Bah! Humbug! No Scrooge.

I don't celebrate Christmas. I haven't celebrated Christmas, despite being raised a Christian, since I left home in my mid-teens. And as I grew up my general attitude toward binge celebration has made me something of an outsider. If one takes the position of an outsider it should not come as a surprise that one is in fact placed on the outside, excluded.

I have not written before about my philosophy on these matters and I do not generally take the time to explain it because, frankly, most people do not want to hear it. But I am moved this week to write about it because on discussing the matter with a close friend he, albeit affectionately, referred to me as "Scrooge."

The implication is, of course, that anyone that does not comply with the social imperatives of Christmas must be mean and hold those things that the season is meant to celebrate as unimportant. Worse, if that person is a parent and denies their children the celebration of Christmas, or some surrogate of it, they are abusers of children or, at least, they deny their children something of the joys of childhood.

Bah! Humbug!

Let's face it, the modern Christmas is still defined by Charles Dickens. The iconic Christmas celebration is the nineteenth century ideal and the cynic views any denial of the Dickensian model as merely excuses for a mean spirit.

Now I confess that my own rejection of Christmas is in some part the response to my own childhood experience of it. It is true that the Christmas I remember from my childhood is fraught with tension, drama and unpleasantness. My parents made Christmas a war zone. Poverty did not allow us to participate in the nineteenth century ideal and its popular conception and expectations led the entire working-class community into which I was born to consumerism, debt and deep feelings of inadequacy. These pressures, frustrations and simple confusions often manifest by the influence of the excessive consumption of cheap alcohol that is, apparently, a necessary part of numbing the English working-class experience.

But you should not believe that my rejection of Christmas celebration is an emotional response to an unhappy childhood. I assure you that is not the case. It is, rather, a rational response.

Nor is it a bitter rejection of the teachings of Jesus. I am sad that my parents felt as they did but today, with the objective distance that time can bring to these matters, I feel that I do understand what they went through and why it was happening. Like most of the working-class, they did not have the education to appreciate their predicament and the peer pressure to accept the Dickensian ideal is and was overwhelming. They certainly did not have the competence to challenge it.

The truth is that despite my natural positivist and existentialist nature I do hold the teachings of Jesus in very high regard. I take these teachings to highlight the importance of compassion, love of friends and family, and the love of our enemies. The latter of these teachings seems to me to be especially important since it is the foundation of forgiveness and tolerance.

I thought this all out in my mid-teens. For me this was a time of deep reflection during which I began considering my life as a priest. It was my dearest wish until my mid-twenties to find some way into ordained priesthood. Ultimately it was a tradentine Catholic priest, Father Morgan, who helped me realize that, in fact, one did not need to become ordained or dress in a priestly garb to have the sensibilities and life of a priest. "Holy men will be born, not shorn from some theological college." I wrote later.

It was in this context that my views toward Christmas celebration came about. I did not reject the binge mass celebration of the Christian ethics because I rejected the teaching of Jesus, rather I rejected that celebration because I embraced those teaching with a new depth and feeling.

I am not going to repeat the cliche recognition that this time of year historically fails to manifest these teachings in the actions of our fellows. I will let your own experience of it speak to that. I will, however, share with you my own recognition.

Firstly, in my own quest, I recognized the value and strength of individuality and independent spirit, of thinking independently, of rejecting what "society" does by convention for the simple sake of it. It seems to me to be laziness to follow and that it is better to live and be free, better to encourage dissent than to encourage others to blindly follow what others do because it is expected.

But in addition to this, if what you celebrate at this time of year has a sensibility deeper than simple indulgence. If what you seek to demonstrate is your personal recognition of your love and compassion for others in fellowship. If you recognize and advocate the value of the extreme forgiveness that comes from loving your enemies, as Jesus taught, then this is not something to celebrate.

If these things are important to you. If, like me, you have a strong and committed autoaesthetic or spirituality, whatever you like to call it, then surely these are things to celebrate in every single day and surely the sincerest form of excess celebrating these things is that which arises spontaneously and from necessity.