Readers and writers blog

Some people have a lot of complaints about Christmas — commercialism, loss of religious meaning, too damned many carols on radio and TV — but I make only one: It comes at the wrong time of the year.

Let’s move Christmas to Feb. 25.

Now before you go all traditional on me, consider the following drawbacks of our current Dec. 25 system:

• Holiday overload. In the five or six weeks between late November and January, we Americans face three major holidays — Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s — at great trauma to our fiscal and physical beings. We all know the cost in dollars. And setting aside the fact that a lot of us live in regions where travel is difficult and sometimes dangerous at that time of year, there are other perils. I mean, how much fat food and booze can you cram into your body in a short period before your gall bladder and liver cry out for help?

• Mercantile uncertainty. A good many American businesses live or die according to their holiday sales. The day after Thanksgiving isn’t called Black Friday just because many of us find it the most depressing day of the year to go shopping. It also has come to mean the beginning of a profitable sales season when ledger ink turns from red to black. Not always true, of course, but imagine where it is so — waiting 11 months to find out if you’ll still be in business a month later.

• New Year’s depression. Without mentioning the effects of overspending and overindulgence in the previous short weeks, looking out on the Jan. 1 horizon can be gloomy indeed — months of bad weather leading to no major holidays until July 4th. At least the Quebecers have the fat snowman, Bonhomme Carnaval, to amuse them. What do we have? Groundhog Day? Valentine’s Day? Come on.

• Arbitrary date. This is the most important point both historically and theologically. Because nobody knows when Jesus was born. There’s no biblical or other contemporaneous record of the day of his birth. (In fact, tradition also has the year wrong. It’s now generally accepted as 6 to 4 B.C.)

Dec. 25 in the days of Julius Caesar and his calendar was the winter solstice, celebrated roundly by the Romans as the point of the year when the days started getting longer. For whatever reason, the early Christians either adopted — or co-opted — the date to celebrate Christ’s birth.

Now don’t go all puritanical on me, either. For I will remind you that it was the early Puritans in America who outlawed Christmas — for many of the same reasons people today complain about the holiday. Of course, the Puritans, who were among the most fundamental of the fundamentalists, also were opposed to most of the other holy days observed by Catholics. (Interesting that today’s rightwing Christians can’t get enough Christmas references into our holiday activities — q.v., the ‘war’ on Christmas.)

Now consider the following advantages to a Feb. 25 Christmas:

• Midwinter cheer. Christmas decorations could still go up in December — even after Thanksgiving, if you want — but would stay up through much of the winter. I like Christmas decorations. And there’s nothing sadder in early January than seeing a cut evergreen with bits of tinsel stuck to it lying in the roadside trash.

• A real New Year’s. As calendars go, this should be an important holiday, one that we could look forward to all through December as we plan — and fortify our resolution — for a better year ahead. Now it’s mostly an occasion to drink alcohol and forget about those huge credit card bills coming due.

• Better balance sheets. Now merchants would know early in the year about holiday revenue — and have time to do something about it, if necessary, during the rest of the year.

• Easier shopping. Three months instead of five or six weeks. Less congestion in the stores. Costs spread out over a longer period. And finally, a corollary . . .

• More time. To celebrate all these major holidays. At a pace easier on our bodies and minds. And even for grinches whose hatred of the holidays would be extended into late February, there would be at least one redeeming factor:

Spring would be just around the corner.

– Sid Leavitt