'Tis the season. The Christmas season, in which we split into several different crowds all scrapping and fighting and tugging over our common holiday much as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all lay claim to Jerusalem. Just read Facebook and it is obvious to see this: Calls to focus on the fact that "Jesus is the reason for the season" intersperse with secular posts about Christmas trees and ho-ho-ho-ing. Deeply spiritual musings about the quiet preparation of Advent vie with someone's Granny's 100-proof fruitcake recipe for attention. What is one to do, how is peace to be made between all the aspects of Christmas? Religion, family, tradition, gifts, movies, carols, overeating and overdrinking?
I am firmly in the middle of all these battlegrounds. Christmastide is one of the most looked-for events of the year, when all the work of the church is bent toward celebration of the Incarnation and all that means for reconciliation and redemption. From Advent to Christmas I move each year, growing in awareness through the Holy Spirit in this retelling of the seminal event when God entered life among us and breathed as a man. But I also carry within me the memory of all the past Christmases celebrated with my family and my friends. Christmases of my childhood, the yearning nostalgia for my past childhood that can never be lived again, and the Christmases spent as my own family has grown, sweet memories of holidays spent with my wife and children and now my grandchild. Of mother and brothers and sisters-in-law, of grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and great-this-and-thats of all sorts.
Tied up in all these powerful religious symbols and family connections are all the rest of the Christmas meanings. Special music both holy and secular that foretells this glorious moment each year as clearly as the robin foretells spring. Santa Claus movies and a cold snap in the weather and jingle bells and all the rest of it, the whole mass of commercialism, American myth, tradition, and fa-la-la-ing that makes the season so very full and exhausting.
I think Christmas is big enough to belong to everyone. Originally, the wintertime Saturnalia was hijacked and the pagan elements married to Christian observance in order to integrate the existing Roman holiday into an emerging Christianity coming into its own. All of the pagan trappings were bothersome enough to folks like the Puritans, in fact, to move them to outlaw the celebration of Christmas, and it took Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", among others, to teach our modern world to "make merry" with caroling and feasts and gifts and Christmas trees.
And reconciliation.
Although there is a tension between religious and secular camps in relation to the celebration or "ownership" of the season, there is about a crucial basis of Christmas NO real difference in opinion.
Christmas is about reconciliation. It is about the reconciliation of God to man, when God became incarnate (embodied in flesh) to reconcile us to Him. When He used human means to His purpose of redeeming his fallen and straying children to His loving presence. When He reached out to the least of us by becoming one of us, to teach and lead and heal and save. It is also about the reconciliation of man to man, when we reach out one to another inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Even the most ardent of atheists agree that Christmas is a time for reconciliation of man to man. A time of the year when one thoughtfully steps back from the battle which is often characteristic of life and vows to treat one's neighbor more charitably. A season for renewal of old friendships, of extending forgiveness to those who have caused pain, and for enjoying family and friendship ties.
Although there is plenty of annoyance to go around-annoyance at missing the "real point" of Christmas whether you feel that that is the birth of Christ or simply the comfort of your family enjoying a meal around the table-there is generally all over the world the consensus that Christmas is a time for setting ASIDE our differences. For getting along at least for a day. For letting people cut into line in front of you at the grocery store. For plunking a quarter into the Salvation Army bucket whether or not you agree with their politics. For these simple reasons and many more Christmas is proof of work done in our poor broken world by kindness and sympathy. I know this to be from God, and it may be that you know it to be only human decency.
For this, Christmas offers to everyone peace and reconciliation. I love Christmas, and I try, as Dickens wrote, to keep Christmas well. From the small still space cultivated in Advent to the excitement of Christmas Eve with my family, I trim the tree and right my heart and try to make room for love in my life. I hope you are able to enjoy Christmas this year, in whatever manner you keep it.
And, as Tiny Tim said, God bless us, every one.
No comments:
Post a Comment