There's a great book by Peter Watson called Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud. Watson tells the history of ideas from prehistory to the present day, starting a million years ago. He investigates simple ideas like the domestication of animals, farming, the development of language and then, of course, for the more Western "white so you gotta be right" mind he challenges the norms of what history tells us of invention. He corrects the misconceptions that all the best artists, inventions, scientists, writers, poets and jurists were Caucasian.
Wipe the sweat from your brow, dear reader, because if that makes you feel uneasy, what I am about to tell you will unsettle you to the point of nausea (if, of course, you don't know these facts already).
Watson also dives deep into the Bible, theology and, most importantly, the invention we call Christmas and the notion of celebrating it as a Christian holiday. It's not. It has nothing to do with being Christian, or with Jesus for that matter, and so celebrating it, if you choose to do so, as a believer of any faith, is completely a matter of choice.
It literally comes down to this: December 25 is a public holiday.
Do we want to give each other presents, have a bit of a party, eat together and wear jaunty red hats? Shock and horror - as a person born into the Muslim faith - my answer is yes. And it will be every bit as good as any Christian household. Not "not much of a Christmas" but much more.
The cranky Christmas communities reside on both sides of the religious border. (For purposes of this article, I am dealing only with two towns, so to speak). One side is Muslim and the other Christian - or even atheists, in fact, who take the fake date of Jesus's birth very, very seriously all of a sudden and then remember they are Christian on December 25.
Then, in the Muslim household, people would pull their arms off just to have something to throw before pulling a cracker or kissing under mistletoe. But they too don't understand that the only thing December 25 stands for is a day when Constantine, a military leader and pillager, no less, legalised Christianity in 313 AD.
The date just happened to coincide with a battlefield conversion, and so to bring the pagans together with the Christians, he decided to make a pagan celebration of the day of Christ's birth. All this folklore for his own military ends. The only thing that Constantine and Claus have in common is the first letter of their names.
But, if you are worried that you might burn in the fires of hell for chewing on a piece of Christmas turkey then ease your mind with the fact that Jesus is as big a deal in Islam as in Christianity. In fact, he is mentioned more times in the Koran than any other prophet. More than the one who built the ark, or the one who was swallowed by a whale, or that other guy who parted the sea and spoke to a burning bush.
Christ is mentioned 25 times by name (Isa in Arabic), 48 times in the third person and 35 times in the first person. So why not give a little love to the guy on a fake day. What else are you going to do? Chill at the Zone in Rosebank and watch a B-grade movie?
But truly, decorating a tree in a Muslim household has absolutely nothing to do with blasphemy or turning your back on the oneness of God to replace it with the oneness of a man by the name of Jesus Christ. It's all fake. So why not go forth and be merry anyway? And by the way, a lot of us do. We don't sit around studying ISIS manuals (I'm looking at you non-Muslim Caucasians).
Watson's book is as thick as a brick. You could use it as a weapon or a doorstop, or you could take some time - about 10 years of your life - and read it. Study it. And stop making cranky judgments on a day that can be used for happiness instead of misery.
Oh, and by the way, you can celebrate as one, or as many. It matters not in the eyes of the "lord"...