One of my newer favorite scientific anecdotes is that if you ask people to judge faces in photographs for personality traits, they will score the same faces more highly on friendly/outgoing traits if you make them hold a cup of hot coffee in their hands beforehand.

Same reason we celebrated Diwali in India, without any intent of becoming Hindu. I think Diwali is kind of instructive here. When I went to India as a kid, nobody ever said anything about the meaning of Diwali, in terms of its significance to the gods or to history: we just lit the fireworks and made the sweets (and boy was that fun). But here’s the thing: nobody really knows the significance of it in those intellectual kinds of senses. Even the Wikipedia page can’t agree on the meaning of Diwali. It means the killing of the demon Narak?sura, it means invoking the blessing of Lak?mi, it’s the time of the harvest. The page tries to pull it all together by saying “While the story behind Diwali varies from region to region, the essence is the same – to rejoice in the inner light (Atman) or the underlying reality of all things (Brahman).” But then further down it talks about how Divali is also very important for Jains, who don’t believe in Brahman and rarely use the concept of ?tman. The ritual itself comes first, the meaning is secondary.

The Confucians love to talk about how traditional ritual is one of the things that civilizes us, makes us part of the community – it’s the act of participating in the ritual itself that does this, not a historical or theological meaning that the ritual has. And… I think Confucians like their traditional rituals for exactly the same reasons many North Americans hate Christmas (or Thanksgiving, or Passover for that matter): the whole idea is to share activity with family, including family who are very different from us, family who have poor character, family we don’t like. In our individualistic small-household culture, the holidays are among the few large-family rituals we have, which is why many people understandably would rather not bother with them.

I’ve been backtracking lately from some of the things I said in my (too strongly worded) post on performance theory, and I suppose this is another example. In the case of rituals like Christmas or Diwali, the important thing (even in a philosophical sense, to some extent) really is what the ritual does, not what people say about its meaning.

Ben:
You don’t want the Christian bit. Is that because the Messiah claim is contra yours as an observent jew or you have no time for religion as such? How do you feel that you are being invited to celebrate the birth of Jesus? And even if you were by some enthusiast could you not respectfully decline?

Also, I surely conflated two things into TTMOC: there is the Jesus version, and there is also the enjoyment of family and loved ones and generosity. However, those two get conflated in popular culture as well: “TTMOC” can refer to either. Therefore, if I’m trying to avoid celebrating the birth of Jesus, it ends up feeling like I need to avoid the broader theme of TTMOC. Partly that’s a wariness about christianity being snuck in, but it’s really just more about associations: which things feel pleasant and joyful, and which things feel uncomfortable.

So I don’t think that consumerism is all you’re left with if you take out references to “The True Meaning of Christmas.” Is Thanksgiving all about consumerism if you don’t say grace and talk about pilgrims?