So how was your Christmas?

It's been fun to meander around the blogosphere are see what some of my favorite bloggers share about their holiday.

The always entertaining Very Mom shares my lack of enthusiasm for Santa Claus, and tells about her son's impression of The Christmas Man.

The Genuine family got an extra special gift for Christmas this year. Go over and read all about it. He almost made me get teary!

Have you seen Mom to 7 Boys photo of her 7 little men visiting Santa? They are so adorable!

I learned about a great-sounding product called d-skin from The Zero Boss. It's a way to cover your CDs, DVDs, and game discs to protect them from scratches. WE NEED THIS!

I'm feeling a little bit bah-humbug-y myself. I was thinking so gleefully of how I was not running the pre-Christmas rat race since I had to have all of my stuff done by the 16th, just happy as a clam to Have It All Over With. More than one person shared my sentiment. And then it occurred to me that I don't even think of Christmas as a religious holiday. I mean, I acknowledge it as such. I'm a Christian and so I believe in Jesus' birth and so on. But, Christmas is just so far removed from that for me. It's a family holiday, and I think that I was brought up to think of it that way. In my husband's family they always went to Christmas Eve service at church. Mine always went to my Grandparent's house to have dinner and exchange gifts with our extended family. My childhood Christmas Eves are some of my best memories and I have no inclination to go to a church service instead. It just seems wrong to me. Seems like it doesn't fit with my internal sense of what the holiday is for.

As a child and teenager it seemed to me that although everybody at church said the stuff about Jesus is the Reason for the Season, that it was kind of a lame cover up for what it really was: Stuff Fest 1985!! or whenever. In other words, to my way of thinking, there is almost no connection between Christ's birth and what we Americans do for Christmas. Yes, Christ was born, I am glad, but it was not in December, and us getting all frazzled for a month and spending tons of money buying each other things and stuffing ourselves full of unhealthy treats has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Some people would feel bad about this, but I'm not sure that I do. To me it seems that Christmas is a runaway train and nothing I am going to do is going to stop it. So, fine. I can choose to embrace it as a family holiday in which we make strides to spend time with those we love, and give them gifts as tokens of our esteem.

As for Jesus' birth, those of us who believe in Him can choose to be thankful and aware of what His coming to earth means to us all year long.

It seems that some people feel guilty if we don't keep "enough" Christ in our Christmas, yet I can't recall anything in the Bible that would compell us to celebrate His birth in a specific way. Maybe this is just because we celebrate so many less important things, that we feel kind of guilty and think that we need to have a big Yay Jesus blowout once a year. Don't send me all the links to the origins of Christmas. I've heard it all before. I don't see any reason to be down on Christmas per se, I am just trying to come to grips with my feeling that it is family-oriented rather than Jesus-oriented in my life.

What do you folks think? Does Christmas have a deep spiritual significance to you? If yes, what makes it so? Anybody feeling something like I do, thinking that it almost makes more sense to separate the holiday and the Christ? I'd love to get some feedback.