Season's Greetings from a Mixed Marriage

So, Coco and I have a mixed marriage: I celebrate Apple Day and she celebrates Rudolph Christmas.

Let me explain.

I was brought up in the traditional mid-century American Catholic Christmas tradition, one comprising equal parts conspicuous devotion and unbridled greed. At some point, I disengaged from both elements of that tradition, the religious and the commercial. Gone were nativity scenes, advent calendars, and midnight mass, along with the gift lists, mountains of wrapping paper, and shopping stress.

For some years, the holiday passed completely unmarked; when I worked in law enforcement and campus security, I was frequently working on December 25 anyway, so it was relatively easy. But generally it was hard to competely ignore the celebratory nature of the season, so I looked for another holiday to make my own. Celebrating Hanukkah or Kwanzaa didn't seem right and Solstice was too woo-woo for me. I briefly considered Yuletide and Saturnalia, but didn't have the energy to get beyond superficial appropriation.

Then I lit upon Isaac Newton's Birthday.

You may find Newton's birthday listed as January 4, 1643, but at the actual time of his birth that date was December 25, 1642. You see, although Pope Gregory introduced his new calendar in 1582, Great Britain didn't adopt it until after 1700, so when Newton was born, days were still reckoned under the Julian calendar. Despite the post-facto alignment to the Gregorian calendar, Newton was born on Christmas.

What better figure to use to co-opt the season to a secular humanist celebration than the father of calculus, gravitation, optics, and so much more ?

Thus was born the holiday of Isaac Newton's Birthday, called Apple Day for short, and abbreviated INB. New traditions arose: the hanging of prisms and rainbows, and the gifting of apples -- and the eating of apple pancakes! Reason became the reason for the season.

Then came Coco.

Now, Coco's upbringing was far different from mine. While her family was nominally Lutheran, they were not churchly folk, and Coco's grasp of Christian tradition was tenuous at best. (This became glaringly apparent when she became for a short time the Parish Administrator of an Episcopalian parish, but that's another story.) As a result, her practice of the holiday season has never involved much religious worship. She was raised doing gifts, yes, but with less greed and more art than a lot of families; she seems to have avoided ever getting too caught up in the overblown commercialism of the season (further proof, if any were needed, that she is a much Better Person than I).

Mostly Coco connects the season with snow (she loves snow), festive lights, decorations, animated Christmas stories, gathering with family, and sharing love. There's a lot of fairly traditional iconography in her holiday celebration, but generally from the generic end of the scale: lights and pine boughs and snowflakes and stars, mostly. She has been calling it Rudolph Christmas, a sort of wintry wish for goodwill.

And I can get behind that; it reflects the spirit of what I have called TV-Movie Christmas. You know the movies I mean: through a little snowy melodrama in a small town or old neighborhood, a cranky guy rediscovers joy, some lonely people find friends, a mean character becomes kind, and a diverse group of people create community. Dickens's A Christmas Carol in modern dress.

 But frankly, right now couldn't we use even the hokiest reminders that kindness and caring are important and that we should all demonstrate a little compassion and generosity in our personal, professional, and public lives?

So whatever you celebrate at this time of year, from whatever source your goodwill springs, I wish you peace and joy, and I ask you to spread love and hope wherever you can.

And may Sir Isaac Newton Bless us, every one.