Christmas Wars, etc. I
Once upon a time there was a holy day called Christmas. This was replaced by the Holiday Season, which was one campaign in the War on Christmas and on all things Christian. For several years American conservatives have been waging their own war, the War Against the War on Christmas.
This year, however, we are witnessing the culmination of a new phase in the campaign, namely, the War Against the War Against the War on Christmas. According to the anti-Christian activists and news readers who decide what is permissible to say, anyone who says there is a War on Christmas is ipso facto (though they would not use a Latin phrase that conjures up the specter of Western Christianity) a—gasp—anti-semite. Does that mean that it is anti-semtic not to be philo-semitic? Jeemenetti, as we used to say in high school, life here in these United States gets complicated.
In past years I have expressed no little skepticism about conservative campaigns to put the holy back in holiday and the X back into Xmas. I was a little unfair. I have warm memories of Christmastime in the 1950's. Despite being one of only two atheists in my elementary school (the other was my sister), I loved Christmas. My sister and I learned Christmas carols and hymns which we played on the piano and sang. We looked forward eagerly to the Christmas pageant in school, and in second grade I was chosen to read Luke's Gospel. I was almost intoxicated by the beauty of the Authorized Version. It never occurred to me once that there was something wrong in celebrating Christmas, either in our non-believing house, where we did everything Christians did (my mother was still, at least superstitious and very probably a believer) or in a public school. And I do not recall a word of complaint from my father's Communist friend or from my mother's Jewish friend.
Well, as one of my favorite Jewish poets says,
"Riding in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim
You know, those were different times.
All poets studied rules of verse
And those ladies, they rolled their eyes
The problem with nostalgia is the way it blinds us to reality. Of course, it was a better world when I was a boy, but it was not a Christian world. I doubt that many of my little Lutheran friends grew up thinking much about their faith and I doubt that very many of them today are anything but occasional conformists to the holiday seasons. It is not so much Christmas that the pro-Christmas warriors are defending (Tom Piatak excepted) as the Xmas celebrated by people who do not know that the spot marked by the X is Bethlehem.
I get the feeling sometimes that the defense of Christmas has more to do with Nat King Cole and the Andy Wiliams Christmas Special—complete with the family Andy hired for the occasion, since his real wife was doing time for murdering her lover. Only a Grinch would object to Santa Claus, Rudolf, and "I saw mommy smoochin' Santy Claus" (in Homer and Jethro's comic version). To eliminate Christmas is tantamount to saying, with another and better poet, "And there's no such thing as Dr. Seuss or Disneyland and Mother Goose, no nursery rhymes." We have gone from the God who through His Son created all things visible and invisible to the god who made little green apples.
I have never understood why non-Christian conservatives like Rush Limbaugh or our friends at VDARE get so het up about Christmas. To their credit, they see our Holy Day as an important part of the Western/European tradition that is being eliminated by multi-culturalism and mass immigration They are right, of course, but there is something of an inversion of values. We could eliminate all the Christmas music ever written, outlaw Christmas trees and figgie pudding, carry out Scrooge's wish: "If I could work my will any idiot who goes around with a Merry Christmas on his lips would be cooked with his own turkey and buried with a stake of holly through his heart," and it would not matter that much to those who keep Christ in their heart all year long.
And so, though I deeply appreciate the support we Christians get from non-believers at this time of year, I sometimes wish they would not. We are allies in many wars, but perhaps this should not be one of them. Those who like Charles Dickens are scandalized by the name of Christ should not be defending Christmas. Leave that war to poor benighted Christians like Tom Piatak.
I suppose, in this miserable world, we should be grateful for any support we can get. Besides, well-intentioned non-believers are a little bit the way I was as a young atheist. Hearing and saying the words, listening to the songs, going through the motions—as it were—with friends and family may draw us ineluctably toward the Church. Peter (the saint!) tells Christian wives: "Be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear." In this spirit, let us pray that all good men will be converted by their Christian wives—and friends.
[Next installment: The Triumph of Ebeneezer Scrooge"]
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I think I understand now why people get so drunk on New Year's Eve. It's the five weeks or more of intense repetitive Christmas pop music that drives them to it. Perhaps they also need to numb the emptiness they feel in their pocketbook before they start another year of slaving to make up for all that hard earned money they have had to blow so they wont look and feel like a Scrooge. What a mess.
Actually, the Eagles song is 'Please Come Home for Christmas'.
