Christmas: Some Caveats
I endorse enthusiastically my friend and colleague Tom Piatak's defense of Christmas. As a curmudgeon, however, I am inclined, this time of year, to gloomy reflections.
Perhaps they go back Herbert W. Armstrong's annual diatribe against Christmas, which I never missed in my teens. Armstrong, the founder of The Worldwide Church of God (and Garner Ted Armstrong's father) was a British Israelite who hated Christmas, and every year he devoted an hour of his "church's" broadcast to listing the suicides, crimes, and fits of depression that marked the "holiday season."
If your you have tender feelings about Santa Claus, Gene Autry, the Muppets, Charles Dickens, and chestnuts roasting on an open fire, perhaps you should not read my own diatribe, which I dedicate to the shade of Herbert W. Armstrong.
I love all great Christian holidays, including Christmas, but increasingly I keep this one with some circumspection. In my world, the secular celebration of Xmas is honored more in the breach than in the observance. For example...
I am less than thrilled by the singing of "Silent Night" on an anti-Christian television show shown on an anti-Christian network and sponsored by anti-Christian advertisers. I am not especially interested in what well-intentioned Jews have to say about how much they like the Christmas season and how much they deplore the Jewish anti-Christianism that is so prevalent in America. When the comic Gary Gulman comes on the radio doing his "All I want for Hannukah is Christmas shtick, I change the station. This is our holiday, Gary, not yours. Stick to Hannukah--which, by the way, commemorates the killing of Gentiles.
And, to be perfectly frank, I could never stand to watch Charlie Brown's Christmas and I do not like Vince Guaraldi's music. Two thousand years of art, literature, and music, and people are still watching Peanuts? Schulz is often praised for the Christian themes in his comics, but he was an ex-Christian and a self-described secular humanist. In my view, he was a board member of that sinister Northeastern syndicate.
I hate all Christmas specials, especially the Grinch who did not so much steal as profane Christmas with Seussian inanity. I did get a bang out of the Andy Williams specials for which he hired actors to play his family, while his wife was doing life for murdering her faithless lover the Croat-American skier Spider Sabich. "Ain't that America?"
I am also sick to death of the anti-Christian Charles Dickens' rewrite of Christ's Nativity as a a softcore Marxist parable without Christ or angels but with a new pantheon of bogus deities--the deeply offensive Ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. How dare such a man pen such a line as "God bless us, everyone." The nasty hypocrite should have been on his knees praying to escape the fires of Hell.
As an atheist I loved the secular American Christmas as much as Gary Gulman. I got all dewey-eyed as I attended Midnight Mass with a Catholic girlfriend, though I usuall fell asleep well before the canon. At parties I joined (and still join) in lustily in singing all the traditional sacred songs like "Frosty," "Rudolph," "Blue Christmas," and "Santa Baby." (I still enjoy Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas Baby," though it strikes, perhaps, the wrong note for the sacred holiday.)
As a Christian, however, I go into hiding at this time of year, harboring feelings that old Ebeneezer would have endorsed before he turned all gooey and maudlin. "Bah, Humbug." I wish that every non-Christian who wished me a Merry Christmas would die with a stake of holly in his heart! (That was a joke.)
There was a time when public hypocrisy was worth maintaining if only for the sake of our children. These times, however, are going to require a harder edge. Here are some Christmas thoughts that would not occur to Frank Baum, Irving Berlin, or whatever American Idol winner is hoping to go gold with a tacky Xmas album.
Suppose we all began to take Christmas seriously and refused to spend over $50 per person on presents and none on at any store owned by non-Christians? Suppose we agitated for a law banning all references to Christmas, including Santa Claus, at the anti-Christian public schools whose bloated budgets and overpaid teachers are funded by money stolen from Christians? The Church has always thrived under persecution and has ofteb decayed under government patronage. On Christian holidays, I do not wish to be patronized or tolerated or indulged. All I ask, to quote a very great man,is to be let alone.
Here's the beginning of my new Christmas song:
Oh daddy dear and did you hear the news that going round?
The Christmas tree's forbid by law to grow on the school ground.
And Christmas Day no more we'll keep
No holly will be seen,
For there's a liberal law against
The colors red and green.
Just kidding, of course, or am I?
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Suppose we all began to take Christmas seriously and refused to spend over $50 per person on presents and none on at any store owned by non-Christians?
Non-penitential austerity strikes me as just ever-so-slightly Calvinistic in outlook. But what about refusing to purchase any Christmas gifts from a mall or a big box retailer? (Confession: I cheated even in that last respect. I ordered DVD sets of Brideshead Revisited and a recording of Russian Orthodox hymns for my loved ones... off of Amazon.)
