CHRISTMAS - There, I Said It!

What the hell!? Christmas is fast approaching. In the Western world the single most celebrated, best known and beloved holiday of the year. Just as cruel winter sets in up steps Christmas to keep people busy decorating, baking, planning, celebrating, gifting, and generally merrying themselves out of their skulls. You see anything wrong with that?

I'm Jewish. When I was a little kid I felt mightily resentful about all that hoopla, the colour, the festivities and joyfulness. I felt excluded. This was not, after all, my holiday. My own tradition in fact had no festive occasions, no holidays to be celebrated that came anything near to approximating the joy and light-heartedness of this single Christian occasion.

But well do I recall the kindly generosity of Italian neighbours in the struggling community in which my family lived who would invite me into their parlour to gape in awe at their Christmas tree ablaze with lights and adorned with the most adorable of ornaments. I felt no jealousy then, only admiration for the beauty of the thing.

At school, when I was a child it was obligatory at Christmas that all gathered at school assemblies in the assembly hall sing Christmas carols. (You could mouth them, pretending to sing, but the technique stifled pleasure.) I felt squeamish about some of the carols, those that were so overtly religious in tone and tenor, but absolutely adored the beauty, the stillness, the expression of humanity in so many more of them. To this day I know many of the words to these songs.

To be honest, as I became older, and then an adult there were moments when I felt put upon at all the feverishness of the occasion, the bonhomie, the heartfelt expressions that people hurled at one another of "Merry Christmas!"; the enquires about whether you'd yet prepared all the gifts to present to family and friends, if all the baking had yet been done - how well prepared I was to face Christmas.

Don't they know? I'd silently ask myself. Aren't they aware? Why are they so full of themselves that they have no thought to anyone else's beliefs and customs? Why must Christmas be shoved in my face?

Well, tough. Like everyone else the colour, sounds and joyfulness of the season affected me, and I enjoyed being a part of it, outsider though I was. Each year I could cast my mind back to the fond memories and the excitement I felt when my mother would take me to Eaton's or Simpson's department stores in downtown Toronto to Christmas Wonderland.

At those times I was just another child. I was included, simply because I was there, ogling at the elves' and the fairies' costumes, the castles and the reindeers, and the gifts displayed everywhere, the trees adorned with ribbons and bells and glass balls and lights, lights galore. And the window displays with their cunningly beautiful automatons were wonders to behold.

Present-day political correctness lest-we-offend in our pluralist society is an absurdity. To banish the sight of Christmas trees lest they offend the gaze of those whose tradition is foreign to the challenge of seasonal happiness is ridiculous. The purposeful delicacy of re-naming the season, the holiday, the appurtenances of celebration is painfully ridiculous.

Hey, everyone, it's Christmas. Enjoy it.