Convenient Christianity

In the 7th grade the girls in my school, including myself, were given the opportunity to be confirmed. My parents aren’t Christian and neither me nor my older brother is baptized, something that is very uncommon in Denmark. Although I did attend a few of the preparation ‘classes’, I quickly decided that confirmation was not for me.
During the following period of time, I felt pretty left out. Almost everyone else was going crazy preparing for their Big Day, the way especially girls tend to do it. It was almost equivalent to a mini wedding preparation. Every discussion seemed to be centered on the upcoming confirmations. What clothes were they going to wear? What food were they going to eat? Where would they have the party? And so on and so on…
But hold on. I never heard any of these girls have a meaningful conversation about exactly what they were about to say yes to. There was never any mention of God in these conversations, but merely a never-ending stream of dresses, napkins, parties and presents. It is common to receive quite a large amount of money at your confirmation, and the length of the wish lists of these girls was quite immense. I have heard people blatantly state that they got confirmed in order to get the presents. In fact, there is such a thing as a ‘Non’-firmation, rather than a Confirmation, in which a young person does not go to church or prepare in any way, but merely throws a big party. A Nonfirmation is essentially saying No to God and Yes to the presents.
Although I disagree with the idea of a Nonfirmation, I would be a hypocrite to criticize it completely. Most of our holidays are Christian, and yet many, if not all, of them no longer have a religious focus. As I said, my family isn’t Christian, and yet I remember the Christmases and Easters as an integrated part of my childhood. Celebrating Christmas while cutting out the religious annotations to it is essentially the same as having a non-firmation. On Sundays, my brother works as a choir-singer in a small church in a Copenhagen suburb. They are usually around 5 people in the choir and yet, my brother has told me, they often outnumber the churchgoers. But come Christmas Eve, the church is filled to the brim with people who don’t set foot in there any other day of year. I think that Christianity in Denmark is ebbing away and that a lot of Danes seem to be Christians only when it is convenient to be so. This kind of detachment from the actual religious part of our traditions made me realize how prevalent the gradual disconnection from Christianity is in the Danish society.
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