Why Christmas Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
Many people look forward to the upcoming holidays, hoping for a Christmas where all is calm, all is bright. Yet not everyone will spend the festive season with family, and not every home will be peaceful. The ideals of holiday harmony and family bliss can become a burden, often overshadowing the celebrations with conflict.
For a lot of people, managing these contradictions can be difficult. And what about those who, from the outset, cannot live up to romantic Christmas images – because they are alone at Christmas time, or because their family doesn’t match the idealized pictures seen everywhere?
“Jesus also had two fathers”
Strictly speaking, Jesus’ own family belonged to that group, as well, as theological ethicist Michael Coors points out in the Christmas episode of the podcast “Erleuchtung garantiert,” produced by the Faculty of Theology and the Study of Religion at the University of Zurich.
In conversation with the podcast host, religious studies scholar Dorothea Lüddeckens, Coors describes Christmas as a key civil-religious ritual, a shared cultural practice with religious overtones, that today often revolves more around idolizing family ideals than celebrating the birth of the Son of God.
Jesus’ family clearly didn’t correspond to today’s middle-class ideal – a concept that only emerged during the Romantic era — given the, well, complicated nature of his paternity. The circumstances of his birth, too, were famously far from ideal. “Christmas doesn’t have to be perfect,” Coors argues, “but it offers the chance to come together within imperfection – and to endure it.”
Sometimes, it just doesn’t work out
When expectations for Christmas are too high and family divisions run too deep, it can be helpful to acknowledge that celebrating together simply may not be possible, Lüddeckens and Coors suggest. What matters is not giving in unquestioningly to the moral pressure that idealized notions of Christmas can create.
The hope for reconciliation is central to the Christian faith – but so is the awareness that reconciliation isn’t always possible in this life, certainly not at the push of a button, says Coors. In cases of deep-seated conflict, it may be more realistic to confront differences outside the holiday season than under the strain of enforced harmony and festive perfection.
This does not mean, of course, that Christmas cannot still be celebrated as a beautiful shared occasion for many people. The podcast, which is available in German,also explores how Michael Coors and Dorothea Lüddeckens themselves celebrate Christmas, and which memories and expectations they associate with the holiday. Tune in!