Putting the Mass back in Christmas by The Rev. Hartshorn Murphy Every year, some newscasters whine about the commercialization of Christmas. Christmas, they complain, has become a secular holiday which has more to do with shopping, songs and snowflakes (to name but a few) and very little to do with Jesus. Even those who acknowledge Christ cast this event as a birthday party for Jesus. As Christians, we likely resent the capitalistic impulse to commercialize sacred things for the sake of money. Even St. Nicholas, the 4th century Bishop of Myra, was morphed into Jolly Saint Nick or Santa Claus, in no small measure by Episcopal clergyman, Clement Moore, who in 1823 penned "'Twas the Night before Christmas." Although it should be noted that Lee Standiford, in his book The Man Who Invented Christmas, makes the case that Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1838) truly created the secular Christmas by "replacing the slippery Holy Ghost with anthropomorphized spirits, the infant Christ with a crippled child whose salvation waits on man's − not God's − generosity. Dickens laid claim to a religious festival, handing it over to the gathering forces of secular humanism. If a single night's crash course in man's power to redress his mistakes and redeem his future without appealing to an invisible and silent deity could rehabilitate even so apparently lost a cause of Ebenezer Scrooge, imagine what it might do for the rest of us." (Kathryn Harrison "The New York Times Book Review" Dec. 7, 2008) But rants about putting Christ back into Christmas are at best superficial because what is often behind the complaint is a resentment of secular culture's failure to acknowledge the hegemony of the Christian faith over other religious traditions. The issue here goes no deeper than punishing those who greet folk with "Happy Holiday" rather than with "Merry Christmas." As such, it's a slam against Islam and Judaism and secular humanists more than an acknowledgement of what Christ demands of those who claim to follow him as Savior and Lord. Who is this Jesus whom we celebrate? The Hebrews of antiquity were hoping for someone to be sent by God to lead them to reclaim a past glory, almost a mythical past. The Northern Kingdom, which had split from the South, had been conquered by the Assyrians. The Ten Northern Tribes, known collectively as Israel, were lost forever through intermarriage and cultural and religious dilution. The Southern Kingdom, Judah, similarly was conquered by Babylon and the Judeans were held in exile for more than a generation. Their national pride, Solomon's Temple, was utterly destroyed with not a stone left upon a stone. The prophets, who spoke the word of God to their generations, warned the rich and powerful, the elite and learned, that God would bring judgment for their neglect of the most vulnerable in their society: the poor, women and orphans. The conquest of Palestine by the Roman Empire − the last in a series of annexations and exploitations − was interpreted by many as God turning his face away from his chosen people. They prayed that God would relent and remember his promises and send a deliverer, a mighty leader in the mold of their greatest King, David (indeed, one in the lineage and power of King David: a "Son of David") to lead them to defeat the Gentile occupying force, to expel the infidels from their Holy Land. Such a leader would unite the people to resist and overthrow their enemies. He would be one who was "anointed" by God (in Hebrew: a "Messiah", in Greek: a "Christos", in English: a "Christ".) With almost supernatural power, the effect of his rule would be that all (Gentile) nations would acknowledge the authority of the Hebrew God and the primacy of the Hebrew people. Jerusalem would be God's throne on earth from which God's anointed King would reign. This is what they wanted. What they got was a baby. God's anointed came in weakness, not in strength; in vulnerability, not in power. God's anointed was born not in a King's palace in Jerusalem but in a stable in Bethlehem. Those who attended his birth were not royal couriers but lowly (and most likely drunken) shepherds. And when he grew into maturity, he brought division and controversy rather than unity and consensus. And rather than defeating Rome, Rome defeats him on a cross; an execution reserved for insurrectionists and escaped slaves. Obviously, those who hailed him as a son of David and who stripped branches of palm and strewed them on his path into Jerusalem during Passover ( a festival which celebrates another great Messiah/Deliverer: Moses) − clearly they who saw him as the one expected were mistaken and they must wait for another. And several would indeed come. The last sought to lead a ragtag army of zealots in the year 66 to occupy the Temple in Jerusalem and resist the Romans. The result was the destruction of the second Temple and the death of thousands. But following the death of Jesus, his disciples (students) continued to experience his presence. They proclaimed to all who would listen that Jesus, though dead, lives and that he is the anointed (Christ) of God − but not for the Jewish people alone but for all humankind, to lead us from our captivity and enslavement to evil. Part of that evil is our enslavement to false values of capitalism and all other socio-political and economic systems which are organized for the benefit of the few over the needs of the many. To put "Christ" back into Christmas would be to contradict the very values of the commercialized Christmas − for this is the self same Jesus who told the rich young man to sell all he owned and give the money to the poor and come and follow (disciple) me. What do gift cards, fine jewelry and flat screen TV's have to do with that Christ? I suspect that the solution here is to recognize Christmas as a holiday which began as a festival to honor Jesus of Nazareth but which has become a mid winter secular holiday of gift giving with the goal of buoying up the consumerist economy and expressing affection to others in tangible and physical (gift-giving) ways. The symbols of that holiday, which coincidentally coincides with the Christian celebration, are trees and Santa and snowmen and Nat King Cole singing about chestnuts and Jack Frost. In this scheme, anyone can (and in fact does) have a Christmas tree, regardless of their faith tradition or humanist/agnostic/atheistic leanings. (I have very dear friends who bought an exquisite crèche set, piece by piece, but who choose not to purchase Joseph and Mary and the Baby Jesus. When I asked her why not, she quite honestly said: "Oh, we don't like that part of the story." Perfectly appropriate for those celebrating Christmas. Alternatively, we who are believers celebrate another holiday, which just happens to fall on this same day as secular Christmas. It's called "The Feast of the Nativity of Christ." And we celebrate that commemoration not by giving presents and hanging stockings etc., but by worshipping God in song and story, in prayer and praise and by receiving the Body and Blood of that Christ who continues to live in and through us, his Church. And, by seeking to be his disciples in how we live, the choices we make, the choices we refuse. (And by baking 40 pumpkin pies for homeless people, buying 89 presents for needy kids and hosting a Christmas eve dinner for hundreds of hungry people in Pierson Hall.) We surrender on putting Christ back into Christmas. When the Hebrew people felt themselves to have been forgotten by God, they prayed for God to remember them again and to turn his face toward them in kindness. We, who are often lost and alone and frightened by our cynicism, our despair and our bitterness; need God to seek us out again in the wilderness of our days. We are those who need to remember that no matter how far we have drifted, God is always seeking us and pursuing us and running to meet on the road and welcome us home. It is that reality that we lift our hearts and our voices to celebrate at the Feast of the Nativity: that God came (and comes) to call us back to our fullest selves as God's own. Copyright © 2009 St. Augustine by-the-Sea
|