I remember years ago you had a similar column in Chronicles about how you basically hated Christmas yet continued to like Halloween, for it reminded children and all people of their coming deaths.
I am slightly curious to know why Nicholas thinks cutting down expenditures on other people can be viewed as an austerity measure, much less Calvinistic. Cheap, perhaps, but not austere. I used to give CDs etc, but the music industry has become so industrialized it would be just as meaningful to give an iTunes voucher. I am not buying my wife anything because it is either shopping at the national chains or online, which is the same thing only less painful. I'm waiting for something to strike either of us when we are in Italy.
No, Mr. Maxwell, I do not think I had a similar column nor do I hate Christmas. What I do dislike is the profane Christmas that is ginned up every year to make money for non-Christians. I used to threaten my children that we were going to have a "spiritual Christmas," but they knew better than to believe me. I don't much like the commercialized and profane Halloween, but there is less to profane and the customs antedate Christianity.
If I can find it, I am going to post a piece I wrote before coming to Chronicles, comparing Christmas to a cargo cult. I recall that Christian Kopff disliked it, and I am sure Tom Piatak will dislike it even more.
Dr. Fleming writes : "Church has always thrived under persecution....."
Yes, and this is my hope so long as there are still a few Christians left to kick around. Yet, a close friend of mine recently allowed that if I was ever accused of being a Christian, he doubted there would be enough evidence to convict me. This is what worries me most during these major feasts days and Octaves but as usual, Tom, you have cheered me up with light verse and hope against the coming darkness.
I am not especially interested in what well-intentioned Jews have to say about how much they like the Christmas season and how much they deplore the Jewish anti-Christianism that is so prevalent in America.
I suppose, in this miserable world, we should be grateful for any support we can get. Well-intentioned non-believers are a little bit the way I was when I was an atheist. Hearing and saying the words, listening to the songs, going through the motions with friends and family may draw us ineluctably toward the Church. St. Peter tells Christian wives to "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's pray that all good men will be converted by their Christian wives and friends.
Let me see if I can follow Mr. St. Hubbins argument. 1) Since Christians have few allies, they should make alliances with people who regard them as wrong but harmless, and we should do this not from any good it may do us our our religion but 2) on the grounds that St. Peter based his argument for marital concord between a Christian wife and a non-Christian husband. I don't wish to be sarcastic at this time of year, but at first I wondered if this was one of those things they used to put in children's magazines, "See if you can spot all the errors in this picture." First off, marriage is not a relationship between two random individuals, second, alliances can only be based on a common objective--which does not exist in this case--and coalitions based on non-principled opportunism always harm the more principled party. At the most simple level, it is quite wrong to misuse Scripture in this irrelevant and misleading manner.
My quips about austerity and Calvinism were... well, reaching, and I think if I attempted to explain the logic Dr. Fleming would probably regret his curiousity (and so would his readers). For one thing, it wasn't so much directed at his suggestion as at a highly literal caricature: say, a man who sets a $50 budget, sees a beautiful and perfect object his wife/sister/daughter would adore and cherish until her grave, leaving it to her oldest daughter... and refuses to buy it because it costs $50.99. I suppose that would be more "miserly" than "austere," and more "generically ridiculous" than strictly "Calvinist," though I confess to the un-Christian sentiment of enjoying any pretext, however conjectural, to mock the current that tells people it's a waste to have more than two holidays on the liturgical calendar.
Perhaps more serious is the reality that it is possible to spend a lot of money on others in the spirit of profligacy rather than generosity. It is after all (let's face it) "fun" to show off and impress, and even if that's not one's principal motive it's not exactly altruistic to treat a non-struggling friend to an expensive dinner because you find his elated mood entertaining. I once heard a woman admit, "When I spoil my grandchildren, it's less because it does them good than it is because it makes me happy to buy them stuff." At that point setting limits can in a way be assimilated into austerity, and virtuously so.
That said, for twenty years my mother always decked out the house with special trappings and we always rotted our teeth with mountains of homemade goodies and we always delighted in watching each other's reactions as the subarboreal "loot" was plundered on the morning of December the 25th before or after a huge briny meaty meal. (My dad once shot a goose on the 24th and we ate it that night.) That's not what Christmas is about, but with traditions like that, I couldn't do austere or even stingy if I tried.
