Why You Can’t Have Christmas
Brenda Lee sang a Christmas classical called “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and everything changed. Well, not really. Christmas was lost long before Brenda Lee’s complicity in degrading it. But her song strikes me as sort of an anti-icon.
Christmas used to be the celebration of a historical/spiritual event - of the ultimate validation of both the world of matter and the world of spirit. Thoughtful people realized that the only solution to the dualistic, fragmented worldview of the pagan world had been supplied. The little baby in the manger, the little child on his mother’s lap, reaching up to play with her hair, to press his hand against her smooth skin on her chin, wrapping his hands around her fingers, had brought deity and spirit to earth and had declared, once again, that the creation was good. So good, in fact, that He came to redeem it.
For 12 days the church would celebrate the coming of Her redeemer and the world’s, beginning with the Christ eucharist or Christmas, and ending with the feast of Epiphany on Twelfth Night.
But some time ago, the church lost its place as the religious center of our culture and the state took its place. This began, I would guess, with Henry VIII. I can’t think of anybody before him who would have had the gall to declare himself, the head of state, as the head of the church. From his time to this, separation of church and state has always meant dominance of the church by the state. And the state has incrementally weakened the church by substituting its secular feasts and days off for the Holy Days of the church. So far as I can tell, protestantism never had much of a response to this usurpation, until today not much is left of protestantism but informal associations and minimalist messages.
Most of the feasts of the church year are long since abandoned. The modern would consider most of them a bizarre use of one’s time. After all, why would you celebrate the coming of an angel to a virgin in Nazareth with any special recognition when you could be watching a football game or playing playstation or making a buck. Get your head on straight!
And Christ’s baptism?! A feast to celebrate the commissioning of the Messiah! Take a day off to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday or the accomplishments of the labor unions, but don’t undercut our economy by troubling us with remembering a fellow being baptized.
Ah, but Christmas. That’s a special day. It involves a baby, a silent night, tenderandmildness, no crib for a bed. It means little children in their bathrobes celebrating cuteness. It means all the Scrooges in the world coming to their senses and the hearts of all the Grinches growing three sizes. It’s the ultimate feel-good holiday. Everybody is happy on Christmas day!
In fact, this year Christmas is on a Sunday. I hope we don’t have to interfere with our traditions: opening gifts, Christmas breakfast, football games in the afternoon. I hope I won’t have to go to church! Imagine that! Church on Christmas day. Who do those pastors think they are? What are they doing scheduling church on a national holiday!?
Companion is a Latin term - it means, essentially, “one with whom I share bread.” We are a hollow people because we have stopped feasting, because we don’t share bread except occasionally in private. We’ll have a party, but we won’t feast. We have buddies, but no companions. We’d never make too big a deal out of the blessedness of Christmas, though we want to keep it. But we can’t have it and we already don’t. All we can do now is rock around the Christmas tree.