12-21-15<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about you, but along about Thanksgiving time I start getting really tired of Christmas. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I have anything against religious holidays. But Christmas is not really a religious holiday any more. This will not be a message about how Hallmark Cards and Rudolph and Santa\u2019s elves and striped candy canes have overtaken Christmas. Or the rush of parties and presents and cookies overtaking the \u201cmeaning\u201d of Christmas. We say that each Christmas\u2026 and every next Christmas too.<\/p>\n
This will not be a message complaining about those things. Oh. Wait. I already have. Well, it won\u2019t be a message about those things alone. <\/p>\n
It seems, year after year, that those traditional (?) complaints have been distilled to a new bitterness. Now Christmas also is a political holiday; more political than the way America celebrates the Fourth of July these days. A holiday that is so \u201cinclusive\u201d that it includes everything; therefore, nothing. Things that were once sacred, whether foundational to the culture or intensely personal, have been sacrificed on the altar of Political Correctness. <\/p>\n
As our society has been spared the litany of beloved carols of the season in schools and public places, I will spare you the litany of crude attacks on our \u201cfree exercise\u201d of religion; and the successful \u201cabridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble\u2026\u201d by courts, legislatures, the press, schools, and the entertainment-industrial complex. There. You have been spared.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time the New Totalitarians in our midst rejected charges that they engaged in many and varied forms of prior censorship and bigotry. Now, rather, they boast about such things. <\/p>\n
Christians have been reduced to defending displays in public parks and shopping malls and maintaining that YES \u2013 Santa Claus and red-and-green ribbons ARE symbols of Christianity. Fine. I wonder how close we are to seeing mainstream churches, in the spirit of \u201cwelcoming\u201d \u201ccompromise,\u201d will suffer the little children to believe that it was the Easter Bunny who was nailed to the cross. <\/p>\n
When Christmas and its essential theological centrality becomes no longer a \u201choly day,\u201d and a mere holiday, in our culture, it becomes the least necessary holiday. We can, after all — and should — hug children and celebrate family every day. That’s not what Christmas “is about.” <\/p>\n
But what can we, the remnant, do to salvage our spiritual self-respect? Sure: free ourselves of the fetish of wrapping paper, cartoon specials, and annoying secular seasonal songs \u2013 not necessarily in that order. We can reinforce the lessons that largely survived as artwork on Sunday-school bulletins: <\/p>\n
That we give gifts because God\u2019s greatest gift \u2013 the Lord Himself incarnate \u2013 is thereby honored;<\/p>\n
That Jesus could have come as a King in the clouds, but instead was a baby lain in a dirty manger from which animals ate, is a reminder to be humble;<\/p>\n
That innumerable threads of prophecy, from many times and many places, written by many hands, were all fulfilled in Jesus\u2019 birth;<\/p>\n
That countless MIRACLES \u2013 not poetic convergence or imputations of wisdom \u2013 occurred that day, that week, in that place, to those people; and to us;<\/p>\n
That sinful humanity, unable to reconcile itself before a Holy God, was graced with a Person, a plan, to redeem itself, receive eternal forgiveness, and embrace the Savior of their souls.<\/p>\n
Those are the elements of the Christmas story. \u201cOh, yes, we know,\u201d people absent-mindedly might say, as they put a David Bowie Xmas CD in the car player. \u201cChestnuts Roasting,\u201d indeed.<\/p>\n
The best observances and celebration of the Christmas story would be for households and churches to shift it, and tell parts of it in, say, May, July, and October. To listen to Handel\u2019s \u201cMessiah\u201d at Eastertime \u2013 it is about the Savior\u2019s entire life, after all. Let\u2019s exchange gifts at Pentecost, and contemplate God\u2019s spiritual gifts that He offers. Or, at any time of the year, gather to buy or make and wrap gifts\u2026 and send them to needy neighbors or foreign missions. And so forth.<\/p>\n
