To understand the psyche of a city government that not only refuses to declare December as Christian Heritage Month but won’t even say why, we needn’t look any further than the official celebrations and observances it does approve of.
In Vancouver’s case, the list is long: Sikh Heritage Month, Black History Month, Pride Week, Italian Heritage Month, and on and on. Each one includes a small testimonial about why the observance matters and how the city is richer because of it.
At the bottom of the list of is one that likely reassures city staff they’ve already “done” Christmas: it’s a statutory holiday, and employees get the day off. But unlike all the other observances on the list, the description of Christmas is strangely sterile. Where the other entries speak warmly about the community being honoured, Christmas is written like a Wikipedia entry, except Wikipedia would offer more substance on what is one of the most significant holidays in the world.
I ran the city’s list past an AI model without giving it any direction and asked whether it noticed anything different about the Christmas entry.
It saw it immediately. “It jumps off the page,” it said. Every other observance explains what the day is about, who celebrates it, why it matters, and the traditions or values behind it. Then we get to Christmas. There’s no mention of Christ, Christian Canadians, or even the cultural heritage of the holiday. It frames Christmas almost as an obligation the city observes only because everyone else does.
The AI summed it up with more courage than most city departments: “Every other entry has a heart. The Christmas one reads like it was written by a nervous anthropology student trying not to get cancelled.”
Which brings me back to the question: what goes on in the mind of a bureaucracy or political culture that will acknowledge the date of a holiday but not the meaning behind it? Are the values Christmas represents really that unimportant to a city like Vancouver which, although less Christian than other parts of Canada, still has a civic history shaped by Christian-based health care, education, social services, charity, and institutions?
I accidentally stumbled on some explanation when thinking about the psychology of Christmas songs. Listening to a familiar Christmas tune on the radio and feeling that spark of joy they bring got me wondering what it is about these songs that resonates in us. Is there something unique about Christmas music that keeps drawing us back year after year? Is it just nostalgia, or is something deeper going on?
So back to AI again: is there something distinctive about the appeal of Christmas songs beyond sentiment?
Here’s what it came up with. First, yes, nostalgia is powerful. Christmas music taps memory, childhood, ritual, and repetition, and that alone activates emotional circuits in the brain. But there’s more. Christmas songs share musical traits that reliably evoke warmth and belonging: consonant harmonies, predictable cadences, gentle melodic arcs, and lyrics centred on home, peace, light, and community. They’re built to be sung together, not merely performed. Our brains respond to that structure because it feels safe, familiar, hopeful.
Then came the part I hadn’t considered until the AI said it.
Christmas songs work because they express a shared story. Even secular tunes assume a world where families gather, neighbours greet one another, communities celebrate, strangers share goodwill, and meaning is something we hold in common. In a culture where almost nothing unites us anymore, including politics, religion, truth, manners, patriotism, and basic trust, Christmas music speaks in a language most Canadians still understand.
It represents, as the AI put it, “one of the last surviving emotional commons,” a place where we can meet without having to fight.
Christmas carols and songs, from sleigh rides to silent nights, are wildly different from one another, but they share a cultural and emotional core of goodwill, warmth, light in darkness, camaraderie, snowstorms that bring out neighbours with shovels, hospitality, joy, generosity, remembrance, and hope. Christmas — from its story to its music — still unites Canadians in ways little else does.
And so my modest wish for the City of Vancouver this Christmas is some good old-fashioned carolling. On Christmas Eve, we could all gather around City Hall like the Whos in Whoville, singing of merry gentlemen and herald angels and midnight clears and the faithful coming, and we wouldn’t offend anyone because they’re in lowercase. Also because everyone has gone home for the Christmas holiday that even the City of Vancouver acknowledges.
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