My Annual Christmas Lament

Google Image

Christmas is not my favorite time of the year.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of celebrating the birth of Jesus. After Easter, Christmas is arguably the most important holiday for Christians, and I thoroughly enjoy the church liturgies of the season, filled with the Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Bible, the music that celebrates Christ’s birth and the apparent spirit of giving that prompts so many people to think of, and act in behalf of, others.

But you have to ask the obvious question, whether celebrating the birth of Jesus is actually what we’re doing at this time of year. Is it still about Jesus’ birth? It doesn’t seem that way. On the contrary, Christmas seems to be the definitive symbol of the secularization and commercialization of society.

I’ve often thought that Christians should perhaps just give up Dec. 25 to the advertisers, the extreme decorators and extreme gift givers - the people who have forgotten or simply ignore the meaning of Christmas.

Another Date?

Maybe Christians should adopt another date, like Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany – celebrating the faith in Jesus that moved beyond the territory where he lived and preached – as the principal Christian holiday of winter.

Of course, this is not going to happen. Sometimes it’s hard for me, who grew up in a thoroughly Catholic family, to accept that we live in a secular, diverse and pluralistic society where you need to recognize and accept the views of people who don’t share your beliefs.

But for those who have already decided that this blog is being written by a Grinch or Scrooge, let’s take a closer look at those two characters, because for me, they are beams of light in what appears to be the wasteland that is contemporary Christmas, and they are not directly related or connected to religion.

Google Image
Grinch, according to Wikipedia, is a fictional character created by Theodor Seuss Geisel, an American children's author and cartoonist who used “Dr. Seuss” as a pen name. Grinch is the main character of his 1957 children's book, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

In the book and films, Grinch is “misanthropic, ill-natured, and mean-tempered.” Speculation is that he was born with a heart "two sizes too small.” Though always hateful, “he especially hates the Christmas season, making particular note of how disturbing the various noises of Christmas time are to him, including the singing of Christmas carols. Unable to stand the holiday any longer, he decides to destroy it once and for all.”

Grinch disguises himself as Santa Clause and breaks into homes on Christmas Eve to steal everything they own and dump it off of a nearby mountain. On Christmas morning, he is shocked to hear the people from whom he stole still singing cheerfully, happy simply to have each other.

He then realizes that the holiday has a deeper meaning that he never considered. Inspired, he stops the people’s belongings from falling off the edge of a mountain, and in the process, his heart “grows three sizes.” He returns the gifts and gladly takes part in the people’s Christmas celebration.

Much Older

“A Christmas Carol” is a much older Christmas-conversion story. A novella by Englishman Charles Dickens, it recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.

After their visits, Scrooge sees things differently, recognizing the importance of Christmas in the lives of others, especially children and the poor, and is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.

Most people can relate to both stories, even when they’re unmoved by the story of Jesus’ birth. The two stories are mainly about compassion and kindness, which is at the heart of Jesus’ birth and his message.

The First Letter of John in the Christian Bible sums up this message: “...Anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel of The Little Prince

Image
  Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it possible that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to be, having strayed far from the innocence and simplicity of childhood? That’s the main question asked in The Little Prince, which Netflix, the streaming video service, has added to its repertoire of movies and TV shows. Though not a big fan of animated flicks, I was a big fan of the book, The Little Prince, back in the 1970s when it became extremely popular in the U.S. It was first published in French and English in New York in 1943 as a novella by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery , who disappeared while piloting a Free French Army plane the following year over the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly Two Million Copies “The novella is the fourth most-translated book in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France,” says Wikipedia. “Translated into more than 250 language...
Read more

‘Spiritual but Not Religious,’ Revisited

Image
Google Image I’ve expressed several times in these blogs my skepticism about declarations by some of our contemporaries that they are “spiritual but not religious.” Much of the skepticism results from the false dichotomy this entails, as if the spiritual and religious are mutually exclusive. Spirituality, after all, is the whole point of being religious. With the exception of some forms of Buddhism, all the major religions aim to bring people closer to God, who is “spiritual.” St. Paul, among the earliest leaders of Christianity, wrote that he is imparting a teaching “not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.” But Daniel Horan, Franciscan priest, theologian and author, wrote in a recent edition of the National Catholic Reporter: “What if our starting point in thinking about what it means to be a person in communion with God, oneself and the world was not reduced to external expressions of institutional belo...
Read more

Clinging to Archie Bunker's God

Image
Google Image Archie Bunker, the character masterfully played by the late Carroll O’Conner in the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family,” had his own take on the traditional Christian doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. “God don’t make no mistakes,” declared Archie. “That’s how he got to be God.” For those too young to remember Archie, who in 2005 was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, Wikipedia says Bunker was characterized by his bigotry towards “… blacks, Hispanics, "Commies," gays, hippies, Jews, Asians, Catholics, "women's libbers," and Polish-Americans….” Bunker was presented as a Christian, however, and “… often misquotes the Bible. He takes pride in being religious, although he rarely attends church services ….” An Anonymous Contributor Sister Mary Matilda, my eighth grade teacher, would accuse me of being uncharitable but I imagine that an anonymous contributor to a recent newspaper column is an “Archie Bunke...
Read more