Dr. Fleming, my favorite writer, why would you spend even a moment to be curmudgeonly over such things? My Puritan ancestors outlawed Christmas trees, statues, celebrating the Incarnation, and would have been (and I guess, are, in their secular stage) the first to ban public expressions of Christ in Christmas. The Scots-Irish probably would have regarded the season as another good excuse for a big drunk, which of course isn't all bad. Our family has for many years just ignored all pagan bejumpers and cares not a bit about whether the early Christians stole off with the winter solstice. We just do the best we can to worship the God who sent us His Son and the Holy Spirit. A blessed Christmas to all the Chronicles family!
John Willson
Hear, hear!
Among the memories associated with Christmas are the annual stories of my father reciting his memories associated with Christmas, memories from the era of the Depression in the South, which was a double depression.
Christmas at school was a mixed bag. In the first grade, at the Christmas party one the last day before the two-week Christmas break, I got a whipping. The boys were sent to the cafeteria, each to get two Nehi Orange drinks for the party, a drink for a boy and a drink for a girl. Gentlemen, even gentlemen in the making were supposed to do such things. We were told in no uncertain terms no to run. On the way from the cafeteria to the room, I tripped over a curb, fell, broke one of the glass bottles containing one of the drinks, and cut my hand. When I got to the room, with a bleeding hand and the sharp fragment of the bottle clutched in it, the teacher accused me of having run. For my alleged insubordination, I was whipped. So, I got a cut hand and a whipping and had to do without a drink during the party. The primary school, first through third grades, gave a Christmas program each year. The year that I was in the third grade, we had to dress up like Christmas cards. My card represented Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. Somehow, the powers that were attached a body-length card to my body, with a hole for my face and painted my nose red. At the play of the song dedicated to Rudolph, I had to leap like a deer. Even as a third grader I knew that I was being asked to play the fool. In the fourth grade, in the middle of the party, I came across a holly leave on the floor, a leaf from a real holly tree which served as part of the decorations. I placed it with no degree of innocence on the seat of a certain girl's desk as she was sitting down. She screamed as if she had been impaled by Vlad himself. That scream got me another whipping. In high school, we FFA boys were tasked with building an entire nativity scene out of wood. The FHA girls were tasked with painting it. From 1966 until it was banned sometime in the 1980's it graced the front lawn of our school at Christmas time, long after we were gone and bumbling our way through early adult life.
We did something at church every year. One year when I was about fifteen, I had to play a wise man in an outdoor pageant. Under the garb of the wise man, a garb which consisted of a long bath robe bedecked with glitter and gold paint, I wore my jeans and my hunting boots. My head gear was a towel tied together with gold string and topped off with one of those pointed glass ornaments which is often placed on the crown of a tree if an angel is not available. Under the head gear was my head wishing that it were somewhere else. I instinctively knew that I was not wise. The only thing which I had to do was to walk point with the other two wise men and point at a bright star, which God mercifully provided us each of the three cold nights we had to do the act outside, and say "Lo!" The town's folk who came out in basket-ball-game numbers to see the Story retold, the Story which they in those days knew by head and heart, were impressed with my "Lo!"
My father, to return to the preamble of this post, always told the variation of three stories. One Christmas, his stocking which was an old sock, was supposed to be filled with some nuts and some Louisiana oranges. His older brothers had gotten up, eaten the contents of the "stocking" and replaced the oranges with dried "horse apples." Neither my father nor I had good first grade experiences. As told, I got my whipping; his was worse. According to my father, the kids exchanged names. The spending limit was one nickle. It was SOP that boys always got one hundred Black Cat Firecrackers which could be purchased for a nickle. What girls got my father never said; however, the girl who drew my father's name did not execute SOP; instead of firecrackers, which every other first-grade boy got, my father received a post card with the picture of a cow on it. There on were the words, "Moo, Moo! The Cow Wants WaaWaa! The third story was a Leitmotif in my father's life. One Christmas while he was yet very young, his much older brother killed nineteen ducks. That was when ducks were still creatures of our Lord and not the property of the "federal" government. For Christmas dinner, noon meal in our climes, my grandfather invited a number of old men who ate all of the ducks as my father, a child, hungrily looked on. He and the women folk got the sopping. Kids ate last. My father's lamentation was not that kids at last in those days, even at Christmas or especially at Christmas, but that after the war, after he had fought the Hun and had returned a productive adult, kids were eating first. He belonged to the lost generation, doomed to eat last. After several years of this story at Christmas, the women who controlled the kitchen ensured that my father got to eat first. It did not stop him from telling the story.
