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The Year The Holidays Were Canceled: Being At Home in the World The Reverend Mark Edmiston-Lange, December 11, 2005 Richard Ganulin of Cincinnati, Ohio is seeking to have Christmas deleted from the list of official holidays of the United States Government. He rather correctly points out that of the official holidays recognized by the Federal Government, Christmas stands alone as a religious commemoration. It is not like Memorial Day, Labor Day, or Martin Luther King Day. Thus, he has sued the Federal Court to delist Christmas. Anyone want to give me some odds on his chance of success? Even the ACLU is not providing him any assistance. His is pretty much a one man crusade. But just in case, Jerry Falwell, safely occupying a different part of the American spiritual spectrum, has initiated what he calls the “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign.” His legal wing, the “Liberty Counsel” will sue any organization, particularly schools, that seem reluctant to sing Christmas carols. Parents across the nation have been notified to alert the Liberty Counsel if they detect such aversions. And another group, the American Family Association, has called for a boycott of Target because they claim that the retailer has intentionally replaced “Merry Christmas” with “Happy Holidays” thereby dissing Christians. Ho, ho ho. If America was a family, it would clearly be dysfunctional. Maybe these different campaigns really do reflect some traditions of Christmas—family feuding, disappointment, despair. In some ways December is to the calendar what Jerusalem is to geography. There is so much going on, so many different and competing interests, so much intensity, that infitada, not fa la la la, may be closer to what this season feels like. Considering all the trouble, the hoopla and hype, the expense and the waistline’s expanse, might we just cancel the holiday(s) and go about our business? After all, Christmas was not always celebrated in the United States. Alabama was the first in the United States to declare that Christmas was a holiday. The year—1836. During those years, in some other states, the overarching culture was not nearly so jolly. If you missed work in Massachusetts on December 25, 1836 you were promptly fired—for popery. In fact, the beginning of the work day on December 25 was deliberately set two hours earlier, 5:00 AM, just to make sure the employee did not sneak off to church before they came to work. And if you missed school, you were declared a truant and expelled. Those Puritans were a pretty tough lot. It would take another seventy years before Christmas was declared a holiday in all the then existing states of the union. Oklahoma, which in this case was later rather than sooner, finally came around in 1907. Christmas is, in fact, a lot like my grandmother. My grandmother, my father’s mother, arrived in the United States, New York City to be exact, as a refugee from Ireland in the late 1890s. My grandfather was a refugee from Hamburg, Germany a few years later. They met, married, forming an improbable dour German/gushing Irish pair. We did not find out until she had died that she was four years older than she had claimed in public. She had not wanted to be older than her husband so she shaved off the four years. Well it turns out that Jesus was more than likely born in the year 4 BC—not the year 0. Somebody shaved off four years—but not intentionally. The Roman abbot Dionysus Exiguus set the date in the 6th century without the benefit of modern astronomical and historical records. If he had access to that information he would have known that Herod died four years before the date that Dionysus Exiguus believed Jesus was born. Apparently there was a lunar eclipse which occurred just before Herod’s death, and we can tell, even two thousand years later, the exact date of that lunar eclipse—March 13, 4 BCE to be exact. Obviously, Jesus must have been born sometime before that event because the nativity stories all state that Jesus came into this world while Herod was still alive. Scholars have further deduced that all things equal, Jesus was more likely born in January or February. But the Bishop of Rome in the 4th century adopted December 25 as a way of counteracting Mithraism, which was very popular and the principal competitor to the early Christian sect in those centuries. December 25 was already a Roman pagan holiday, and had already been adopted by Mithraism as the date of their savior’s birth. This move was very shrewd on the part of the Roman ecclesiastical officials—kind of a “my savior is better than your savior” joust. They must have known that people would soon realize they sounded incredibly silly singing, “We wish you a merry Mithmas” instead of, “We wish you a merry Christmas.” Thus over time, Mithraism became one more religion in the dust heap of human culture. My point, and there is a point to this exposition so far, is to cause us to think a little bit more about the ingenuity of human beings. In this particular case, great consternation can sometimes arise in disputes about a holiday whose details are almost entirely fabricated. We know one thing, Jesus was born. As to when, where, what happened, stable or not, shepherds or not—these things we do not and cannot know in the typical historical sense. As to what it means that he was born? H’mm. Actually we might attribute some certainty to the gifts of the Magi. Consider, are frankincense and myrrh appropriate baby gifts? Gold maybe. But incense? They sound like guy gifts bought at the last moment when the only store that was open was Honest Ahab’s Incense Shop. (I must thank that gifted theologian Dave Barry for this last insight.) But move beyond the nativity story and think about the centuries of behaviors. Every age and so many different cultures have added details, the real origins of which are lost and new meanings found, which meanings are in time thought to be essential. If you celebrate Christmas in your home and you have a five year old child—you will have a Christmas tree. This is not an option. More conservative Christian communities sometimes launch “Jesus, the reason for the season!” campaigns but they cannot put a dent in the vast amount of seasonal behaviors which are purely pagan in origin. It might be interesting to ponder what the nativity stories would be like if they had been composed by people from someplace other than the middle east. If the authors had come from a northern European culture there would have been an evergreen in the stable and Joseph and Mary would have been kissing under some mistletoe. Over my own lifetime I have built up an extensive catalog of things that I associate with the season. Some of the items are public in nature, I share them with others. Some of the items are unique to my own family and only we know the meanings that are connected with each artifact and memory. Still other items are purely personal, reflecting my own personality and circumstance as I encounter these hectic