Whatevermas Indeed

As all open-minded, modern American teenagers, I have a relatively diverse friend pool, and as such have run into problems with celebrations that are born of religious holidays and then evolve into more secular activities. Namely, Christmas.

Now, my friend Nur is a Muslim, but I'm a Christian. Obviously, we wanted to celebrate some kind of holiday in December 'round Christmas time that involved an exchange of loving thoughts in gift format, but I didn't feel quite right about calling it Christmas for, I should think, obvious reasons.


So, I bought her a gift and wrote her a long and (I thought) entertaining letter explaining how we celebrated Whatevermas and our icon, instead of Christ or Satan, was Urgle Spunk, the merry skipping hippo. Who happens to wear a tutu.

But as the years have gone by (this will be our third official Whatevermas celebration), I've realized that Whatevermas is really the embodiment of the essence of secular Christmas - exchanging heartfelt and occasionally ridiculous trinkets that you've quite obviously thought about in relation to who's getting it, and alerting those that you care about that you do, in fact, care about them.

I wish we could make it a national sensation.

In other news, check out these articles:

http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/stuff-free/

and

http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/index.html?source=friend