Christmas is everywhere. It fills the malls with bright, glittering displays of Christmas trees covered in red and gold bulbs. It’s on sale in the storefronts with their huge Christmas discounts. It covers the hotel and club calendars with special events themed just for the occasion. But in all of that, Christmas is really nowhere.
For centuries holidays have brought us together. They are a time set aside to come together and be with friends and family. To prepare food together, eat together, celebrate together, and enjoy the blessings that we have. This is no different for the Christmas and New Year season. It’s a beautiful season, full of the spirit of giving and thinking of others, and Egypt has the opportunity to make the most of it since the festivities start with Western Christmas in December, and extend through New Year’s all the way to Eastern Christmas in January. But even though there is so much opportunity to celebrate, it seems that there is less and less true celebration each year. When did Christmas become so fake?
It’s not saying anything new that holidays have become ridiculously over commercialized. It’s hard to ignore: the advertisements, the sales, the decorations, the events. Any opportunity that could possibly exist to make money out of these traditions have been packaged and sold to anyone in line. Every year it just becomes more “in your face” than the past. You might want to hold onto the “true meaning” of the holiday but it becomes harder and harder to remember what is genuine and what the industry just wants you to spend your money on. Because of the commercialization and Westernization of the whole thing, how the Christian holiday is celebrated in a Muslim country is complicated. Cafes and stores can have fun decorating their windows and front rooms with trees, tinsel, and Santa hats without any actual base in the meaning of the holiday. It’s all show. It doesn’t mean that they will spend time with their family and appreciating their blessings, it just looks cute.
It’s not just Christmas. Other holidays have fallen victim to the same problem, where all of the glamour and pizzazz is used without thinking twice about why it’s a holiday in the first place.
Take St. Patrick’s Day, what has turned into one of the biggest drinking days of the year. When bars are holding their month-long Shamrock specials and green-themed parties are everywhere, do people stop and think about how Saint Patrick was an actual person in Ireland’s history? Do they think about how he is credited with bringing Christianity to the country, and that the famous clover is said to have been used by Saint Patrick to explain the holy trinity to the Irish? Probably not.
The phenomenon that we are dealing with now is that holidays are not being used to celebrate the point of the holiday, they are used as a reason to celebrate celebrating. It’s like they are just a series of parties that are conveniently already planned into the calendar every year with a theme already chosen for them. The holidays that have been kept by societies for centuries have been made as fake as Facebook events and Instagram posts capturing the “spirit of the season” in a convenient little square. It seems that holidays are just basically trending at this point, and don’t have much more meaning than that. Just another way to blow your salary and get crazy at another party.
Of course, going out is fun and holidays are a great chance to celebrate. But when they get so fake and far away from the original point, it’s time to take a step back and consider if it’s the best way to celebrate the holiday. If the holiday is built on your beliefs, take that opportunity to strengthen them and enjoy the true meaning. If the holiday is based in a belief set other than your own, take the opportunity to spend more time with your family and friends. Celebrate with a purpose, not because it’s “what everyone else is doing.”