However, through it all, I knew that we were struggling to celebrate our Lord's Advent and His Incarnation. He weaves our stories into His Story. His Grace is worth celebrating.
I cry foul. Dr. Fleming, you can't dress down the Libertarian- minded, Free Market loving Scrooge in one post and then turn around and canonize the man in another. Peanuts I can live without, and I refuse to teach my kids Frosty or Rudolph, but I'll be hanged if we don't read a Christmas Carol every year.
Dr. Peters, thank you for your recollections. I'm certain you would get tired of talking/typing before I ever grew tired of listening/reading.
I wish a Merry Christmas to all here. To the Chronicles staff and wonderful commentators, I thank you for furthering my education. May God bless you and yours and grant you relief from the insanity and protection from the Evil.
And, to open up Dr. Fleming's song in the spirit of Mr. Piatak's essay:
Have a holly, jolly Kwanzaa,
Or a lovely Hannukah.
And I insist
You have a great Solstice
No matter where you are.
Have a whiz- bang Chinese New Year
Or a Ramadan, I guess.
Or just defer
And go secular
Do whatever you feel is best.
And to all the rest of us, Have a Merry Festivus!
One Christmas morn down at the tree as a toddler in his 'feet-pajamas' the greatest invention for cold winter nights, since the wheel for moving things about, except why the feet-pajamas didn't also come with a hood attached as well, may have been an oversight. I was stunned and amazed to see a shiny red wagon, which could be pulled by whomever was its owner around outside in the driveway. My grandparents were looking at me when I turned around and I asked: "for Me?" "Yes!!" they said. That's the last time I felt important at Christmas, or enjoyed so pristinely a material gift; which I later went on to realize is a bit like life itself. So now I too hide out around Christmas time remembering as my own lights allow to just get through it, it is what it is, everyday, not just on Christmas. Loved ones, a false sense of importance, necessary material things (most of them unnecessary), and otherwise that's all we really know so accept it and just get through it, except for the other thing we also know and are happier once we can accept it, our experience here will be over soon enough. However this message seems to me to be even more poignant at Christmas, perhaps as it should be, so I'm on special alert, to just get through it.
As with so much of the world's noise, the only thing we can do is tune out the lies, deceits, and hatred that have become attached to Christianity's recognition and celebration of the birth of our Savior. The best way to tune out all of this noise is to simplify. Read the first chapter of John, the second chapter of Luke, and, though more commonly associated with the Passion of our Lord and Savior, never stop reading Isaiah, chapter 53, for it answers the "why?" of Christmas.
"A blessed Christmas to all the Chronicles family!" Here, here..
and as an old english peasant who often smelled like a fox once wrote to his friends :
I pray good beef and I pray good beer
This holy night of all the year,
But I pay detestable drink for them
That give no honor to Bethlehem.
May all good fellows that here agree
Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me
And may all my enemies go to hell!
Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!
May all my enemies go to hell!
Noël! Noël!
Perhaps its time for a brief word from Sir Walter Scott:
"Heap on more wood! - the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still"
It's always fascinating to read what passes for, and what is misleadingly labeled as, defenses of Christmas. Not that I have any strenuous objections to folks espousing their own personal and specific preferences in how, where, who and when to observe that occasion. Go for it, by all means. It makes for an enjoyable, informative and revealing read. I want to stress the informative part, since Mr. Piatak really did his homework for his earlier article. Nice job and good work, Mr. Piatak. Seriously.
Again, let me get this fine point out of the way first. Defending Christmas is what exactly? Defending the fact of Christ's birth? If so, how does that make any sense and why would an intelligent man be so employed? A fact is a fact and needs no defense, is this not so? Or, do the defenders doubt the fact of Christ's birth? And, do they risk in their zealous defense of a fact undermine that fact in the eyes of the ignorant? Shall we next defend the occasion of the New Year, Easter and the moon landings? Well OK, maybe someone does need to defend the reality of the moon landings.
Now, of course it's not really a question of defending Christmas. It's about presenting an opinion about how to mark the date, how to celebrate it, or not, etc. Bluntly, how and why the celebration or observance of Christmas SHOULD be conducted. Since that is so, let's call it what it is, shall we? If I may, I have noticed an unfortunate tendency of some of the fine writers around here to beat around the bush. They dance around the edges of issues and seem to lack the boldness, fortitude or conviction to write plainly. This defense of Christmas thing is more of the same. And that's all I wanted to say about that.
