So I’ve been thinking about cultural Christianity lately and how people tend to get very upset about it without really understanding what it is, so here is a primer
Cultural Christianity is not a choice you make. It does not mean you are Christian, or even that you remotely like Christianity; a lot of people who vehemently hate the religion do so because of their own cultural Christianity
It is not a shortcoming, or a moral failing, or a sin. It just means that the culture you were raised in was predominantly Christian.
Note: I did not say “majority Christian”. Christians don’t need to be a majority to have a dominant cultural influence
Cultural Christianity means you inherently understand and probably use swearwords like “damn”, “hell”, or a variation on the name “Jesus Christ”
It means when I say cultural Christianity is not a sin, you understand exactly what I mean without needing to have it explained - and you probably know the phrase “original sin” or “seven deadly sins”, even if not in full detail
It means hearing about Hades, god of the dead, wealth, and volcanoes, and assuming he’s the bad guy of Greek mythology… y’know, like Satan
(EVERYONE went to Hades when they died. The Elysian Fields, where the best heroes went, was in Hades’ underworld. The Eleusinian mysteries, a cult to Demeter and Persephone, was basically about asking them to tell Hades to give you a cool afterlife
And he would cuz he drank his “respect wife” juice if not all of his “respect women” juice. Did still kidnap her. But she is a major feature and often makes the decision herself or influences his when they’re mentioned together
Meanwhile, people try and cast Zeus as a good parent)
It means having to have a dreidel, a menorah, or a kinara explained to you at a time when you already knew about Christmas trees and Santa
(Yes, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, major host of the Mass of Christ, is culturally Christian. Even though Coke invented his aesthetic - that’s the “cultural” part)
It’s when you go to make up a new non-religious or pan religious winter celebration… that is centred around a day with family and gifts which is obviously the 25 of December. Maybe counting down 12 days before
It’s defaulting to calling a place of worship you don’t know the name of a “church”
Cultural Christianity is not something people have a choice in; you don’t pick where you’re born, and there are so many other cultures in places like Canada, America, and Britain that are culturally Christian out the ass! But… you will catch Contact Christianity in any of these places
It’s damn near impossible to consume any American or most Western media without brushing across it; cross imagery is everywhere, Christian demons and devils sneak into media all around the world
Western (and some other) Gothic fashion leans heavily on gothic architecture and, yeah, heavily Catholic imagery
Now, brushing across the media in other parts of the world does not impart the same level of cultural Christianity as growing up in a city with four churches on a single block and a Santa Claus parade
And you can grow up heavily in an entirely different culture even in the Bible Belt (but you know what Bible Belt means); you don’t have to abandon all other culture just because Christianity has a chokehold on your home
But when December (or fucking November these days) hits and you hear Mariah Carey in 3/6 stores, yes, you probably have some cultural Christianity
You sure as hell don’t need to be able to name half the denominations (can you name more than 4?), you may never set foot in a Christian church in your life, and still have a cultural Christian influence
If your street names have “saint” in them
If there are crosses or angels on more than half the graves in a cemetery
If you know how to cross yourself but aren’t really sure when you learned; you didn’t look it up or do research to find out
Now note: none of these have an inherent moral judgement attached to them
It’s just about what the culture you live in has taught you about the world, and there’s no culture that is magically the Right One or better than the others
There’s no reason to expect even specifically Christian culture to be the same around the world; it isn’t. It has the same root, but what flowers from the soil is another matter entirely
There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that you have culturally Christian influences and biases; being human is 90% absorbing information from the world around us and half processing it at best - there’s just too much input, and intentionally filtering out Everything Christian Ever?
Well unless you started at 2 years old, odds are pretty good it’s not really a personal choice kinda thing
And you cannot compensate for these influences unless you acknowledge that they exist, that you did not choose to form them, and that you do get to choose how they affect your actions going forward
Christmas stuffed a bunch of other religious traditions into a single package to make itself popular, but if you learned them as Christmas traditions first… do I even need to say it?
