This Christmas thing, for Christians, is an exercise in dealing with intellectual conflict, expecially for "low church" Protestants, which the CGGC was when it grooved before it began to putrify.
The question is, what do you do with the tension between biblical truth that provides no authority for the celebration of the birth of Jesus as a Holy Day, the, originally Catholic, yearning to sacramentalize and liturgize the birth of the Messiah and focus it on the activity of the clergy inside a so-called sanctuary and Xmas as an excuse to engage in excessive materialism.
What many Christians do these days is, I think thoughtlessly, approach these options as if they are choices in a smorgasbord and gorge themselves with as much of what they want to consume as they can until they become ill.
Others attempt to be purists in one way or another.
During my CGGC parish priest days, we had a family leave the church because it displayed a Christmas tree because the tree is pagan fertility symbol. The people of the church just rolled their eyes in disdain, certainly not brotherly love. Their response was, essentially, that they wanted to have the tree. Period. The tree was pretty and, really, who gives a dern if it has no Christian meaning and even has, no pun intended, roots in pagan religion.
And, as I've detailed here, I attempt what I think is a more pure form of purism.
The people who left the church accepted Christmas as a Holy Day. They simply wanted to keep true to the biblical story.
I, in my mind, want to be truly pure. I want to truly be biblical. There was no celebration of the nativity among New Testament disciples. I see no reason to make a Holy Day out of it now. So, I don't.
We love Xmas. But, even then, we Jesusize it. We temper the materialism and almost all of it is devoted to giving to the least of these. (Evie and I had a budget of $10 in spending on each other. )
We met with family doing goofy, Sloat-humor things and eating favorite foods. And we experienced joy. I haven't laughed that hard since, well, last Xmas Eve! Today, we'll take leftovers to mom and dad and eat sandwiches and laugh again and wonder if this will be the last time.
We may pray this time, rejoicing in family, but in not Baby Jesus. And, we will laugh with Xmas joy.
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The problem with the smorgasbord approch is that it is fuzzy, thoughtless and, in the end, worse than meaningless. It teaches nothing.
In fact, it confuses.
Repent.
Well, I was right about yesterday with mom and dad and the rest of the family. We did pray and, because I am the family chaplain, I did the job. There was no mention of baby Jesus but the giving of thanks for family love and for the love and, well, the leadership of mom and dad over the decades.
ReplyDeleteWe had a wonderful time.
Dad was very confused and he wasn't really sure of who I, in particular, was. But, he responded to being called dad, though I believe that he now thinks that his name is Dad.
My parents are very cute. In many ways, they are childlike. Evie bought boxes of Russell Stover candy for them to give as gifts on Christmas. The problem is that she did it just after Thanksgiving and, by Christmas, mom and dad had eaten and shared it all so she had to buy more. Dad, in particular, ate more than his share of candy again yesterday. At his age, though, I think he's earned the right.
I had a wonderful time but, as I said, in the back of my mind, I was wondering if this would be the last time.
If it was, we went out on top!