As a final small observation made in the manner of a cautionary note and ironic smirk, I mark the fact that Mr. Fleming's opinion piece contains a slightly disturbing contradiction. And I'm not referring to the hate or disgust references in an article defending Christmas. Mr. Fleming is a curmudgeon, like me, and entitled to his bitterness. I refer to Mr. Fleming's call for statutes banning references to Christmas and his expressed desire to be left alone. Even after making some allowance for sarcasm and humor of some sort, which I see in his writing, though very dry indeed, I think the contradiction between wanting to be left alone and advocating for laws to control others is unavoidable. OK, I do see the humor in that. <----- A bit slow, that one. Never mind.
W.C. ,
Thanks for your posts and the always ravishing ripe picture of yourself back when Christmas was celebrated traditionally ?--- that is individually and collectively in small communities of friends, neighbors and those once ancient but now god-awful things called, "faith communities" ?. One reason such a story sounds so foreign today, is because it is. Never mind this blog, it is nothing but a bunch of old has beens,sailors, soldiers, poets and petty politicians remembering once upon a time. Nothing around here should be taken too seriously or examined closely under a microsope like a dead bug, rather look up at the stars tonight wherever you might be and wonder what significance, if any, it could all possibly have in the long run. And of course have a Merry Christmas if you are so inclined, or beat your teeth against the cold concrete in disgust, all the while remembering that in our post christian culture nobody gives a damn one way or the other.
Dr. Fleming: I suspect Scrooge represents a very common literary type, although I lack the scholarship to cite other examples -- i.e. the grouch, the grinch, the sourpuss, who remains grumpy throughout the winter holiday season while everyone else is making merry. Can it be that Scrooge suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which affects nearly ten percent of the population in northern latitudes? In that case, he would have benefited more from a light box than a succession of chain-dragging wraiths, although I guess he had to make do with what was available to him. I probably have the condition, and if you ever fantasize about being a lizard basking on an adobe wall under the noonday Mexican sun, maybe you do too. It brings me to such a level of surly, morose misanthropy that, on the shortest day of the year, I start to post on blogsites. I've left quite a trail today. Cheers, and the best to you until the same time next year.
Dr. Fleming,
Your posts are always thought provoking; no exception here.
You got me thinking about just when the war on Christmas really started. The guy who officially started is was probably Herod – a long time ago. The war will wage on until the end of time; the battles will vary in intensity from time to time and place to place, but probably the only real cease fire occurred during the reign of Christendom in the Middle Ages.
The purpose of the Messiah’s birth was the Messiah’s death – and resurrection. This is a good time of the year to remember that, for this, too is our purpose: to be born into a new life, to die to the world, and, as adopted children of God, redeemed by Christ, to rise again with and through Christ Jesus, the Messiah.
I doubt whether America ever really wholly embraced the true meaning of Christmas. Like Tom Piatak, I too enjoyed many wonderful memories of family Christmas – still making them. But I confess that I was infected from earliest memory by the commercialization of Christmas. I wonder (with trepidation) if I should primarily be called Christian or American. They are most certainly not one in the same thing.
And perhaps being in a society that does make war on Christmas is not all bad. It makes one choose sides. St. Augustine would say that we are blessed to live in such a time because it should make us more availing of God’s grace; a time of making martyrs, bloody or not.
Christmas is and should be a time of joy and celebration. But it is also a time of reflection. When the Lord comes, will He find any faith on earth? Honest reflection leads me to beg for God’s grace to become the Christian witness that I am called to be.
Thank you, once again, Dr. Fleming, for causing me to pause and think.
Christmas as celebrated today seems like a rather discardable holiday that I can do without. It's gotten to the point that I can't really stand many secular christmas songs.
Nevertheless, for those who understand what a real Christmas is supposed to be all about, Merry Christmas!
The only SADS cases in literature I can think of are the Norwegian settlers in Rolvaag's novels., but, then again, living in Minnesota they were sad with good reason. I haven't read A Christmas Carol in a long time and don't recall if Scrooge was actually depressed or grumpy. He was simply a Manchester School Liberal with a hostile attitude toward poverty and failure.
To Mr. Cornell's witty rejoinder I should say, with some seriousness, that books can be as complex as people. Many parts of Dickens are quite good and I enjoy them, especially Pickwick and Bleak House (in which he satirizes the abstract sentimentalism of do-gooding leftists). Personally, he was rather despicable and he was no Christian. Taken as a secular parable arguing for human decency toward kinfolks and employers, A Christmas Carol is a positive response to libertarian inanity, but it should not be permitted to displace Christian Christmas stories.
