The European Origins of Many Modern American Christmas Customs

I have often found the customs and traditions of other cultures to be vibrant, more authentic, less watered-down, than those of my ancestry. I grew up celebrating the holidays in the same way as most of the people around me. In rural North Carolina, growing up with fundamentalist parents, it seemed that everyone around me was either a Baptist or a Methodist. Even other Protestants were often thought of as "weird."

Of course, I knew about a variety of world religions. I turned my back on Christianity while I was in high school because I could not believe that a loving God would condemn so many good people around the world to eternal torment simply because they did not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. However, it was only after moving to Raleigh that I realized that there were stores that closed for Jewish holidays, or that Catholic students in the North often got time off from school to go to religious classes in preparation for their confirmations. As a child, I can remember running into an (Eastern) Indian family in a local park and playing in the creek there with their daughter. It was an unusual occurrence. I simply enjoyed myself, as children do, and was curious about their lives and beliefs, while my mother found them to be strange.