Calling a Christmas party a spade

Does calling an event a Christmas party mean that it is automatically associated with the Christian religion?

This is the question that an email sent out to members of the Biology department asking what they would like their “Christmas party” to be referred to as forces one to consider. (The poll was instigated by objections to the use of this phrase raised by a member of faculty.) 

At the most simplistic level, the answer must be yes – the clues in the name –but to take such a view would be to completely ignore or misunderstand the realities of language and culture. 

Words and ideas evolve constantly as the world and the people in it change. Cultures borrow from each other as they develop, to a degree that is all too rarely admitted. What meant one thing at one time can very quickly come to mean something entirely different.

For example, consider the form and content of the Christian festival of Christmas itself. 

The idea of a virgin birth on the 25^th of December is identical to the pre-existing birth myth of the Persian/Roman god Mithras, with that myth being in turn markedly similar to the even older story of the origins of Zoroaster (virgin births also being credited to Krishna and Quetzalcoatl, amongst others).

The date itself is a few days after the winter solstice, an event associated with some form of festival in a large proportion of the world’s cultures, past and present. Just as Christmas marks a new beginning for Christians, these winter festivals generally involve ideas of renewal and rebirth as people look forward to the return of spring.

As final examples, it is from such pagan winter festivals that we get the Christmas trees that we put in the corner of our rooms, as well as the mistletoe that hangs from our ceilings.

The Christmas festival thus provides a perfect illustration of the way in which ideas and practices are borrowed by groups of people to create something new. 

The phrase “Christmas party” should also be seen in that light. Whilst it may once have referred to a religious event, the phrase has evolved to mean something quite different – and entirely secular – to the majority of people. When we hear it we do not think of church: we think of tinsel and presents and perhaps a little too much mulled wine.

Of course, language is not a zero-sum game, and the phrase can continue to have religious connotations for those who are members of the Christian religion. There is no need for a battle for meanings – our language is adaptive enough to accommodate them all, just as we are sensible enough to identify the correct one through context. 

It is this flexibility that makes language so wonderful, and this potential plurality of concurrent viewpoints that any true secularist should be seeking to advance.