> Do you think about the long pre-Christian traditions of those two
> festivals,
> in particular?


Some things, like bringing in the Yule log. We used to do that. And had fun
with bits of mistletoe.
Why not celebrate the start of the year and the sun's return? All the
better if we got a White Christmas.
Jesus probably wasn't born at Christmas, anyway.
Our elders used to read us the Dickens story, "A Christmas Carol".

And at Easter we used to think about the Passover, Exodus and the ten
plagues of Egypt etc, as well as the Christian story.
But we didn't have the Easter Bunny, that is a more recent idea. We got the
Easter eggs, though.

The churches were full of spring flowers, and it was easy to believe in the
Resurrection.
Easter in Autumn is more of a promise than a celebration.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth".
But did he do it as related in Genesis, or by a Big Bang, or what?
And is "God" a conscious being, as various religions believe, or some kind
of impersonal force like gravity or electricity?
If the Bible had stopped at those ten words, it's as good an explanation as
any.

Something had to start everything, unless there never was any beginning and
things have just gone around in circles.
What happened before? There wasn't a Before.

Why worry about it? Here we are on Earth, until our species becomes extinct
altogether.

I don't remember where I came from, (if anywhere) and I don't know where
I'm going afterwards, if there is an "afterwards" for me, though people have
made various guesses.

"A bird flies into a lighted hall and flies out again." Wasn't it Bede who
said that?

I'm still none the wiser, but I'm overdue to fly out again, so I shall find
out. Or not!