passed since that fateful conversation with my mentor, I have been seriously abused by a partner, gone through a devastating divorce, been abandoned by the community I poured my blood, sweat and tears into, been used and then tossed aside when my volunteer labor was no longer needed. I fell in love with the most amazing person only to have him snatched away from me shortly after when he was killed in a tragic accident. I have been harassed and mistreated by the church yet again during the vulnerability of my grief, I was refused help when newly widowed because I wasn’t the “right” kind of Christian, large sums of money were stolen from me by Christians, I’ve experienced multiple serious health scares, slogged through anxiety and depression and PTSD. I was illegally retaliated against at my job, sexually harassed by another boss, betrayed by my closest friends one after another… After so much heartbreak I found a beautiful partnership with a fellow widow but we’ve had to work hard for our happiness, fought for survival in an unfair economy, lost our first child due to miscarriage… Oh, but God wants to give me good things! Great news! What’s the hold up, I wonder?!

My husband recently pointed out to me that whenever we go hiking together, I always walk on the side of the trail, almost in the bushes or rocks or whatever obstacles are there. When he asked me about it, I just shrugged and said it was natural for me to try to get out of the way so I didn’t block the view. After we processed it together, I realized that my opinion of myself is so low I don’t even believe I deserve the physical space my body takes up. Walking on the side of the trail is just a subtle manifestation of the mindset the church has trained into me, one that seemed so normal I didn’t even notice. I’m always stepping out of the way and making myself small and quiet and compliant. I’ve been trained to always anticipate other people’s needs and be quick to meet them and make them happy. I am very unfamiliar with my own needs, let alone confident in meeting them. It’s my purpose in life to always be grateful even if my prayers are met with stubborn silence or “NO” or I receive something dreadful. My duty is to praise God and be thankful and smile even when I am worn down over and over and slowly dying inside.

The short of it is I don’t matter.

Oh, but have you heard? God wants to give me good things! And apparently he is all-powerful and nothing is stopping him. So I guess he is just choosing not to. Apparently this merciful God turned a blind eye when my soulmate lost his life. Apparently the Great Gift-Giver took a vacation day when a pandemic swept our world killing millions and destroying the livelihoods of millions more. Apparently the Almighty Heavenly Father felt ambivalent about whether or not my baby ever got to see the light of day or meet her father.

So yes, while the indoctrination took a while to fully unravel, the first tug of a string was the shift to believing in God’s existence but not in his goodness.

I realize now I stopped believing in God long before I stopped believing in Christianity, and giving up the latter was more about coming to terms with the former.

To believe, or not to believe… Unfortunately, to me that’s an easy question.

Can you blame me?