I was wrong. It’s often hard for me to admit when I’m wrong, but I feel it’s important to make it clear that I was.
I was wrong about the holidays and I have had to rectify any harm I may have unintentionally caused my family, as a result.
It all started a few years ago, when I joined a Facebook group run by marginalized people, to try to do better about cultural appropriation.
At the time, many members of the group, including myself, had been harmed by some form of Christianity in the past. However many of these individuals were never Christians, unlike me and others who grew up in Christianity/Catholicism. Our pain comes from different places.
I read every post, and absorbed every word that was said wanting to be a better ally and wanting to be a better person.
One day, someone posted something that altered the course of a lot of how I participated in what I believed were secular holidays.
The post said, you can’t celebrate secular Christmas. Christmas is a Christian holiday and if you celebrate you are celebrating Christianity. This was stated more than once in the group where if you celebrated the holiday at all, you were culturally Christian.
Having been harmed greatly by Christianity and Christians in general I was aghast at that statement and I really took it to heart. I believed that I was participating unwillingly in Christianity by celebrating Christmas.
I have been raised in multiple sects of Christianity. My father comes from a long long line of Catholicism – my paternal grandparents, the first generation of our family in the US from Poland.
My mom’s side of the family is a mix of Irish Catholic, Roman Catholic, Appalachia Baptist, and Mennonite. That evolved into my maternal grandparents being Lutherans.
Because my father divorced his first wife he and my mother had actually exchanged religions by the time they met. My mother had converted to Catholicism some years before and my father had become a Lutheran because he was no longer welcome in the Catholic church.
Wanting to raise us Catholic but unable to, my parents baptized my brother and I as Lutherans.
By the time I was five, scandal at the church had led me to a Methodist Church in my small hometown – one my best friend, at the time, invited me to attend.
By the time I was a preteen, Catholic rules had relaxed around divorce and my mother and I were converted to Catholicism while my father and brother remained religious, but did not attend church.
Being disabled and trans Christianity has always been harmful to me and I was absorbing a lot of those harmful messages. Being trans and being from a small, conservative, religious town meant that I faced a lot of oppression, and by the time I was in my early 20s I had left religion behind entirely.
Meanwhile, Ashtyn and her family had been celebrating Christmas secularly forever. They were not Christians. She did not attend church except for times when friends took her with them because they attended church.
Her entire idea of Christmas has been only about Santa, elves, the North Pole. There has never been any Jesus or angels or anything that I experienced. Her entire experience of the holiday did not involve Christianity, at all.
My first memories of church are performing in the Christmas play at my grandparents church. I was an angel and I got all the lines because I was a good little actor.
I’ve been in numerous nativity plays across the years. I attended midnight mass religiously once I converted to Catholicism. I have performed many religious Christmas songs, sang religious songs in choir. For me, Christmas was religious and secular, but for Ashtyn it never was.
She and her family were not culturally Christian – they celebrated the idea of an imaginary guy who was kind to children.
Due to trauma, and wanting to be a better person, a few years ago, Ashtyn and I talked about how I felt very uncomfortable celebrating Christmas, and how we shouldn’t do it anymore. I was internalizing everything that was said about Christmas being culturally Christian.
And my family, being supportive of me, decided to follow what I was feeling. They decided to be supportive of me
I was hurt at the thought that by celebrating anything, that I was indulging in Christianity. So, I wiped Christmas off the map. We didn’t celebrate it. We didn’t say anything to our family members.
We celebrated the solstice so we had something. That was it.
Ashtyn’s mom didn’t understand, but she’s one of the most supportive people I’ve ever met. She quietly let us do what we wanted, all while silently suffering herself – because Christmas was her holiday and she gave it up for us.
It’s taken me the last few years to realize what I did. While attempting to make myself a better person I actually have ended up hurting my family.
Ashtyn’s mother has celebrated Christmas for 70+ years. She stopped celebrating it for a year or two because of me. But this year, Ashtyn and I spoke again. She stopped partaking in her tradition and her holiday because of me.
She is family and she deserves to celebrate whatever she believes. We don’t have to believe what others do to respect each other’s beliefs.
I thought by getting rid of Christmas I would be helping others – but I didn’t recognize that I would be hurting someone I cared about deeply by doing so.
You can celebrate Christmas secularly, especially if you don’t go to church. For many, the holiday is more about giving and receiving – sharing love, and celebrating family. That is what we do in our house and that is what our family wanted to do.
As such, we decided to weave our traditions together.
During the solstice, we celebrate because that’s when we feel empowered. We celebrate the return of the light. We celebrate nature.
And then on the 24th, we celebrate Christmas with Ashtyn’s mother because that’s her holiday. We celebrate giving to others. We celebrate family. We celebrate love.
Christianity has messed me up massively, but I don’t have to let that lead to me harming others.
I’m sorry to my family for letting my trauma dictate what we did. Thank you for letting me have space to work through this.
And to everyone who is like my family members who celebrate, I wish you a very Merry Christmas.
Whatever you celebrate this year I hope it is wonderful and I hope you feel as much love as I am lucky to feel with my family.
Originally posted on Patreon in February 2024.
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