Why do non-believers still go to Mass on Christmas Day?
A little girl is held close to a statue representing baby Jesus in the crib at a church in Bethlehem
Christmas Day brings out the traditionalist in a lot of people, necessitating going to Mass to celebrate the birth of Christians’ saviour.
Mind you, some of us just don’t get it.
As I said to a friend (who’s a believer) the other day, what exactly is God for?
Wars are raging in the world, homeless people are living on the streets, confirming what they must think on bad days - that they simply don’t count. The planet is imploding and there are always famines and droughts.
Why exactly is there so much suffering if the so-called most powerful entity really exists? My friend said that Jesus was (is?) totally against wars and all the other follies and crimes of man.
As you dress up in your brand new Christmas outfit and head to church, you probably won’t be burdened by philosophical questions on the glorious day of excess and merriment. You have the cooking of a turkey to time so you’re really not going to get into argy-bargy about religion.
But there is a lot of hypocrisy out there. Weekly
I used to do my bit for hypocrisy, by going to Mass on Christmas Day to please my parents. Now that they have passed on, there’s no need to go, although it wouldn’t bother me to attend, if only for the singing.
Heck, if Mass was an event like Shane MacGowan’s requiem Mass (which lasted for two hours and 40 minutes), a lot of us would flock to church. Singing secular songs and dancing in front of the altar? It was sublime.
Isn’t that what we were taught at school? To use our strengths and maybe enrich lives by doing so?
That survey found that people aged 55 or over are most likely to attend a religious service on Christmas Eve or Christmas day.
Some 31% of respondents said they ‘always’ attend a religious service at Christmas while 26% said they sometimes do. Some 43% of people said they will not be going to a religious ceremony this Christmas.
A lot of people stopped going to Mass as a result of Covid - and they never came back. (I won’t ask why God allowed Covid to happen. That would be nit-picking and a denial of the agency that living beings have).
But there are plenty of people who may not be overly religious yet practise their religion in their own way.
Due to being indoctrinated with a lot of the negative stuff about religion as a kid, I kind of half believe that there is a hell. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic, I guess, even if my version is minus the stately and wise old man with the white beard and stick.
The odd thing that has happened with Catholicism is that it has become á la carte. People pick and choose what they want from it, despite it being such a doctrinaire religion.
Most of us appreciate our local priest celebrating Mass when a loved one dies. (Sometimes, listening to David Bowie, brilliant though he was, at a humanist funeral seems a tad inappropriate.)
As ‘Deirdre in Letterkenny’ said on Newstalk regarding attending Mass on Christmas day: “If you feel like going and listening to beautiful music, a little bit of meditation, peace and quiet - whatever experience it gives you at Christmas - away you go and enjoy it.”
The church, she added, doesn’t belong to the priests. “It belongs to the people.”
Jesus would have approved of that sentiment. So too might he have found a better use for large church buildings than just using them for poorly attended Mass.
Why not open churches to the homeless as a temporary measure? You could cordon off the altar area and put partitions inside the building, providing people with their own space.
That’s not as crazy as it sounds.
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