I devoured Dickens during my liberal do-gooder adolescence. Now in middle age, when I not only believe in original sin but know for sure that it exists, I much prefer Anthony Trollope, who happens to provide a delightful caricature of both Dickens and Carlyle in *The Warden*.
Dickens, however, may have his uses. Fr. Seraphim Rose, a Russian Orthodox missionary ascetic and writer who passed away in 1982, did a lot of pastoral work with "spiritual seekers" from the West Coast "youth" culture. Besides the fact that most of them had seriously damaged their minds with dangerous chemicals, they were cultural ignoramuses. Fr. Seraphim believed that the "golden thread" of Christian culture had been snapped at WWI and the Russian Revolution, and that it was important, before trying to reconnect post-modern Westerns with the mind of Byzantium and medieval Russia, simply to reconnect them to their own culture at the point when it, more or less, ended - the 19th century. Out of all the authors he tried to get them to read to introduce them to real literature, Dickens seemed to work best.
By the way, everyone, since today is really December 9th, you still have plenty of time to get ready for the Nativity of the Lord. And I pray that everyone enjoy a very happy St. Spyridon Day this coming Tuesday, which is, of course, December 12th!
Dr. Fleming,
All I know is that the Rockford Institute's Autodidact's Reading List recommends "A Christmas Carol", so I assumed I was on solid ground!
I am glad you like Pickwick. The scenes with Sam and his father made me laugh till I cried. In fact, just the thought of them makes me chuckle.
Cultural ignoramus that I am, I actually never read any Dickens until about a year ago. I haven't read any biographies, nor am I inclined to. What I've heard was not promising. And I learned he was not a Christian after I read the first chapter of his Life of Christ that someone had given us for the kids (it now resides in some landfill somewhere). I assumed he was an Arian after that book, but someone later told me he was a Unitarian. Mox nix to me.
Are there any recommendations for Christian Christmas stories (other than, of course, THE Christmas Story and the many stories that lead up to it)? We watched "It's a Wonderful Life" on "Black" Friday, a symbolic if small strike against the Potters that have done their best to annex Christmas. And, I probably shouldn't admit this, we will be enjoying the Laurel & Hardy "Babes in Toyland" sometime during the Octave (in a fit of disgustingness we're even going to watch the colorized version). I am always eager to expand and/or replace the repertoire.
And, much in the vein of this article, the local newspaper ran a story about a new "Atheist Christmas" album as well as a new "Jewish Christmas Album" - the idea being, apparently, to enjoy the "spirit" of Christmas while at the same time completely rejecting Christ and all he represents. Oy vay.
It is at Christmas that I more fully apprehend - never reaching comprehension, understanding or wisdom - the tension in being a creature, made in the image of God, yet fallen and yet earthbound. This tension is reconciled by the Incarnation as the Advent as celebrated in the Christmas season and by the Incarnation as made manifest in the Eucharist: God in the person of the Christ becomes Man and is our Redeemer. I experience this tension particularly at Christmas in the joy of loving, feasting and fellow-shipping with kith and kin and yet with a happy melancholy knowing that this joy is a mere foreshadowing of that great joy which is to come. Here I think to see how narrow the way is and how fraught with danger it is. To one side of the narrow way is the abyss of escapism, the impulse to flee this world in a radically rapturous eschatology. To the other side of the narrow way is the abyss pointed out by Eric Voegelin, the impulse to immanentize the eschaton and to attempt the creation of an earthbound Utopia. This is why the Christian must focus on the Incarnate Christ, our Redeeming Reconciliation who binds the joy of our earthbound Christmases with the joy of that Eternal Christmas.
R.R,
Thank you for your very kind words, sir. Yes, as an old soldier, cook and petty scrivener, I also pine for the days of yore. I dare not refer to myself as a writer or poet as my skills pale in comparison to all the contributors here. And, I don't mind this blog even a little bit. As for tradition, I'm for it. But, mostly in the old-fashioned sense of the term. At this joyous, lonely and sad time of the year, I am particularly grateful to find a small community of fellow curmudgeons. Without you, I would have to find a few more liberal/progressive (please let me just call them commies) blogs to incinerate with pungent words. As you know, those guys are notoriously thin skinned, self righteous and intolerant. I think some of them even banned me or whatever they call it nowadays. Too funny. My thanks again to you and to all of your fellow "paleos" and a very merry Christmas to each of you.
Are there any recommendations for Christian Christmas stories (other than, of course, THE Christmas Story and the many stories that lead up to it)?
My own view is that a Christmas story IS Christian and anything that isn't is... not Christmas.
