Talking about the birth

Most of our family members are either non-Christian to nominal Christians at best. My neice and her husband are practicing Christians and when we have religious conversations at get togethers its tolerated for a bit and then the subject miraculously get changed.

Lämmchen said:

Does your family talk about the birth of Jesus during Advent or Christmas? How about when you get together to open gifts? Or at the table eating that big meal? Does the topic come up?

If it doesn't, what is an easy way to bring it up without any fighting since religion is one of those big no-nos for some people?

Click to expand...

I find it hypocritical if talking about the birth of Christ on Christ-mass is pushing buttons.

Lämmchen said:

Does your family talk about the birth of Jesus during Advent or Christmas? How about when you get together to open gifts? Or at the table eating that big meal? Does the topic come up?

If it doesn't, what is an easy way to bring it up without any fighting since religion is one of those big no-nos for some people?

Click to expand...

Generally not. There's really no need to.

Even trying to bring it up among people who don't believe doesn't seem like it's necessarily a worthwhile activity. It seems to make more sense to me to look at the message of Jesus as an ongoing thing rather than trying to shoehorn the notion of commemorating something he never told us to commemorate into a conversation, especially when there's doubt about whether December is anything to do with the birth of Jesus at all.

I admit I'm somewhat cynical, having become jaded in my younger years by people who were very keen to shoehorn as many mentions of Jesus as possible into conversations around Christmas yet showed very little sign of paying any attention at all to the teachings and commandments of Jesus.