days of December. This collection includes things which are very sweet, such as people’s faces lit by candlelight in a sanctuary as we sing Silent Night. There is also the deliciously inane elements such as Grandma Got Run Over By Some Reindeer and the dogs barking out Jingle Bells. When I was a child, and you visited our home when we were decorating our Christmas tree, you would have been amazed by the skirmishes between my two brothers and I as to who would get to hang one single ornament, a cobalt blue glass deer, only as large as a child’s hand, but ripe with meaning none-the-less. It had been an ornament on my mother’s father’s tree, and who ever found it first in the box of ornaments wrapped in tissue paper thought themselves to be especially blessed. In what way? We never knew. But the ornament was wondrous, imbued with the sense of carrying on an important family tradition. When the blue deer appeared, everyone would stop, become hushed, as the lucky child lifted it as high as he could, being ever so careful to make sure it hung securely and would not drop to the ground. I suspect that if it had fallen, our family would have come unglued and Christmas would have turned into a disaster. Well, maybe it wouldn’t have been that tough a circumstance to overcome. But perhaps you get the feeling of how much meaning we impute to things, which in of themselves, are perhaps not quite that meaningful. These details of what we individually require in order to feel festive are unique in some ways to our own situation, but what is not unique is that we each act, more or less, this way. Whether it is Christmas, or Hanukkah, or any celebration in any year, by any people in any place there are certain foods, certain activities, that seem to be necessary ingredients for the festivity to be considered a success. Take away the required foods, take away the favorite activities, and a holiday becomes decidedly less joyous, less seemingly profound, less a holiday and more a chore. On some level it may seem that we are asking an awful lot from the universe that such tenuous and arbitrarily contrived details be the vehicle by which delight in a festivity becomes possible. Does it strike you as odd that happiness depends upon the possibility of suspending a cobalt blue glass deer upon an evergreen? You might think that is merely the way a child looks upon the season. But what are your requirements? Are they any more defensible, or sensible? Maybe not. One thing is quite clear, human beings have a very strong propensity to impute such meanings to little things. This talent crosses all boundaries, all faiths, all nationalities. That is, the behavior itself is well nigh universal. We probably could not, even if we wanted to, try to stop the practice of seeing meaning in all the little things that go on in holiday behaviors. And it probably wouldn’t make a single bit of difference to point out that, in of themselves, glass baubles, candlelight, et al do not in of themselves have nearly as much meaning as we insist they do. Do you think that if we really could tell when Jesus actually was born that Christians would say, “Oops, guess we’ll do the holiday in February.” I sincerely doubt it. Some particulars may change from one year to the next, but in general, our need for these particulars does not go away. The depth of the meaning we impute becomes even more prominent in those terrible years when we may have lost someone we loved, and the emptiness in our hearts is immensely magnified by the holiday rituals. Given that this is a universal human behavior, what is it then that we as human beings are doing? We may say we are celebrating Eid, or Pesach, or Christmas or New Years or the Solstice, or Divali or Kobo Daishi. In all probability we are all doing something very similar. In all likelihood we are decorating our universe and repeating refrains in the silence as a way of asking for answers to some very similar and not terribly unusual questions. These are questions which we are reluctant to ask out loud, in part because they are all, in a sense, rhetorical questions. We already know answers we know we want to hear. But the part we can’t bear? We are far less certain about the answers we’ll receive. So we hang the bauble on the tree, we light the candle, make the pilgrimage, cook up a storm, in each case, in every land, by every person, hoping to garner a sense that we really will get what we want. And I am not referring to presents per se. We hope to decorate our world in such a fashion that it is transformed into the kind of place where our deepest dreams are possible. We hope to discern that the big and somewhat overwhelming world in which we find ourselves is in fact a place that is habitable, hospitable and that we and those we love are not just chunks of random stuff. We hope to learn that our efforts are not in vain, that what we want matters. We hope to hear back from the universe news that our loved ones are safe, even better than safe, that they are happy. We lift a song up into the thin air, hang a light as high as we can. It’s as if we are saying, “Believe it, if you dare, that love and peace and joy are entirely possible. Can’t you see it, there, in that light, can’t you feel it in that song? It’s real! I promise!” If these are indeed the questions and answers that all the lights and prayers and baubles are about, you can see why people hang onto them so fiercely. These are very important questions. Unitarian Universalists often feel some confusion about what to do with holidays—particularly the big massive cultural events like Christmas. Unitarian Universalists are often of two minds, one willing to debunk, the other willing to indulge. We can be nostalgic, longing to repeat things that have meant much to us before, even if we are not sure what they might mean to us now. We wonder, is it alright to sing about a babe in a manger when we know the story is a fabrication? And if I’m Jewish, am I betraying someone by celebrating Christmas, if I’m Christian am I betraying someone by celebrating Hanukkah? Maybe one way out of the confusion lays in understanding that while the holidays are specific to individuals, faiths, and cultures, the human reality behind the need for holiday making is universal. And from that perspective, how could any of us feel reluctant about participating in and supporting anyone’s deep, and our own deep, desire to conjure up answers to the important and inevitable questions of our mortality? Is our world the kind of place where our deepest dreams are possible? Are our efforts are not in vain? Does what we want matter? Are our loved ones safe, even better than safe, are they happy? I would be willing to light any kind of candle, sing any kind of song, make any kind of pilgrimage if I thought doing so would make even the slightest difference. So given any kind of chance to lend a hand in making our big universe a little more hospitable, I would urge you to sing with enthusiasm, dine with gusto. Light that light, and be a light unto the world. |
