Jesus, the Reason for the Season? Or Not?

There is more to Christmas than Christ, and for some
there's less to Christmas than Christ, much less than
Christ, but that's just fine.

A friend of mine recently told me a story about Christmas and grinches. My friend teaches at a private school somewhere in the Northeast.  The school has adopted a strong secular identity and few of the students come from Christian homes.  There is a policy forbidding so much as a poinsettia plant in the faculty lunch-room or a jolly elf in the library.  Even reading The Polar Express is verboten and a teacher was reprimanded for wearing a green sweater with a red and green plaid skirt.  Boy, anybody who thinks only conservatives are rigid needs to visit this school!!!  Well, my friend told me, one parent was upset because—horror of horrors—there was a Christmas tree near the entrance to the parking lot.  You see, this school rents its property from a Christian Church to whom the parking lot belongs but this particular parent obviously thought that the landlords should refrain from decorating their property because she did not want her child to be exposed to Christmas.  A Christmas tree has no religious significance.   And so let’s take a break from this Founding Father and Christian Nation thing and indulge ourselves a bit in a look at the history of Christmas.  After all Jesus “is the reason for the season.’  Or not.  Now when I say that, I am not being anti-Christian or on the “Take Christ out of Christmas” bandwagon.  I am a devout Roman Catholic—more devout than most I would suggest—but we need to look at Christmas in its wider picture context if we want to consider intelligently the issue of the crèche on courthouse lawns that we have been looking at. 

      While Christians began celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25^th in the fourth century they built their celebration on already existing “pagan” festivals.  History does not know the actual date of Christ’s birth.  Some argue that the story’s relating to us that “shepherds were keeping watch in the fields by night over their sheep” argues against a December date as in the winter the sheep would be kept in barns through the cold nights.  I am not familiar with sheepherding protocols in first century Palestine but I do know that December in Israel/Palestine has long nights with low temperatures—not as low as Idaho or Colorado and American sheep, but regularly in the 40’s and occasionally below freezing.  And, in any case, contemporary biblical scholarship would not consider night-time temperatures of Bethlehem fields relevant to whatever historical/biographical shreds might be recoverable from the gospel texts.   Suffice it to say that we don’t know the actual date of the birth of Jesus.  Nor do we need to. The Queen’s Birthday is a Saturday in June—any Saturday her government might choose for the festivities—though she was born on April 21^st.  But it rains a lot in London in April (April showers,May flowers, and all that) so it is celebrated another day.  Same with Jesus.  Who knows when he was born, but December 25^th works well as everybody needs a lift from the dark days and longer darker nights of midwinter.  And long before Jesus was even a twinkle in some celestial star (I am speaking here of the man born, not the Word who became incarnate in that birth) people were reveling at midwinter.  According to the historian the Venerable Bede (8^th century) the ancient Anglo-Saxon peoples celebrated Modranecht (Mother’s Night) on December 25^th.   The Celts had Meán Geimhridh—the festival of the winter solstice.  Germanic and Nordic folk had Yule.  Baltic peoples had Ziemassvētki.  The Slavs had Rozhanista.  The Roman/Graeco culture had a variety of feasts in honor of the god Bacchus, the god Saturn, or the Sol Invictus: the unconquered Sun.  Customs varied from culture to culture but certain common features included gift-giving, revelry (usually to excess), hospitality, and the use of light.  The further north, the darker and longer the nights, the more ardent were the celebrations.  Greens were often brought indoors to decorate the home (and probably to freshen the air of the houses closed tight against winter cold) and to keep the awareness of nature when all outside seemed dead and awaiting the rebirth spring would provide. 

     Initially there seems to have been some resistance among Christian theologians to the idea of celebrating the Birth of Jesus as it was too close in concept to the pagan celebrations honoring the birth of various deities.  Of course Kings, Pharaohs, and Emperors regularly had their birthdays celebrated but primitive Christianity distanced itself from such royal celebrations as well because the implication was attributing divinity to the monarch being celebrated.  It does seem by the middle of the fourth century however that the feast was being celebrated at Rome from where it spread eastwards to Constantinople and the Churches of the East.  This makes it somewhat of the exception as most of the ancient feasts began in the Eastern Church(es) and spread westward to Rome.  The Church in the West was always inclined to a more Spartan liturgical style than the more exotic East.  By the end of the fourth century Christmas had achieved great popularity as it was used to combat the Arian heresy that denied Jesus full divinity, equal to the Father.  Christmas became an affirmation of the idea that in the birth of Jesus, God (the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity) became human, uniting in one person the human and divine natures. 

     The name Christmas derives from the Old English Christemaesse—Christ’s Mass—even as other feasts were called after the Mass celebrated on that day—Michaelmas  (St. Michael’s Day, September 11^th ) or Martinmas (St. Martin’s Day, November 11^th). 

