So much so that I was seriously tempted to place Christmas lights on our house, in a flashing “XMA$” formation, to declaim the empty shell I felt it represented. Or so it seemed to me.
And I wouldn’t really have minded if we just called the whole event off
That’s perhaps a bit contradictory, since I’m committed to pursuing the Christian faith, which obviously does not get off the ground if Christmas, as a key event, does not have a reality in history.
But it wasn’t that aspect of Christmas, as the story of Jesus’ birth, that I was questioning. That’s a starting point that bears recurring discussion and celebration, and which I don’t feel I have exhausted; or even come to the beginning of really deeply understanding, when you consider what its all connected to. A beginner still, in many ways.
But the thing is this mystery had grown disconnected, in my experience, from the cultural phenomenon of Christmas; the shopping and compulsion to get together and exchange presents and have too much food. It all seemed to prod the culture into a ritual of excess and pseudo community - and the light dusting of an occasional church service in there almost made it worse.
WH Auden captures it well; the way it misses the target, after getting somewhere in the vicinity:
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes –
Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week –
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully –
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
This pretty much summarised how I experienced it. And so, in a reaction against a culture that supersized the cultural trimmings, while dimly ignoring or sidestepping the meaning, I found myself thrashing against the whole thing.
What was your favourite Christmas, asked my mother, nobly trying to hold the preparations together a few years ago. Trying even harder to recapture something perhaps, given some new patterns in the family.
I try to stay civil: conflicted about the work that this version of Christmas is for her, but frustrated by the systematic missing of the point that the whole thing seems to entail. I cite one year long ago at the beach shack, when we went by boat across the lake on a beautifully still morning to a church service, without any of the usual rigmarole.
‘Look David’, she says, pointing at the turkey she is stuffing, and trying to instill some sense of the season and ritual in my son, “its..” she pauses, uncharacteristically struggling for words as she beholds the plucked carcass
“a dead bird” I say coldly, my reaction at the skewed balance of all this getting the better of me, and failing dismally at the civility part.
So, yes, I was pretty jaded.
A friend shook me out of this attitude a couple of years ago : she confronted the “bah humbug” attitude that some of us evidently had developed; since for her, the season represented a remarkable opportunity; the cultural practice whereby declarations of belief and celebration in song filled the airwaves for a while created opportunities and possibilities to communicate, a stage for the message, which should be welcomed and celebrated, rather than despised and written off.
I respected her views, and was silenced and convicted in my malaise. We were both trying to be lay leaders - though thats not a term the denomination really used - in a church at the time, and that role possibly added to the weight and conviction of her point, and I sensed a correction in what she was saying, even though directed en masse.
(and watching the culture turn away more determinedly, in many ways, in recent years, from this common footing, i appreciate the respect for the shared values and celebrations ; though its another story how the cultural shift will play out. As CS Lewis says somewhere, things are always coming to a point ... wherever you dip into history, there is often a past where it was easier to remain neutral about key events; things are always drawing to a clearer and starker state of separation.
The annual hand wringing in the education department, for example, about the boundaries between showing nativity scenes but not proselytizing, is an example of the issue.)
It took me a while to think through how I had got into that state of despising the shared culture which still bore some impress of meaning; how the desire to debunk the whole exercise had arisen, whereas she had a clearer vision of the opportunities. I think I had spent too many years in a practically agnostic culture which celebrated Christmas as an end in itself. No significant discussions around Christmas, no common faith nurtured throughout the year quietly underlying all this as we gathered for the feast. No-one ever outright denied it either - we played carols etc, and probably felt a little warmth on return from an annual visit to church; stirring some dormant emotions. But it all dissipated with the next round of relatives and friends and champagne and shortbread. At least that’s my experience: I can’t presume to speak for others, but it seemed like that to me.
(and I knew some of those factors were reversed in my friends case: that authentic faith was cultivated in that family background; and Christmas in that case is no doubt a richer and more meaningful event)
For me, the event had come to seem like an overblown convention, rather than the celebration of any common belief.
The faith I’d since developed outside of that upbringing was mostly in denominations that were not big on traditional ritual: indeed Advent (and Lent) were rarely even mentioned; probably reckoned (too hastily i guess) as belonging to a moribund world of traditional liturgy.
So when the compulsory cultural event came around, a number of factors conspired to present a feast not quite bereft of heart, but strained away from its meaning.
Still, my friend blew a lot of my malaise away in one simple confrontation and affirmation of the opportunities that the cultural valuing of Christmas represents
So where now, a few years later? Well, still working on how we approach all this, but we’re getting there.
Small example; I like Tear Fund as a way to confront the excess of presents for adults - and a way to call out some sanity to others – since we’re all washed in this sea of commercialism - and we’re downsizing trimmings in the wider family, and working on the meaning, in other ways.
And the responsibility for creating something in our own family, that celebrates the meaning.
There is something in presents under the tree for children and the smell of pine that still resonates. But its only really good if the real meaning is upheld in some way; and we can negotiate that.
I can see that if people want to listen to carols its worth cultivating; I even got to liking the channel nine version when one side of the family wanted to do that :)
part 2
