Harkness ringing, Whiffenpoofs singing, all is merry and bright. The end of Thanksgiving officially ushers in the holiday season: that sacred period during which it becomes acceptable to play Mariah Carey on loop. Never mind that night falls at 4:00 p.m., the New Haven cold nips at your fingertips and finals loom on the horizon. It’s the most wonderful time of the year — and no, it’s not because Christ our supposed savior was born 2022 years ago this month.

There are many things I would prefer to keep religion out of — notably, our Supreme Court. Ironically, I’d like to add Christmas to the list. Perhaps I want to give my lost atheist soul something to believe in. Perhaps religious exclusivity seems antithetical to the spirit of unity that makes this season special. Perhaps unity is exactly what we need. 

There aren’t many things that have escaped the bite of politics of late. Thanksgiving has been reconsidered for its roots in America’s fraught colonial past. The Christmas classic “Baby It’s Cold Outside” has been a target of criticism for its coercive flirtation. Even this year’s World Cup has been tainted by controversy over the choice to host it in Qatar, among other things. These developments seem to disprove an assumption I used to hold dear: if anything can overcome division, it’s soccer and Christmas.

Over a hundred years ago, during a much darker and drearier winter season, soldiers found themselves in the trenches of World War I’s vicious Western Front, robbed of the hope that they would be home by Christmas. The Christmas Truce of 1914 is the story of a minor Christmas miracle — for one night, German and British soldiers ceased fire and emerged from their trenches. What followed was a variety of shared traditions, from caroling to conversation to a game of soccer — apparently won by the Germans, unlike the war. 

“The Christmas Spirit” is the sort of abstract magic invoked mostly in the world of fantastical holiday films. But I’m a sucker for Home Alone, and perhaps this miraculous force rears its head in reality every once in a while. If the Germans and British could put down their guns, perhaps we can put down our grievances for a moment and, if nothing else, appreciate the amalgam of absurdities that make up our annual Christmas celebrations. 

Christmas began as a combination of various winter festivities that preceded Christianity itself, including Germanic celebrations of the pagan god Oden and Norse observances of the Yule. The greatest influence on our contemporary Christmas traditions was Saturnalia, the Roman holiday in honor of the god Saturn, complete with wreaths, gift-giving, singing and feasting. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Jesus’s birth date, unspecified in the Bible, neatly supplanted Rome’s largest holiday. 

Today, while many still observe Christmas as a religious holiday, it is celebrated equally often as a secular and blatantly capitalist tradition, as one look at Shops at Yale will prove. Christmas tunes, glittering lights and tree-trimming are commemorated globally, including in many non-Christian nations. My mother has often recalled her father, a Japanese Buddhist priest who for many years managed his own temple, sneaking Santa-like through the night to place presents underneath the tree. 

All of this is to say, Christmas is something of a cultural Frankenstein. It is an embodiment of the best and worst of what America has to offer: a multicultural capitalist extravaganza that may claim to be sacred, but is actually just fun, primarily because we have the creativity and resources to deck the halls with boughs of holly, gigantic Rockefeller Christmas trees, Radio City Music Halls and an endless slew of wannabe “All I Want for Christmas is You”’s.  

Christmas was never entirely a Christian holiday. At its best, it is an exercise in tolerance, multiculturalism and the ability to lay down our differences and bridge the no man’s land that sometimes seems to stretch out between us. For just this one time of the year, let’s unite under the anthem of Mariah Carey and remember that it’s both beautiful and bizarre that of all the things to survive the darwinist course of History, this singular holiday is certainly one of the best. 

We can all go back to arguing in January.

ARIANE DE GENNARO