Poll How do they celebrate Christmas in the Trekverse?

In my head canon, WWIII was us liberals taking the War on Christmas up a notch We finally won!. Christmas parties like the one KIrk went to are only done ironically.


Jason

 

Those Vulcan fertility rituals are NUTS.

 

Hmm. The only fertility ritual I've ever encountered is one that gets practiced at a lot of weddings I've attended (either as a guest or as video crew, back when my videographer friend still did weddings). It's called the Chicken Dance.

 

There's a lot of Bajoran customers at Quark's. Indeed, there's one episode where Quark even complains about business being slow because that particular day is a Bajoran holiday where they abstain from consuming alcohol.

 

She smiles a lot for someone who supposedly is drinking the Vulcan kool-aid.

When she describes the Vulcan life style as "better than ours," tells the fat teddy bear story, and about Sarek last confrontation with the Tellarite ambassador, there is considerable bemusement in her voice.

Not all that stoic.

 

I think it's still celebrated, but not on a galaxy-wide level. With all of the non-humans in the Trek-verse, everyone has probably become more sensitive to other peoples beliefs and non-beliefs, and don't try to impose their personal ideas on others.

 

Without the mass consumerism we see today, and the marketing machinery cranking up the pressure to conform with your wallet, Christmas will probably be claimed back by Christians as a celebration of the birth of their saviour.

To everyone else, Dec 25th will be a fairly normal day. Unless of course, it finds a new relevance during the nuclear winter or something.

 

Speaking of normal day. Even if a Starfleet Captain and his wife - let's say Jean-Luc and Beverly - celebrate Christmas. When duty calls, the Christmas party is canceled or at least postponed until the crisis is over.

 

Who cooks Christmas dinner? You gotta go with Chef from ENT, right?

 

They probably have a low key celebration among people who observe it, but don't spend all of December forcing it on everyone else.

 

They celebrate with Panny! The Pan-Cultural Seasonal Entity!



Panny avoids any religious, spiritual, or gender-y connections. Panny is all things, and therefore nothing! The perfect Star Trek holiday character.

Panny respects you and your beliefs!

 

Looks like a big black nose. Noseless species are furious.

 

I can't blame them for being out of joint what with so many snooty people looking down their noses at them. Proboscis discrimination is nothing to sneeze at. You would hope that by the 24th century people would stop trying to pick on them.

 

I think some of the novels mentioned a human philosophy that was based on following Vulcan teachings.

Kor

 

It is logical for most humans to express their emotions. Human emotions tend to not be as extreme and violent as Vulcan emotions, yet due to weaknesses in their neurology, repressing them can lead to high levels of stress that can manifest into physical ailments. Therefore in the case of humans, controlled expression of emotions, filtered by careful application of logic, leads to better control and wellbeing than repressing them completely.

 

Suppression of all emotion would lead to uncontrollable passions every seven years.

Kor

 

That’s how we celebrate Valentines Day in the future.

 

The Nuclear Winter will perfectly counter-balance Global Warming.

Or if he's unavailable, then Chef from South Park.

When do we see Amanda dressed in Vulcan manner even once? Twice she's in warm delightful colors, and the clothing she arrives aboard the ship in is unlike any Vulcan clothing we'll ever see. She's hardly in the female version of Sarek's attire.

 

I would propose that genuine Christmas trees would be pretty much gone. Either replaced by artificial trees or replaced with some sort of alternative. Gift giving would still exist. The Santa Claus aspect may have died out or been replaced by something else. I imagine a post-apocalyptic 2050s earth would have been the breeding ground for many interesting cultural changes.

As a religious person I was caught up in the taking the Christ out of Christmas frenzy probably in my early teen years. However, what's interesting that now, after much study, Christ was never in Christmas to begin with. Historically, Christmas was created over the century's as multiple winter festivals morphed together. Not only is Christmas not found in the Bible, but Christ* would have celebrated the Hebrew holy days such as Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, etc.

I don't want to veer this discussion off on too much of a religious tangent. I just thought it was interesting that as a person who formerly thought we should avoid using "Xmas"; I now realize that the holiday festivities we today label as "Christmas" weren't ever really about Christ to begin with.

*I make this statement under the assumption that Christ existed at least as a person.

That's something I really wish we could see in the Star Trek Franchise, all of the changes and evolution of religions, and philosophies in the future. What new things are there? What evolutions of existing ones? In what ways have human religions morphed to include alien traditions? Not to toot my own horn, but as a Mormon I think there are some fundamental aspects of Mormonism that would be particularly well suited to being an interstellar religion.