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Poll How do they celebrate Christmas in the Trekverse?

Is Christmas still celebrated in the Trekverse?

  • It is still celebrated

    Votes: 16 48.5%
  • It doesn't play a role anymore

    Votes: 6 18.2%
  • Non humans adapt to the festivities and go along or at least tolerate them

    Votes: 8 24.2%
  • I don't know

    Votes: 3 9.1%

  • Total voters
    33
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
 
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.
 
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
This is already a semi-religious topic...let’s not bring politics into it as well.
 
Bajorans? It seems (and maybe I didn't notice) that most of his customers are non-Bajorans.

Humans and other aliens yes. Kira does go in, and Quark has Bajoran dabo girls, but not many Bajoran customers in the mix.
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.
 
Journey to Babel shows that she at least publicly tries to remain somewhat stoic like other Vulcans.
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.
 
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!

latest


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

latest


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.
 
Amanda dressed in the Vulcan manner in every scene we've seen of her. I like to think that she was a human follower of Surakism (Syrranite?) that allowed for expression of emotion since she is unable to repress them in the Vulcan-like manner.

Journey to Babel shows that she at least publicly tries to remain somewhat stoic like other Vulcans.

And if she didn't believe in the Vulcan religion before, she certainly converted after her son rose from the dead.

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.
 
Unless of course, it finds a new relevance during the nuclear winter or something.
The Nuclear Winter will perfectly counter-balance Global Warming.
Who cooks Christmas dinner? You gotta go with Chef from ENT, right?
Or if he's unavailable, then Chef from South Park.
Amanda dressed in the Vulcan manner in every scene we've seen of her
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.

There are some very vocal people who complain about "taking the Christ out of Christmas." Usually railing against First Amendment issues, or against such generic greetings as "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" (both of which originated over a century ago). Or claiming that the idea of absolute church-state separation is a 20th century notion, and came from aggressive atheists like Madalyn Murray O'Hair (it actually predated the First Amendment, predated the Constitution, and predated the Declaration of Independence, and came from a man named Roger Williams. The Rev'd Roger Williams, founder of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (starting in 1636), who envisioned his colony as a haven for people of all faiths).

They're right about there being people trying to "take the Christ out of Christmas." They're just shooting at the wrong target. Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Linus were much closer to the right target. Because it's not liberals, or atheists, or religious minorities. It's Madison Avenue, trying to take a religious feast day, and the 12-day liturgical season that begins on that day, and turn it into a month-long commercial feeding frenzy, running from "Black Friday" (remember when merchants didn't talk about "Black Friday" with each other, and said even less about it to outsiders?) to December 24th.

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.

Assuming that's in Amanda's background. For all we know, she's Wiccan, Buddhist, was raised in some futuristic century tradition dating back to the 22nd century, or none of the above. Pretty much all we know about Amanda is that she was a school teacher and she married a Vulcan.

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.
 
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