But back to your actual question, I think the difficulty is this. THE Christmas story is very difficult to match or to match, on a spiritual level of course, but even from a literary/dramatic angle it is quite remarkable. This is especially true for anything overly didactic, unless it is a metaphor for the Christmas narration, in which case there would be no explicitly Christmassy bling.
That leaves us with two potential literary forms. One is retellings or expansions of the Nativity story. The other is the "family angst story" insofar as united families are a loose metaphor for the Holy Family. In the latter case the explicitly Christian iconography is likely to be present only as background iconography, but that's just as well, since preachy narratives get tired very fast.
Even so, one cannot have too high of expectations, and the fare therein is likely to be fairly light since, once again, any story is bound to pale in comparison to the birth of Our Lord. My take: I would avoid anything that puts too much accent on Santa Claus, Rudolph, Frosty, presents, etc. insofar as they tend to emphasize the materialistic aspects of the month of December more than the nostalgic and metaphorical human ambiance around Christmas.
So far as movies/specials go, I like what they did with Peanuts but loathed the Garfield special (kiddie fare after the 1950s is almost always meant to sell toys). The Grinch... well, if you like that sort of thing, perhaps. (The remarke is a good satire of childish materialism but I found it aesthetically annoying and could not bear to watch it again.) Little Drummer Boy wasn't bad, either. I am a huge fan of Home Alone, at least the first one. (Director Chris Columbus sometimes gets a bit of flack for his glorifying of the family, and if nothing else it's a lot of fun to peeve off hipsters who think the pinnacle of sophistication would be a black and white film about lesbians belonging to a genre they can pronounce using all two words of French they know.) My extended family has a tradition of gathering in Austin and watching the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation every Friday after Thanksgiving (as an inside joke - I am not going to recommend it to others who don't share our very idiosyncratic breed of fraternal humor). Lastly, there is the OLD version of "Miracle of 34th Street," which I cannot recommend enough. (Speaking of which, Mr. Taqiyya, is that Madame O'Hara herself in your photo?? Good man.)
There are others that I enjoy, but I have already admitted to more than enough Yuletide froufrou, I think, and the rest would earn me scorn and ridicule no matter how much disclaimer I put in front of it.
By the way... Jewish Christmas? Atheist Christmas? Imagine the outrage if a Christian claimed to have become a Messianic Jew... oh, wait!
Mr. Moses,
A Merry Christmas to you as it should be about that time over there. I'm up drinking coffee, prepping for the drive into Midnight Mass, and being thankful that Christ's Advent, neither the first nor the second, depends on my being ready for it.
Thank you for the recommendations; I agree that THE Christmas story is hard to compete with, which makes it remarkable that they were able to make such a dud of a movie about it (not that I have actually seen The Nativity, but I've seen enough to know that I need see no more).
It's not that I mind the National Lampoon vacation movies so much as it's just not quite five and six year old fare. However, I will take Stan & Ollie over Chevy Chase if given the choice.
Best to you and the Eldest but Prodigal Daughter of the Church; may she soon return so that the Father might slaughter His fattest calf for her.
Merry Christmas, everyone. Midnight Mass was wonderful and I forget how spoilt I am to live in a place where it is so easily accessible (10 minutes on foot for that matter...).
Veal is good, but quail and foie gras will do fine for today.
Several caveats: Hannukah is not about the killing of Gentiles, qua Gentiles, but the cleansing of the Temple following its desecration by Antiochus. A bit of revisionism that is beneath you. Also, most of the problems with Christmas is not with Christmas but how it is celebrated by the culture. I would recommend your friend Doug Wilson's new book 'God Rest You Merry,' Canon Press. He answers some of the problems we all have with our culture, but in a manner that allows us to redeem its observance without becoming gnostic. Thanks for your always bracing commentary.
Give (back) to the heathens what belong to the heathens.
December 25 used to be their holiday , the birthday of the sun-god in late Rome
or the yule festival off the German pagans.
In my opinion is it time to give to the modern heathens their 12/25 back , including
the Santa Claus idol, the crappy sentimentalism , the hollyweird movies, the
Christmas three, "jingle bells" and so on.
The old Church used to celebrate Christmas on January 6 , most orthodox Churches
on January 7 (which is December 25 julian calendar). In my opinion western Christians
can follow these examples and pick January 6 or 7 to commemorate the birth of God the Son.
Best regards,
MT Depré.
DR. Fleming,
Just a reminder that, as of 12/27, you're under attack over at Mr. Auster's site.
