“Sorry, We Don’t Celebrate Christmas”

How life changes without the celebration of religious holidays

Photo by Yan from Pexels

First off, while religion has much to do with this subject, this article is not about religion itself, but about how one’s life changes when one no longer celebrates religious holidays.

In 1992 I joined the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ), and we do not celebrate religious holidays. I was 29 at the time and had always celebrated Christmas without fail. Every year (unless I was deployed in the Navy) I’d get that tree and decorate it, and buy what gifts I could afford. When I joined the Church, however, all of a sudden I didn’t do any of that. Instead:

• I no longer had to stress about buying gifts for every family member, or even about buying Christmas cards and forcing myself to write personalized messages for everyone.
• I didn’t have to worry about buying and decorating that doggone tree, just to throw it away a couple weeks later (and cleaning up the mess of pine needles on the floor). I also didn’t have to grab out the ladder and put up lights all over the house, or buy ever-larger decorations to put in our yard to keep up with the decorations put out by our neighbors.
• What’s more, it’s an almost guilty pleasure that, with the hundreds of dollars saved by not going deep…