     It’s clear that our contemporary Christmas is an amalgamation of Christian and Pagan elements.  Christianity has often adopted and then adapted indigenous customs, “baptizing” them as it were with Christian meaning.  The Chinese Rites controversy of the seventeenth century is one of the more interesting examples of this practice and the rejection by Rome of the use of Chinese practices by the Jesuit missionaries was a huge mistake from an evangelizing point of view.  Pius XII, in one of the first acts of his papacy, admitted the mistake and to remedy it repealed much of the legislation of Clement XI that had outlawed the incorporation of Chinese practices into Catholic liturgy and devotions.  We will have to do a study of the Chinese Rites issue in the future but before we blame Clement XI for his narrow mindedness we need to locate him in the ambiance of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.  This was the same time, incidentally, that Puritans in Boston were outlawing Christmas because of its pagan roots.  And so we should distinguish between the Christian meaning of Christmas (the liturgical celebration of Christ’s birth with its worship services, scripture readings, and sacred songs) and the cultural survivals of pre-Christian practices with evergreens, blazing lights and fires, revelry and (not so sacred)songs.   They both have their place but a Festooned and light-bedecked tree is no more a Christian symbol than is a Halloween Jack-o-lantern or a Fourth-of July firecracker.  So get over the Christmas tree in the Park or the wreath of lights on the lamppost.  And while you’re at it, let Ms. Paula wear that red sweater and plaid skirt: she looks real cute in it. 

Of Tim Tebow and Christmas Trees in the Park

The Christmas Tree in the Place

Notre Dame--just because it is in front

of the Cathedral doesn't make it a

symbol of Christian faith

I am not keen on this Tebow thing.  I don’t mean Tim—he’s fine, seems not only to play good ball but to be a very good man—but this prayer thing.  I don’t go for it.  The bible verse in eye black or whatever is fine.  Talking about Jesus is fine.  It is just that I think Jesus had a point when he said
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward  But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.  And your Father, who sees in secret will repay you.   (Matt 6:5-6)
     It is like those people who in a communion line need to drop to their knees just to show the world that they take Jesus more seriously than the rest of us luke-warm believers who follow the established procedure and remain standing to receive.  Nevertheless, even though I think the public displays of piety are indicative of a psycho-spiritual immaturity I want to defend Tim Tebow’s choice to publicly demonstrate his faith.  Rabbi Joshua Hammerman recently attacked Tebow’s public religiosity making the ridiculous claim that it can lead to “insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants.”  Rabbi Hammerman retracted his statement and his column was pulled from the internet but the point had been made.  There are a lot of people in our society that want to see religion banished from the “public square.”  And this brings us back into the conversation about the crèche on the Courthouse lawn in Leesburg VA.   By the way,lil’ ol’ country town Leesburg isn’t the only place having this dispute.  Big ol’ California Gay Town Santa Monica is embroiled in it as well, but we will save that for future entries. 
     In looking at our Founding Fathers and the “Christian Nation” issue we need to differentiate between the “Public Square” and “The State,” or as we should call it for clarity—government.  A County Courthouse lawn is not only public space, it is government space.  A Courthouse lawn represents, symbolizes, like the Courthouse itself, the institution of government.  The same can be said for a State Capitol (or the U.S. Capitol),  government office buildings, the public lawns and chambers of official residences, embassies or other space where government functions.  This can be differentiated from publically owned (but governmentally administered) spaces such as streets or  public parks.  Government space, I think, should be free of religious (or anti-religion) symbols.  Public space, on the other hand, should be open to the public with equal access to all.  I don’t think that a crèche or a Menorah or an atheist slogan belongs in government space but I also think it is wrong to bar Muslims or atheists or Buddhists from erecting displays where Christians or Jews are so permitted to place their symbols.  There are those in our society who want religion to be restricted to the private sphere.  They would maintain that there should be no public displays of any religious symbols.  That is a restriction upon religious freedom.  While there are some religious groups who themselves see religion as a private matter—Quakers, for example—and while there are religions such as Judaism whose rites are traditionally practiced in the privacy of home and synagogue, there are other religions, Christianity being one, whose rites are meant to be public and to attempt to restrict their practice to behind closed doors is to inhibit their religious freedoms.  So Tim—I think you need to give Matthew 6:5-7 some thought, but if you want to showboat your religious faith I will defend your right to do so. 
     And before we move on from the subject of religious displays, there is need for one more clarification and that is between religious symbols and societal symbols.  A crèche is a religious symbol, a “Christmas Tree” has nothing to do with Christian faith.  “Christmas” is actually an amalgamation of two celebrations.  There is a Christian holyday.  A wreath with four candles, a crèche, a star, wisemen on camels, shepherds, Silent Night, a Saintly Bishop Nicholas,  or a good king Wenceslaus—all these symbolize the Christian feast.  There is also what anthropologists might call a “solstice celebration.”  The days are getting longer; the spell of winter is broken.  Christmas trees, candy canes, a fat man in a red suit with presents, strings of lights—these are about the solstice celebration.  Now not everybody chooses to celebrate the solstice.  That is a choice they make. They have no right to begrudge others having a glass of eggnog (or even getting snockered) while toasting the earth’s change of tilt.  But celebrating or not celebrating the solstice is not the same as celebrating or not celebrating the birth of Jesus.  There are plenty of people who don’t regard Jesus as anything more than pious fiction but who are into celebrating the solstice.  Personally, I would like to find a way about celebrating the birth of Jesus without having to get trapped in the solstice thing.  But don’t denigrate my religious faith by saying that a light-covered tree or an overweight elf represents my religious convictions.  I don’t need to see the baby Jesus at the Mall but don’t scream because there is a Christmas Tree in the town square.