Last Christmas Post (I promise)

Heck, I know Christmas is long past and the whole debate about putting Christ back in Christmas and all that (the Christmas "culture war") has been mothballed for another 11 months or so (only to be brought out again next year in a debate as ritualized as live Natitivities at the megachurch down the road), but I just had to point out this hilarious post posted on Dec. 20 over at Missions Misunderstood.

Is it a “win” for Christians if secular businesses say “Merry Christmas?” Is that part of our mission on this earth? Is a coerced profession of Christmas our mission? I’m no expert in degrees of God-honor, but “If you don’t say Christmas we’ll go elsewhere to buy the Chinese-made junk we don’t need” doesn’t seem like it’d be that high on the list.

The post is titled, God Is Most Glorified When Wal-Mart Says Merry Christmas. Gotta love it.

heh.

Christmas is to Hollywood what a bank is to a crook.

Terry Teachout

Thoughts on a Christmas Morning

If every Christian in America removed themselves to, say, the Australian outback, would the remaining Americans still celebrate Christmas?

Of course they would. Culturally speaking, Christmas has grown far beyond its Christian roots. We Christians might wish it were otherwise, but the cultural holiday we call Christmas does not belong to us alone. Not any more. In fact, I would say it is not particularly Christian at all. In defense of this assertion, I call to the dock Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and John "And-so-this-is-Christmas" Lennon.

American Christmas, at once glorious and schlocky, is a cultural phenomenon that is not driven by Christians, not defined by Christians, not guided or controlled by Christians. It is defined and driven to a large extent by marketers, who happen to have their finger on a deep longing in the human spirit. Perhaps we should say that cultural Christmas is ultimately defined by this longing. It is a longing that preceded even the "first Christmas," going all the way back, I suppose, to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden.

As further evidence, if any is needed, I submit to you a stack of popular Christmas songs a mile high, many of which I'm quite fond of myself. According to these, Christmas is all about gift-giving, snowflakes, going back to the old homestead, sleigh rides, etc. Even though most Americans live in places where snow is infrequent, images of muffler-wrapped carolers in the snow seem never out of place, because they touch something in us deeper than weather. Most of all these songs display a generalized nostalgia for the way we think things used to be. A desire to turn back. A longing for reunion.

Here we are as in olden days / happy golden days of yore.

Again, the evidence: a zillion greeting cards with Currier & Ives-like imagery of small towns, horse drawn buggies, gaslit streets, snowbound cottages in the country, etc. We want to fade into a charming nineteenth century lithograph of an idealized pre-industrial America. These images were already nostalgia-laden in Currier & Ives' time!

In the end it is innocence we long for, and innocence we almost seem to capture, if only for a moment, in the cloud of images and wishes that together coalesce around our Christmas celebrations. This is a deep and steady longing in all of us, I'm convinced.

And that's why Christmas now is more than a Christian holiday, like it or not. Its non-religious aspect has proven to have remarkable staying power. Cultural heft, you might say. That's why it seems foolish, in my opinion, for Christians to protest, "but Jesus is the reason for the season!" The reason for both the Christian Christmas and the cultural Christmas are ultimately the same: the understanding that we have lost our way.

We have lost our way. Everyone knows that. Christmas, however it is celebrated, reveals a recognition of this, and it is the starting place for understanding the why and the wherefore of Jesus. Why he came, why he lived the way he lived and did the things he did, and why he died the way he died.

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

[Update: See also Peter Berger's defense of commercialized Christmas.]

We Three Kings

My favorite Christmas carol, played on some really cool drums.

Shepherds

I doubt that shepherd boys in the ancient world were inclined to expect, in the middle of the lonely Galileean night, the glory of the Lord shining all around them, and the voice of an angel making highly improbable claims. That phrase, the glory of the Lord, it stands for what we cannot imagine, like the term googleplex, or before time began. But there it was, filling the near longest night of the year with an unimaginable light, for only a gaggle of tired shepherd boys to see. The boys are no doubt scared stiff. Then the glory of the Lord speaks! Something about a child. Something about a manger. Something about a child in a manger being the messiah of the Lord. So when it's all over and the night is again still and dark and the stars remote and the hillside quiet once more, the boys agree to go looking for this child, testing the possibly-fantasized angel's unlikely prediction.

So then, single file down the long winding goat path to the sleeping village under the stars, and then the going from stable to stable through the town--if their master had caught them at this midnight roaming there would have been hell to pay for sure--and at last they find what they hardly dared expect. A mother and father. A new born baby. Just as the voice from the brightness shining all around had said.

So this is what the hinge-point of history looks like. A handful of runaway shepherds, a homeless family sheltering in a stable, on the near-longest night of the year, in an out-of-the-way town, under the shadow of empire. And from this immensity and this mystery the shepherds, lost for words, must eventually walk away. What on earth have they seen? What have they heard? All they can really know is that from now on nothing else matters, but the dawn light winking over a secret horizon.

Christmas should be disturbing?

Sinclair Ferguson, writing for Ligonier Ministries, has penned a timely article called Santa Christ? Now, you know me. I've grown pretty damn ruthless about this travesty they call Christmas. I'm for eliminating the commercial aspect of Christmas altogether (if only one could!), and for scotching the whole Santa Claus tradition while we're at it. That's right. The trite and sentimental iconic representation of the Christmas spirit is really the front-man for our culture's direct assault on what Christmas really means, an assault which is entirely motivated by the acquisitive instinct at its most ruthlessly organized level.