The Christmas holiday is one that many scholars (not Orthodox scholars) believe is arbitrarily observed on December 25, perhaps an early-church marketing ploy to attract pagans on one of their holy days. I have no problem with marketing ploys, in that case, if they draw upon, meaningfully observe, and point to the Savior.<\/p>\n
In that sense our Christmas is perhaps the most superfluous of the church\u2019s holidays. The Person of the Christ, His moment of birth as God-with-us, was the nexus of history. In the baby Jesus all that was before, everything that had been prophesied, all the miracles and teachings, the scourging, crucifixion, sacrifice, Resurrection, and Ascension, were manifest. The Creator of the Universe became flesh and dwelt among us. The Hope of humankind came to us as a baby who would be able to identify with our needs, hurts, temptations, joys, and sorrows.<\/p>\n
It does seem unnecessary, and perhaps should be redundant, that we reserve \u201cChristmas Day\u201d to think on these things. More than any other holiday, the entire sweep of the Bible coalesces here. Too often we let it become \u201conly\u201d on December 25. Yes, Jesus came as a baby; but to freeze that image in amber \u2013 or in snow globes \u2013 can cause us to forget that Jesus grew up! From a manger to a throne to our hearts. <\/p>\n
Oh, it is good marketing to choose a day to remember Christ\u2019s birth; or so we hope. To write meaningful hymns, at least before they are overtaken by jingles and reindeer songs. <\/p>\n
But it is a sin to compartmentalize the Incarnation. Let us observe, contemplate, and celebrate it every day of the year. We don\u2019t need a \u201chook\u201d to remember what \u201cChristmas\u201d is all about. In that sense Dec 25 is the least necessary of our holidays.<\/p>\n
+ + + <\/p>\n
Music Video:<\/b><\/p>\n
I want to take you back as far as we can travel, musically, to the worship of Jesus\u2019 time and place. <\/p>\n
It is not known exactly when this Hymn of the Nativity (Christmas Troparion and Kontakion) was written, but it was a mere few centuries after the life of Christ on earth. It is from the early Byzantine era, although not from Byzantium (Constantinople, present-day Istanbul), and its words are Greek of the time. They exist too in Syriac and Aramaic (Aram being another name of Syria), and other local and ancient tongues. These primitive tropes are what early music sounded like, in the Middle East, and into Europe.<\/p>\n
I choose this not only for its historic or informative function this Christmas, although interesting enough. But the changes I refer to in the essay, our culture\u2019s onslaught on Christian traditions, are made evident by this music, and the images \u2013 look at the the images! (They are all labeled at the end of the clip.)<\/p>\n
A few short years ago, the world took note of persecution against Christians in totalitarian states like China and North Korea. Christianity was proscribed in Muslim, Hindu, atheist, animist, and Communist societies. But today, many thousands of Christians are being slaughtered every year. Tortured, raped, crucified, beheaded. Threatened with death if they do not renounce Christ. Forced from homes by the millions. <\/p>\n
Some of those homes and their church communities go back to the times immediately following Jesus\u2019 ministry. For the first time in history, often, these communities of believers are being martyred, \u201ccleansed\u201d from their 2000-year-old homelands. Do we know? Do we care? Sadly, many of these people are being as betrayed and forgotten by the church, as Jesus was by his \u201cfriends\u201d at Crucifixion. <\/p>\n
Our president does logical contortions to explain away Islamic radicalism in our midst. Yet persecuted Christians around the world receive scant notice from our government. Islamic refugees are welcome; displaced Christians are not. A sin.<\/p>\n
These are people from Christ\u2019s time and place; and the music video here shows sites and churches and shrines from those times and places \u2013 birthplaces of Christianity. Here are images of the mighty ruins of Petra (where the Wise Men reportedly stopped on their journey); from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem; significant sites in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan; the West Bank. Places where Jesus walked. Now being swept of Christianity.<\/p>\n
Be filled with wonder; and with sorrow. And be reminded of our heritage. Have a blessed Christ\u2019s Mass.<\/p>\n