Back in 1974 I took a year off college and was a volunteer in Gallup, NM, serving the Catholic diocese. Bishop Hastrich, in whose home we lived (he lived on the poor side of town, and had a separate wing for seminarians, visitors, or volunteers) was clear about how to prepare for Christmas. For instance, during Advent, there was a tree put up, but left barren until Christmas Eve. It was then tastefully decorated and left up until the feast of the Epiphany.
Advent was a time of prayer and preparation for the coming of the Christ. We increased our prayer life, took part in the liturgy of the hours, and reflected on the prophecies of the Messiah. Those four weeks of Advent that year allowed us to deeply appreciate the Church's liturgical year, and learn (re-learn?) the meaning of Christmas.
The good Bishop told us that while there was nothing necessarily wrong with the way that most of our society - even Catholics - prepare for and celebrate Christmas, there was always a danger that it could get out of control and we would miss the graces available during this beautiful season. He reminded us that many in Israel, through the many centuries between the foretelling and actual coming of the Messiah, had lost track of God's plan, and sought/demanded a political King. In a similar way, when we focus on gifts, parties, and even spending time with family and friends - all good things - we might gradually end up wanting God to conform to our will, rather than the other way around.
Early that Advent, when I had questioned Bishop Hastrich about all of this, he gave me a simple, memorable answer: "Well, Mr. Jones, it all depends on whether you are preparing for Heaven, or for something else."
The best pop culture contribution to Christmas music: various songs and orchestra pieces by Leroy Anderson.
The worst: After sorting through all the Krustmas rot out there, I've decided the worst is the recent "Where Are You, Christmas?".
The finest, most beautiful Christmas song I've ever heard is "O Holy Night" performed by the Mantovani orchestra. Also very nice is his version of "Good King Wenceslas."
We tell others to live well, are we willing to do so ourselves? How does one celebrate a fellow's birthday? With mourning? Is the best way to celebrate Christmas is with sackcloth, ashes and shaven heads just to show our devotion? Are we to be like the Puritans who banned Christmas celebrations because people were too merry?
We cannot blame Christmas for man's irrational exuberance. Christmas does not change. It never does. It is about one thing only and that is God coming into the world, Immanuel. No, Christmas does not change, we change. How we choose to celebrate or not, how we handle it, how we view it, changes. But not the day itself. We cannot blame the day for others thoughtlessness, greed and do-gooderism gone haywire.
We tell others to live well and yet do we not see how Scrooge was the opposite of this? Say what you want about Dickens, but I've always seen Scrooge not as an evil man but one who simply did not live well. His life was devoted to gain for gain's sake. True he did not squander or waste his fortune but he did not put it to any use, not even for himself, let alone his fellow man to whom he was blind to.
But man is not hopeless. If that were true, Marley would not have haunted Scrooge, Dickens would not have written "A Christmas Carol" and we might as well close up shop right now and wait for the end to come. If we believe in reclamation and if we know what is right and true, what is beauty and what tacky and vulgar, then so long as persons know the meaning then others will come to know it too at some point. Tom Piatak and other's efforts are a part of this. And while I will grant the point that much of it is nostalgia and perhaps some of the good Christmases we remember have to do with what toys we received under the tree or the store displays and catalogs from J.C. Penny's, not all of it is commercial. I have my fond memories of Christmas concerts at my Catholic school and church back in Beloit, all the family get togethers and some harrowing moments as well. But they are moments well removed from a price tag or Black Friday.
It was inevitable that a consumer-driven society like ours would make Christmas become more commerical (and it has been since World War II). Society makes it more difficult now to enjoy Advent bombarding us so with shopping, decorating, baking, gift wrapping, concerts, Christmas cards, 24-hour Christmas music, let alone the efforts of those who wish to "downgrade the holiday" as a Labour Party think tank wished to do. We always overdue everything. I can only speak for myself but I do get wearied and dread how much time I must spend on something that only comes once a year and feel exhausted when it finally comes due.
And yet, last weekend, I sat in my living room with the lights and the tree and decorations all around me, watching a Christmas special on TV, smelling the aroma of the baked good my wife makes every Christmas time to give as gifts to our families, Christmas music in the background and couldn't been more at peace or relaxed. I would probably also feel less harried on say, July 13th, but such a time would not have been as special, or as magical, as here and now. I lived well.
And so long as there are those who feel the same way, then Christmas itself will be fine.