Why I celebrate Christmas

I haven't been a Christian long, but long enough to recognise a leading question. Like, when somebody who doesn't share my beliefs asks why I celebrate Christmas, I'm fully expecting a detailed explanation of how Jesus wasn't born in December and Christmas trees are just something we carried over from the pagan festivals and blah blah blah whatever.

To which, my response is a resounding 'So what?' If we didn't celebrate the birth of Jesus in December, we'd just do it in June or some other date that someone decided was as good as any. And so what if we have kept on a few old traditions. If you want to celebrate Yuletide or the Winter Solstice or Hogmanay or me and animal's anniversary, knock yourself out. I choose to celebrate the birth of my saviour at this time of year.

So, to answer the question: I've celebrated Christmas all my life; it's just what we do. In this country we need a bright spot in the middle of the depressing wet winters we usually get, and Christmas is it. It's an excuse to get together with loved ones, and at least be civil to those we don't love quite as much. And that's good; peace and good will to all man is a good thing, whatever you happen to believe in, God-wise. Family get-togethers are... well ok, they can be a bit fraught, but it's once a year. If I only saw my sister once a year we get on far better I expect...

So Christmas is a good thing, and I don't have any issue with non-Christians celebrating it. After all, I celebrated 24 myself as a non-Christian...

But, dates aside, as a believer it obviously has a deeper meaning now. And it doesn't matter that Jesus never said 'celebrate my birthday'. He didn't say don't celebrate it. Why would the event be described in such detail in the Bible if it wasn't important?

I've posted this here before, but this song pretty much sums up the religious reasons why I celebrate Christmas:

I don't know if that answered the question, but there you go. That's me done blogging for 2012.

Merry Christmas, and I'll be back next year.

So that was Christmas...

I hope you had fun.

There is an interesting phenomenon I've noticed the last couple of Christmases, which is that of people asking me really weird questions, based purely on the fact that I'm one of those Christians now. I don't mean sensible questions about why I believe all that baby Jesus stuff, I mean silly ones like these...

Q: You do know Jesus wasn't even born in December, don't you?
A: Well, so what, smart-arse, you don't believe he was born at all but you don't have any problem partying down do you?

Q: Doesn't it bother you that most of the people singing about Jesus aren't Christians?
A: Well, since for 24 years all I knew about Jesus was what I learnt from Christmas Carols, no, not really. Admittedly Christmas songs barely scratch the surface of the tip of the iceberg of what Jesus is about, but it's a start. They showed me He was there, so that when the time came I had some idea where to look for Him.

Q: Did you know Santa is an anagram of Satan?
A: Yes, I did, and I see he brought you a dictionary this year. Not before time either, dead hick.

Seriously though, don't let that stop you all asking me about these things. I do like having sensible conversations about them, either here or in private emails, but some of these questions just come up repeatedly from friends, colleagues and relatives, for whatever reason. Still, why not start the year with a rant, eh?

Jesus Christ and our robot overlords

There are loads of versions of this tune kicking around, but for some reason it has evaded most Christmas song compilations since it was first released in 1978. Originally by Big Star (before my time, sorry), for your enjoyment I present the song as performed by Teenage Fanclub on the 2006 tribute CD Big Star Small World.

And with that, I think I will be signing off until, probably, 2012. Have a meaningful Christmas, and a peaceful New Year.

What was that sorry? You want another song first? A geeky sci-fi song? About robot overlords? Are you mad?

Have a good one people, God bless.

These aren't the snowflakes you're looking for...

I am so decorating my place with these!

Print out the patterns from here!

Darth Vader is a little disappointing, but the Stormtrooper snowflake totally rocks :)

(seen first at Geekologie)

O Holy Night

Time for another of my favourite Christmas songs, the very lovely O Holy Night. My favourite arrangement is by BarlowGirl, definitely worth tracking down if you can (Hint: they're on Spotify) but I couldn't find it on YouTube. So instead, here's a not quite as good but still worth a listen acoustic version by one of my favourite bands, Flyleaf.

What Christmas is really about....

The Doctor Who Christmas special, of course :)

I Celebrate the Day

I love music. Friday should be music day here, shouldn't it?

I have no musical talent - my singing is not bad enough to get on the X-Factor audition shows, but neither is it good enough to do so. I had a few drums lessons last year, but that was because I fancied the teacher, who just said I had an interesting sense of rhythm.

So I'll leave it to the professionals - starting with some of my favourite Christmas tunes. This one, I Celebrate the Day by Relient K, I totally fell in love with last Christmas, mainly because of the lines:

And so this Christmas I'll compare

The things I felt in prior years

To what this midnight made so clear

That You have come to meet me here

which pretty much summed up the way I felt, the first year the nativity was something more than a nice story. The rest of the words are similarly beautiful, so please enjoy it...