Some People Celebrate Christmas by Dodging It We skitter, we dodge. My boyfriend and I will be flying to India on Christmas Day. Jetting off on Santa's Judgment Day is not unusual for me; I'm among that tiny percentage of the population who hears "Santa's helpers" and thinks "skycaps." Part of my seasonal wanderlust lies in the belief that a Christmas celebrated by two adults and no children can be eerily quiet, a Beckett play performed in a canyon on the moon. But the larger part lies in my conviction that the most beautiful and tinselly bauble to be found on Dec. 25 is reduced airfare. For others, dodging Christmas and its rigors is more a matter of self-preservation. "My husband and I have not entirely regretted our unavailability for family gatherings at Christmastime on account of our duties in the church as ordained persons," an acquaintance told me. Truth be told, when these duties changed over the years, we didn't exactly alert the extended families of our sudden availability, but rather used the transition to shield ourselves from the freneticism of the season. The net result? "Guilt abounded," said my acquaintance. Multilayered guilt abounded. One year we even went and sat in a pew together, no less. We're party poopers at one of the biggest parties of the year. The antlers on our reindeer sweaters have drooped decidedly floorward. Frequent exposure to the song lyric "It's the most wonderful time of the year" causes our innards to wobble, and I do not speak metaphorically. "The radio, the traffic, the music in grocery stores: Christmas is inflicted upon you," said Alexandra Loew, an interior designer and the founder of the Los Angeles design firm From the Desk of Lola. Every year, I fall ill on Christmas. Not a kind of I'll-stay-in-bed-for-the-day malaise, but a feverish and, at times, hanging-over-the-toilet-bowl kind of sick. We used to get off the plane at my in-laws, and the first thing my father-in-law would say was, "Are you going to get sick this year?" " Given that the divide between party pooperism and bad manners is gossamer thin, what should Christmas deniers keep in mind when interacting with the less seasonally challenged? While some of us refuseniks seem to have an excuse ("I'm pretty awkward and shy," said Allen Yuen, the general manager of Mission Chinese restaurant, "so I always tell my family that I have to work so that I don't have to socialize with them"), some of us exhibit behavior that falls into a gray area. First, an understanding of the long history of Christian nonobservance of the holiday can help leech our holiday-dodging of any strains of defensiveness. To wit, nothing in the New Testament specifies the date or month of Jesus" birth; even the year is open to debate. Bruce Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College in Iowa and the author of "Christmas: A Candid History," added that early Christians recognized the date of a person's death, not birth. "We talk about C and E Christians, who only go to church on Christmas and Easter," he said. For the early Christians, it was all E. In mid-1600s England, the Puritans started suppressing Christmas because they thought it was rooted in paganist superstition and had led to the kind of licentiousness that a modern-day observer might call Mobcaps Gone Wild; this bah-humbuggery spread to the colonies of New England. Major American denominations such as Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists either ignored or discouraged celebrating Christmas until the late 19th century, Mr. Forbes said; throughout much of that century, Congress met and businesses and schools were open on Dec. 25. But it was also during the 19th century that the widespread family-centered celebration of Christmas got its start, once the overtly religious significance of the holiday had dissipated. "We now have a cultural Christmas and a Christian Christmas," Mr. Forbes said. Asked about those few contemporary Christians who object to the holiday on religious grounds, Mr. Forbes, who is an ordained United Methodist minister, said, "I wish people would chill out." HENRY ALFORD is the author of "Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners. Circa Now appears monthly.