This post was submitted by corey

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People who speak of the secularization of Christmas perhaps have a near-sighted view of humanity. Yes, much of “the holiday season” lacks a clear relation to the religious ideals upon which it was founded, but the fact that it defines an entire season of American life, and the fact that it is the holiday season, and not just one among equals, give it a conspicuously prominent place in our culture.

It may not always be theological, but it nonetheless reeks of religion.

This weekend, I went to see the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production of A Christmas Carol in Boulder. The friend who accompanied me, a Jew, and myself, an Agnostic, were perhaps not the likeliest pair to go see this together. In fact, it being the evening of Black Friday, I was probably the only homosexual with a shopping addiction who wasn’t out hunting down discounted coats and designer jeans.

Nonetheless, we went to the show, which has always been among my favorites. My friend had never seen it or any of its variants – strange, I thought, even for a Jewish girl. Seeing A Christmas Carol performed in its intended century and location is almost as rare as a similar sighting of a Shakespeare play, what with the American public’s preference for such things being readapted as a high school basketball drama or some kind of space odyssey. As someone who once saw an African tribal version of King Lear at Yale, I consider myself jaded in these regards.

So it was nice to see the story told as it was intended and performed by a cast who let the power of Dickens’s narrative do what it was written to do. I believe that the story is intended to be a fable, not a realistic portrayal of the changes of a human heart; that is why so many adaptations of the work fail to capture the meaning of the original. The play, as performed by this ensemble, did exactly what it was supposed to do: end abruptly, unrealistically, with a sudden swing to a happy ending that can only come from a British novelist.

Having said all this, seeing the play made me nervous. Over the past few years I have gone from being quite religious to being quite thoroughly agnostic, and as this change has occurred, I have grown more and more alienated in America’s Christian culture. I felt like an alien in that audience – more alien, even, than the five young men in front of me in XL basketball jerseys and backwards-turned hats who we believed were there on some kind of juvenile parole program. Surrounded by white, heterosexual, God-fearing Christians in matching holiday sweaters and their Sunday best (despite it being a Friday), I felt as though their was no part of their experience that night with which I could relate.

Scrooge, on the other hand, was a character with whom I could suddenly feel a connection – another fact that worried me. Like Ebenezer, I had yet to turn on my heat this year, despite the fact that Colorado has had several blizzards; like him, I wear my peacoat around the house some days to keep warm and (right now, for example) hide under my blankets to get work done. The only difference was that I had sprung for Ralph Lauren bedding, and used my heating savings to buy the Burberry scarf on which my heart was set.

The point is that I felt close enough to being a Dickens villain as it was without facing an impending dilemma that hit me as I sat in the theatre: was there any way for me to enjoy the Christmas season? Or was I too removed from mainstream American culture, too detached with (and angry at) the conservative Christian conversation, to do so? And if that was the case, would I become a younger, gayer version of Scrooge, and spend the next month isolated and bitter?

I certainly can’t be the only one who feels at odds with this month-long Jesus jubilation. The holiday has long isolated many American Jews, who responded by over-emphasizing Hanukah beyond its traditional, theological importance so as to have a counterweight to the United States’ Christmas fetish. As I told a Jewish friend over brunch this weekend, the attempted parallelization of Hanukah with Christmas is itself indicative of the latter’s cultural muscle.

And following that line of logic, I can’t help but think that Christmas is essentially a white holiday, as well. Jesus is portrayed as being white; all of the Middle East is portrayed as being white; Santa and all his elves are portrayed as being white… It has even been suggested to me that the term “Black Friday,” the epitome of the commercialization of Christmas, has racial undertones – as do all negative days that we deem “black” – especially when contrasted with the traditional image of a “White Christmas.” I don’t know if I really believe it, but the fact that some black friends of mine felt that way suggests a sharing of my cultural isolation. (Let’s not even get started on Kwanza.)

There I sat, in the University of Colorado Theatre, getting teary-eyed (as always happens when I see Tiny Tim), but all the while wondering if I could find meaning in a season that is so detached from my reality, or if I would simply find myself too at odds with the predominant culture to enjoy the next four weeks.

Things didn’t get any better when I avoided donating to two charities this weekend because both invoked God in their Christmas campaigns; “Sorry,” I thought to myself, “but surely I can find a secular charity to whom to give.” And it didn’t get any better today when, sitting inside my friendly neighborhood Starbucks, I saw a deranged preacher screaming at truant teenagers as they jumped off the trolley, or yelling at women with baby carriages that “Jesus is coming back.” It’s funny how only “moderates” see a difference between themselves and an “extremist”; to an extremist, the moderates might as well be heathens, and to an outsider, they’re all fairly equally insane.

But I suppose time will tell. Meanwhile, even as an agnostic the idea of being “home for the holidays” rings true, and – ironically, perhaps – my feeling of isolation during this season has made me miss being home for it even more. Out here in Colorado, I miss my family, I miss the east coast, I miss Sundays being for hangovers and brunch and not for going to church. I miss knowing that an October day wouldn’t see two feet of snow, and that even a Scrooge like myself could stay warm through the winter.

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