But read Ferguson:

There is, therefore, an element in the Gospel narratives that stresses that the coming of Jesus is a disturbing event of the deepest proportions. It had to be thus, for He did not come merely to add something extra to life, but to deal with our spiritual insolvency and the debt of our sin. He was not conceived in the womb of Mary for those who have done their best, but for those who know that their best is "like filthy rags" (Isa. 64:6)--far from good enough--and that in their flesh there dwells no good thing (Rom. 7:18). He was not sent to be the source of good experiences, but to suffer the pangs of hell in order to be our Savior.

The Christians who first began to celebrate the birth of the Savior saw this. Christmas for them was not (contrary to what is sometimes mistakenly said) simply adding a Christian veneer to a pagan festival--the Roman Saturnalia. They may have been doing what many Christians have done in marking Reformation Day (which happens to fall on Halloween), namely, committing themselves to a radical alternative to the world's Saturnalia, refusing to be squeezed into its mold. They were determined to fix mind, heart, will, and strength exclusively on the Lord Jesus Christ. There was no confusion in their thinking between the world and the gospel, Saturnalia and Christmas, Santa Jesus and Christ Jesus. They were citizens of another empire altogether.

And this:

The truth is that unless the significance of what Christ did at the first Christmas shakes us, we can scarcely be said to have understood much of what it means, or of who He really is.

So, have a very disturbing Christmas, one and all!

[HT: Joshua Otte]

"From the Shadow Lands into the Light of Christ"

Ove at Gospel Coalition there's an article by J. V. Fesko on one of my favorite hymns, O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Andy uses the hymn as his example of the real meaning of Christmas. Two snips:

As people sing this hymn they assuredly know that they are singing about the birth of Christ. However, what is striking about this hymn is its approach to unpacking the birth of Christ. It moves from the shadow lands of the Old Testament into the light of the New Testament with the revelation of God in Christ. This hymn traces the themes of Israel’s exodus to the eschatological, or final, exodus that was to begin with the birth of the Messiah.

And:

When we contemplate the birth of Christ, we must not do so in terms of some sort of saccharine tale about an infant king born to bring the world some joy—to give some glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy place. When we think of the birth of Christ we should also not get caught up in the seasonal sentimentality, where Jesus is but one of a number of symbols meant to inspire kindness and good cheer: snowflakes, snow men, sleigh rides, and Jesus.

Rather, the birth of Christ is the long-awaited fulfillment of God’s promises to his people, the beginning of the eschatological exodus. Christ was born in a lowly estate, in the likeness of sinful flesh, that he might redeem for his Father a people, that he might redeem for himself a bride, a bride for whom he laid down his very life.

Read the whole thing and be blessed.

Don't be so dang Scroogey!

When I first became a Christian, I used to get all defensive about Christmas. You know, "the reason for the season" and all that. Much like those people over at Stand for Christmas. They get their panties in a twist if some store doesn't make enough reference to Christmas (as opposed to "holiday") in their advertising, etc.

Well, that's post-Christendom for you, folks. It's pretty well a settled fact in the northeast, and I'm guessing major urban areas elsewhere. The very last town with a creche in its public square will be Grovers Corners . . . oh wait, that was a Hollywood movie set! I forgot.

Anyway, there are still parts of the U.S. where they put up Ten Commandments billboards on the roadsides, as I discovered driving through Ohio on I-70 last week. Even so, Christendom is waning there too, I suspect. The fight to keep Christmas in store decorations and advertising is especially silly, I think, because it reinforces the notion that store-environments are central to the way we understand and "keep" Christmas. Wait a minute . . . store environments and advertising ARE central to the way we keep Christmas! I almost forgot . . .

I heard someone say that because of money-issues his family is not going to have a very good Christmas. Having a good Christmas is all about getting lots of stuff, right? Christmas without a month-long spending frenzy would be so sad! After it's all over, you're kids' friends will eagerly ask one another, "What did you get?" See, just like any kid, our definition of a "good" Christmas is wretchedly materialistic, and we do not want to talk about changing that. Don't be so dang Scroogey!

You can wear all the "reason for the season" buttons you want, but most Christians I know keep a pre-dominantly secularized Christmas with a Creche in the front yard to emphasize that our hearts are in the right place even despite the conspicuous over-consumption.

Ebenezer Scrooge famously said, "You keep Christmas your way, and I'll keep Christmas mine." If you want to do something healthy for the Christian holiday known as Christmas, you might start by severing your celebration of the birth of Jesus from the consumerist impulse altogether. Buying nothing for Christmas is a good way to start.

Update: 11 Ways to Avoid the Seduction of Consumerism This Christmas
Update 2: Rant: Not "Standing" for Christmas
[HT to Jesus Creed for both these links.]

Christmas Doe-See-Doe

OK, Folks, all you happy happy few who depend on your daily dose of In the Clearing to get you through the day, I'm going to be gone for the next two weeks. It's a mighty act of self-discipline for me, but I'm pledging to take a two week vacation from all blogging. So I leave you with a couple of fine Christmas songs, and I'll see you next year.





Have a very faith-filled Christmas!

Peace on Earth

Love it.

Chesterton on Christmas

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes.... It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one moment the great day is not and the next moment the great day is. Up to a certain specific instant you are feeling ordinary and sad; for it is only Wednesday. At the next moment your heart leaps up and your soul and body dance together like lovers; for in one burst and blaze it has become Thursday. I am assuming (of course) that you are a worshipper of Thor, and that you celebrate his day once a week, possibly with human sacrifice. If, on the other hand, you are a modern Christian Englishman, you hail (of course) with the same explosion of gaiety the appearance of the English Sunday.

Read the whole article here.