Celebrating Christmas as a Deconvert
Or, How “Friends” Ties in With Apostasy
Like many people trying to pass the time during this pandemic, I have spent a non-trivial slice of the last nine months binge-watching various television series, be they on Netflix, YouTube, or the quaint, old-fashioned DVD. Recently, I finished my re-watch of the NBC sitcom, “Friends” — a weekly viewing staple while I was in college, and a show that I would argue has a lot of comedic writing that holds up, even 16(!) years after it ended.
The first Thanksgiving episode features some backstory from Matthew Perry’s character, Chandler Bing. We learn that Thanksgiving was the day when child-Chandler learned that his parents were getting divorced, causing Chandler to loathe Thanksgiving from then until well into his adult life.
As the episode develops, the other characters’ cherished Thanksgiving plans are cancelled one by one (a predicament that we can all sympathize with in 2020!). Rachel misses her flight and thus misses skiing with her family, Ross’s and Monica’s parents vacation elsewhere and can’t host dinner, and Joey is too embarrassed to face his family after they (erroneously) think that he has VD.
After everyone has sat down to grilled cheese for dinner (long story), it’s Chandler — the Thanksgiving hater in the group — who offers a heartwarming toast. Chandler, who is likely used to spending Thanksgiving alone while everyone else visits family, points out that the six friends would not have been able to spend the day all together if everything had gone according to plan. For the first time since childhood, Chandler genuinely enjoys his Thanksgiving with his new “family.”
“Friends” had a Thanksgiving episode in each of its ten seasons, and by the second half of the run, Chandler’s disdain for Thanksgiving was almost non-existent as a plot point. For Chandler, Thanksgiving had become something different from how mainstream society views it: not specifically about giving thanks, or even about the food (he was still opting for chicken over turkey in Season 8), but a day for spending time with the people he cares about most. And he was much happier for it.
Like Chandler with Thanksgiving, my relationship with Christmas has evolved as I’ve gotten older. The big difference, of course, is that Christmas has always been my favorite day of the year. It’s just for different reasons now.
My family still celebrates Christmas much in the same way we did when I was a kid. On Christmas Eve, my parents, brothers and I would go to an evening church service, before going out to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, then driving around nearby neighborhoods to see their Christmas lights. Upon getting home, we’d put on one of our favorite Christmas movies (favorites included “Rudolph,” “Sesame Street Christmas,” and “A Christmas Carol” with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge). Then, before being sent to bed ourselves, we would “heatedly” negotiate the time when my brothers and I were allowed to get my parents out of bed (which always ended up being 7:00 am). On Christmas morning, we open the gifts from each other and from “Santa,” then spend the day relaxing (well, the kids, anyway…) before having our traditional ham dinner in the evening.
Back when I was religious (or thought I was, at least), I would happily join in marveling with my church’s congregation at the Nativity story — the angel appearing to the shepherds, the wise men bringing their gifts, and of course, the miracle of the virgin birth that brought God incarnate into the world to be our savior.
Today (during non-pandemic years), we do still visit our parents’ church for their Christmas Eve service, though a different church from our childhood one since our parents changed cities. Ever since I started identifying as an atheist four years ago, however, attending the church service has become merely a formality for me — something that we do only because we’ve always done it, and something that I’m happy to tolerate for the family’s sake, but tolerate only. If and when I have kids of my own, the church-going tradition will be left behind, and the Nativity will be explained as a legend that some people (such as their grandparents) believe in and enjoy celebrating.
Just as with Chandler and Thanksgiving, Christmas for me has become a day for spending quality time with my loved ones, and for expressing gratitude to the close friends in my life. More broadly, I also can’t help remembering a line from “A Christmas Carol,” where Jacob Marley’s ghost declares that every person’s “spirit within should walk abroad among his fellow man, and travel far and wide.” I think the world would be a better place if everyone carried the holiday spirit of kindness and generosity throughout the entire year, and asked themselves how they can treat and care for others just a little better than before.
As we grow older, and gather more life experiences that influence our worldviews, it’s only natural that we come to value things in a different way, or come to value things that we hadn’t before, or to leave behind things that we did value while holding onto the memories of what they meant to us once. And to quote “Doctor Who’s” Matt Smith, “That’s okay. That’s good! You’ve got to keep moving forward — just so long as you don’t forget all the people that you used to be.”
No matter what you celebrate, or why, have a wonderful and safe holiday season!
