Christmas has become a treasured and beloved American icon. At this time of the year, how many of you fondly think back to your childhood and recall many precious memories of those times? I know I do. I still look forward to it: the true meaning of Christmas, the decorations, the aroma of Christmas cookies, the presents, the delicious feast, and the getting together with family–some of whom we may have argued with in the past, but at this time of the year, we seem to put it all behind us. We even become friendlier with strangers, don’t we? It’s a wondrous time of year.
Now isn’t that special? This person speaks of the “True Meaning of Christmas” without actually talking about Christ. He talks about “celebrating the birth of Christ” stripped of the life of that Jesus. The ‘meaning’ of Christmas one would assume goes beyond the the literal roots of the word —which is what much of this hoopla is about. What is worth some HOOPLA is the “celebration” of the birth.
The above quote reveals the depth to which these surface, empty attacks at the “secular liberal menace” which is but an echo of the hollow ring the utterance of the name “Jesus” has when it is combined with an uncritical acceptance of the forces of nationalism, war, and “capitalist euphoria” of this “Season”. The quotation identifies Jesus with the trappings of a culture. What makes this whole thing complicated is that here and there, families and Christmas do intersect with church, and actual acts of kindness and mercy, and that all of this is mixed together in memories from our childhood, and numerous experiences with those gatherings where people were genuinely happy to be with one another.
But to see this “fight over Christmas” without so much of an appeal to the actual person or teachings of Jesus, a nd see signs in yards that say “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” (yes, it’s back again this year, this time without the accompanying Bush/Cheney sign— and I shudder when I see it, knowing that there are only certain selected “attributes” of “Christmas” (just occurred to me that there’s not a lot of attention to the other part of the literal word: Mass. the Celbration which is uniquely the observance of the church, which is a trans-national, attached-to-no-other-Kingdom community— and a recognition of the announcement of the birth of Christ “Peace on Earth”. As Daniel Bell affirms in Liberation Theology at the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering”, the announcement is not to be an easy “assent” to the “importance” of Jesus, but a giving of our very lives to the realities which he announced with his coming: The Kingdom of God has come.