Bruce David Forbes - Americas Favorite Holidays: Candid Histories

Some holiday snippets:

+ Several years ago I returned from a Labor Day weekend trip to find that while I was away, one house in my neighborhood had been decorated with Halloween lights and inflatable ghosts and pumpkins. Over the Labor Day weekend! People sometimes complain that Christmas lights go up too early, but this was new. Halloween decorations already?

+ At a Thanksgiving dinner gathering of several families, casual conversation at the tables stopped when a little boy seated next to me blurted out, in full voice, I get it! All my favorite days have fancy food! Many laughed, and his mother smiled.

+ A college student in one of my classes learned that her best friend had become engaged on Valentines Day. She confided to me that if her boyfriend ever tried the same thing on Valentines Day she would tell him no, and to try again. Everyone gets engaged on that day, she said, and she wanted her proposal to be special, on some other day of the year.

+ One Easter, while visiting my son in Washington, DC, we attended Sunday worship at a prominent local church. A mother and two teenage daughters seated behind us all wore very attractive spring hats. Easter bonnets, I thought to myself. How long has it been since Ive seen one of those?

+ A little ceramic figurine sits on my office desk, a gift from a friend. It combines two whimsical figures, an Easter Bunny handing a decorated egg to Santa Claus. I have no idea what it means. If anything.

So many holidays, so many memories. And for me, so much curiosity. How did these holidays get to be the way they are today?

I am first of all a participant in these holidays, along with my family and friends. For me the days evoke childhood memoriesof Christmas carols, and Valentine boxes in grade school, and Easter egg decorations, and Halloween costumes, and school Thanksgiving pageants about Pilgrims and Indians, and family meals, and worship services, and candy, and presents. Since then there have been many additional adult experiencesmeaningful moments, funny stories, big surprises, and touching events. There also are frustrations. As I grow older, some holidays have changed in ways I do not especially like. Family gatherings both expand and decline. Children grow up and have families of their own, adding new excitement when babies arrive, but they also gain new obligations to in-laws and sometimes move far away. Loved ones die, and family gatherings may not be as large as they used to be. The surrounding culture also changes, in all kinds of ways, and there is exasperation about religious meanings, commercialization, hectic schedules, and exhausting pressures.

In addition to being a participant, I also am a college professor of religious studies, with special interests in the history of Christianity, the history of American religions of all kinds, and the analysis of popular culture, especially the ways that religions and cultures intertwine. So, as I experience the holidays that I love, I also cant help growing curious about where they came from, how they developed, and what they mean. In many cases I suspect that the conventional stories we hear are sugarcoated or even flatout inaccurate, and I became interested in investigating on my own, consulting various academic sources. I want to know the real stories.

When it comes down to it, though, I know that this curiosity is not limited to college professors. As children, most of us gladly celebrate major holidays and spend little time wondering about their origins. Yet we eventually want to learn more, especially when we encounter questions about particular days. Was Christmas always as commercialized as it is today? Is Thanksgiving a religious holiday or a secular holiday? Should Christians oppose Halloween as something threatening to their religion?