Chanukah has undergone a transition. Once an obscure unnoticed festival, it has been glorified as the alternative to Christmas, rather as secular Christmas has displaced Easter. There are, of course, two sides to the historical events commemorated. Please recall that Judaea had been a province of the Persian Empire, which was conquered by Alexander the Great, whose successor Antiochus Epiphanes was. Every imperial power values order and peace, and this peace was frequently disturbed by the conflicts of Jews with each other and with their neighbors. Regarded by most of his contemporaries as a wise and humane ruler, Antiochus retaliated intemperately against the troublesome Jews and inspired a national uprising whose main result was to transfer authority from Macedonian kings to the Romans, whose intervention the Jews requested.
Later they would compound the problem by inviting Pompey the Great to intervene in a dispute over the selection of the high priest. Under Nero, they unfairly demanded jurisdiction over cities that had been founded as Greek communities, and when the decision went against them, they were conquered by Vespasian and Titus. Finally, they made the mistake of staging another rebellion against the peace-loving Hadrian and the result was expulsion from Jerusalem and its environs. By the way, Vespasian and Hadrian were not responsible for the diaspora. By the best calculations of Jewish scholars, a majority of Jews, at the time of the Incarnation, already lived outside the Holy Land, and Babylonia and Egypt were the true centers of Jewish culture where Judaism was transformed. Jacob Neusner, a former contributing editor to Chronicles, has written very perceptively about the reinvention of Judaism in the age of Theodosius.
The prophets repeatedly warned their people against the folly of playing power politics against great powers like the Assyrians, but their wisdom was ignored. To go back to Chanukah, the reconsecration of the temple takes place at the end of the killing of the Macedonians/Greeks who were, after all, representatives of legitimate government. Personally, I nearly always incline to the side of the little peoples crushed by empires and I salute the courage and grit of the Maccabees. (One of them, by the way, re-Judaized Galilee, not an insignificant act as far as Christians are concerned.) Nonetheless, it is sometimes useful to know more history that can be learned by reading myth and propaganda.
Oh dear, attacked by Mr. Auster, the fellow who used to write me impudent letters until I took to returning them unopened but inside a second envelope. If Nietzsche was right to say he was proud of all the enemies he had made (Wilamowitz, Wagner, et al), this news is truly an embarrassment.
The Maccabees have a good reputation in Catholic culture, though: 1 and 2 Maccabees are part of the Catholic canon, the Maccabean-era martyrs had a feast in the traditional calendar (uniquely among Old Testament saints), and Jesus Himself seems to have celebrated Hanukkah (John 10:22).
Dr. Fleming, you have spoken of the story of Maccabees on these pages before, and let me thank you for re-telling it here during Christmastide. Without downplaying the real cultural and spiritual chasm between Christianity and the system today known as "Judaism," I do think the story has important significance during Advent, above all because it is a fascinating story that helps us reflect on the state of the world in the last years before the coming of Christ - and likewise on the state of our own hearts before we let Christ in.
As we consider your observation that "[t]he prophets repeatedly warned their people against the folly of playing power politics against great powers like the Assyrians, but their wisdom was ignored" and remark that these follies nevertheless allowed events to unroll so perfectly as to fulfill that indispensable mission for which the Israelites had been raised up as a nation, to bring Our Lord into the world, we can see yet again how the history of the Old Testament prefigured the history of the Church that became the history of our own peoples.
I cannot remember who said so (I will look it up when I get home), but to paraphrase and expand a bit, here goes. Critics of the Church are quick to point out the human failings of the men charged with Her guard. Throughout the millennia the human element in the Church has thwarted the divine in the temporal sphere, yet the divine element has used these human follies to help the Church achieve Her transcendent and perennial destiny.
Happy New Year from Tallinn Airport.
Refutation and war is all some people know reaching, reaching, ever not grasping, the indeterminate is what is potentially but not actually. Always doing so in the interest of 'peace', and in such blather over the indeterminate they 'think' they are talking about what is, when in fact they are talking about what is not. If only they knew some actual history. Always refreshing your historical tours Dr. Fleming, especially when in juxtaposition with what has otherwise been rewritten down the memory hole, in behalf of (you guessed it) the indeterminate. Cudos. Not surprisingly some of that ilk always manage to profit from the 'indeterminate', sadly an everlasting (in this world so far) pet. The also imperfect actual ain't so bad, and especially by comparison. Ah, if only we at least remembered that in noticing the difference. I suppose we can hope, maybe next year. (humor) ... In the meantime sadly again, instead of in balance mommy reigns supreme. Ouch. Happy New year anyway to you!