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In a few weeks it will be Christmas again, my 60th celebration of the holiday.

Of course I don’t actually remember the first few years, and memories of the next couple are more supported by old photos and family stories than personal recollections. But the vast majority of Christmases in my lifetime are well remembered. Not all the memories are good ones; there have been family tragedies and difficulties accompanying the holiday season at various times…but for the most part thoughts of Christmas bring a smile.

Yet while a love for the Christmas season has been a constant through my life, I have often wondered, as Charlie Brown does each year in the Peanuts TV Special, if I really know “what Christmas is all about?” My own view of the holiday has gone through a number of changes over the years.

I have looked at Christmas many ways: as a child waiting for Santa, as an Alter Boy in a Roman Catholic midnight mass, and as an adult reveling in secular celebrations and consumer excesses. But interestingly enough, since becoming a Buddhist I have begun to think of the whole of the Christmas season in more spiritual terms. It occurs to me lately that Jesus, as is often said by my more devout Christian friends, is indeed the “reason for the season.” After all, what is Jesus about other than love? And what is Christmas if not an expression of love?

No, I am not a believer in the divinity of Jesus. Neither am I bothered nor threatened by that belief in others. Who am I to judge the beliefs of another? As John Lennon Roshi put it, “Whatever gets you through the night is all right.” But I do find in the teachings of Jesus many of the same beautiful commitments to compassion, forgiveness and love that I find in the teachings of the Buddha. And the fact that we have a holiday season to remind ourselves of these teachings seems like a pretty great idea.

The more I look at the holiday season the more I find Jesus’ teachings reflected there: life everlasting through renewal, giving gifts as an expression of love, charity as an expression of compassion. Understanding, forgiveness, universal love, acceptance of the darkness and the light…it’s all there in every one of those wonderful Christmas traditions from the nativity story to the tree to Santa to the Yule log. And it is especially there in the spirit of love for others that prevails at Christmastime.

Yes, we all know the spirit of helping, of giving, of being compassionate does not hold full sway at Christmastime. We all still revert to our petty thoughts, and our selfishness, our angers and jealousies. But sometimes during the holiday time…just for a moment… perhaps only in the moment of hearing a Salvation Army volunteer’s bell… we sometimes do remember to be better….or maybe we just remember that we want to be better. And in that moment we realize the possibilities of the love for all beings spoken of by an impoverished wandering preacher in Galilee so long ago. So to me Jesus is the true reason for the season…as is the Shakyamuni Buddha…as is Ghandi…as is Mother Theresa…as is Cantor Michael Weisser…as are you when you take a moment to toss that coin into the Salvation Army collection bucket.

Of course people being people, some of us can be a bit possessive about the holiday season. We get so attached to our own Christmas experiences we begin to think of it as “our” holiday. And if the holiday belongs to us, then sometimes we start to think it can’t also belong to “them” (the ones who think differently than us). As a result we sometimes replace the universal love of Jesus with an attempt to control how the holiday is celebrated.

I have been saddened of late to read and hear so much about the “battle” to own Christmas by so many people. For example I see agnostic/atheistic/non-believers who cringe at the sound of “Merry Christmas.” They seem to see every Christmas card and nativity crèche as an assault on their liberty to not worship and as a imperialistic attack on the beliefs of other cultures. For them the greeting of “Happy Holidays” is a blow against tyranny.

And I see devout Christians believing Christmas religious celebrations are a last stand to protect the Lord Jesus from the infidels. They believe their faith is under attack and only by enforcing officially sanctioned traditions of their own particular form of worship against the non-believers can the Lord be protected. For them “Merry Christmas” is the only holiday salutation which is acceptable to God.

Personally I find both views confusing. If the beauty of the season is that it creates a sense of universal compassion, why worry that some people might think the man who taught that lesson is divine? Does a belief in his divinity by other people in any way diminish the message that you hear? You can’t control other people’s reasons for compassion, but you can focus on your own. And how can you be focusing on your own compassion when you devote your energy to “disproving” the basis for the faith of others?

And if someone follows the teachings of Jesus for reasons other than his divinity, how does that injure your faith? If we are celebrating the birth of Jesus should we not also be celebrating his beliefs, including that we should love our enemies. Not like them…not tolerate them…not change them or send them packing…but love them. If Jesus is God then he alone can take the measure of your fellow men. And if he is God, it would seem very arrogant to imagine he needs our protection from unbelievers.

For myself, I have vowed to try to find Jesus’ love throughout the season. I am not very good at it, but I still try. And as part of that search for compassion I try to understand when others feel that Christmas is a cultural battlefield…but as a Buddhist I also offer my own simple belief that there is no right or wrong way to celebrate the birth of Jesus and to honor his teachings.

So to my devout Christian friends who insist that Christmas should not be diluted by inclusions of other non-Christian celebrations in the season, I say “Happy Holidays” with all the love in my heart.

And to my non-believing friends who rally against the primacy of a Christian holiday over other end of year celebrations of so many religions and cultures, I say “Merry Christmas” with all the love in my heart.

And to everyone, I bow and say “Namaste”…which means I see in you the same love that is in me and which is the true reason not only for the season but for our very existence. And I say it with all the love in my heart.

I like to think that Jesus would not have had a problem with my celebrating his birth in this way.

(BTW, if you would like to read more about the common themes of love and compassion found in Christianity and Buddhism, I recommend “Living Buddha, Living Christ” by Thich Nhat Hanh).

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