Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Christmas seems like one of those holy days that is filled with timeless traditions that have roots going all the way back to a stable in Bethlehem. We assume that Christmas has been at the center of the Christian Story since there has been a Christian Story. That is not entirely wrong, but it's not entirely correct.
In scripture we have two versions of the birth of Jesus: Matthew and Luke. These days we have the two stories so thoroughly intertwined that we don’t much notice the differences, but they are very different stories. In Matthew, Jesus is born at home in Bethlehem. According to Luke, Mary and Joseph have made a difficult journey from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem where Jesus is born in a stable because the no vacancy sign is on at the inn.
Luke gives us shepherds. We supply the sheep, and we imagine them into lovely, homey scenes around the manger. Matthew gives us Magi – mysterious wise persons of an unknown quantity who bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh; A homicidal Herod killing all the young boys in Bethlehem, an escape to Egypt for Jesus and his parents, and from there they go back to Nazareth, not Bethlehem...
In both stories Jesus is born in Bethlehem and in both stories, Jesus grows up in Nazareth. Mary is a virgin, and Joseph is not Jesus’ father in either story... That's about where the common details end... These stories tell us essential things, but they do not tell us the same things. Luke and Matthew are both subversive and the stories they tell us are pretty dark. Part of our challenge in keeping Christmas is to get past the sweetness and sentimentality that we bring. The Christmas Story, and for that matter the entire Gospel, is not sweet nor is it sentimental... Jesus is revolutionary and following Jesus means being part of the revolution.
Christmas, more than any other sacred day in the Christian Calendar, for me at least, is defined by the music. That makes it the best of holy days... for me. From hymns to anthems and motets, from African American spirituals to Celtic folk songs, from Carols to the soundtrack of our shopping malls, Christmas rules the music charts. You will not convince me otherwise. Sure, Easter is important and it, too, has some excellent music, but the music of Christmas is without equal – in my humble opinion.
However, the music of Christmas is not particularly ancient. It took the early church about four centuries to arrive at an agreed time for the keeping of Christmas and a few centuries after that to begin developing a catalogue of Christmas music.
Christmas existed within the church year in a sort of second tier of holy days until the Reformation. Some of the currents in the Reformation were OK with Christmas – mainly Luther and his pals. Others rejected Christmas as a feast with no proper scriptural basis – think of Calvin and his companions. Our Anglican forebears, as they often did, stood with their feet firmly in both camps. Still, much of the keeping of Christmas took place outside of Church, with things such as madrigals giving Christmas its flavor.
Closer to home, those Pilgrim forebears of ours, who gave us Thanksgiving, gave us absolutely no Christmas. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay Colony officially outlawed Christmas (they could do that in those days), and it remained illegal for more than two decades. Their Puritan forbears in England had outlawed the keeping of Christmas in the 1640s. Even once the ban was repealed it took a while for Christmas to come in out of the cold.
Meanwhile, the Quakers in Pennsylvania did not ban Christmas, they just didn’t keep it. They held that every day was a holy day. Every day was a good day to remember that Jesus came to bring salvation. It is hard to argue with that.
In New York the Dutch did keep Christmas. Perhaps due to the commercial drive of the Dutch West India Company, who founded and ran the colony of New Amsterdam as agents for the Dutch government, Christmas began to take on commercial significance – which is still prominent to say the least.
The Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church may not have loved the idea, but they had long since learned that you don’t mess with the Dutch West India Company...
Other colonies in the US did not have the Pilgrim/Puritan heritage of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and so tended to keep Christmas as the English did, with food and family gathered. Did they go to Church? Maybe. They were just as likely to go Caroling with friends and family.
Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters were required to attend Mass for Christmas, but they were mostly still in Europe... the waves of Catholic immigration from Italy and Ireland were in the future.
Christmas, for much of Christian history, was not the big deal that it is now. Some reviled the feast, including many of deep and abiding faith. Others were devoted to the feast, including many of deep and abiding faith...
In the 18th Century, the love-hate relationship with Christmas transformed into a friendlier relationship. Services of lessons and carols began to appear. And the institution of Midnight Eucharist on Christmas eve began to appear meaning that people could go to church and still have Christmas as a mostly family-centered day, which is what it had largely become.
In the 19th Century two big things changed our approach to Christmas. One of those big things was Washington Irving, the writer more or less local to this area. The other was Charles Dickens... another writer... Dickens was a generation younger than Irving and Irving exerted great influence on the young Dickens.
When Irving penned his Sketchbook of Geofrey Crayon – a sort of New Yorker’s view of English Christmas, it was a sensation, especially in England. Among other things, Irving had a very high view of St Nicholas and is probably most responsible for our enduring love affair with Santa Claus. Irving helped found the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York which is still a thing.
Irving saw Christmas not only as a pleasant indulgence, but a spiritual necessity. According to Irving, “He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow beings… wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas.” Sounds a lot like something Dickens would say...
A recent movie about the life of Charles Dickens describes him as the man who invented Christmas. It may be a bit of hyperbole but also has some truth. In his beloved story A Christmas Carol, Dickens picks up where Irving left off. And while Mathew and Luke may be a bit austere in their telling of the Christmas story, Dickens more than makes up for that.
Dickens describes in beautiful detail how the power of Christmas can transform even a dreadful, selfish person like Ebenezer Scrooge. This redemptive story of Christmas repeats in our popular culture in stories like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, and Home Alone to name a few.
Conspicuously absent from these stories is any significant place for the Church... The possible exception might be Charlie Brown’s Christmas which does conclude with Linus reading from Luke’s Gospel, but not in church... Even in A Christmas Carol, only Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim are reported to go to church.
So here is the challenge on this lovely Christmas day: How do we, the church of our time, relate to Christmas? Fellowship and family are a good start – and we are on our way to these. Songs of prayer and praise are wonderful as well – clear echoes of the Shepherds as they sing Glory to God in the highest...
But I think the real work for those Shepherds is when they stop singing and return to their fields with the conviction to make peace on earth – as in Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace.
Jesus doesn’t call us to think good thoughts about peace from the manger. Peace does not make itself. George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, defined heresy as praying for something without working for it.
In this glorious celebration of Christmas, we get a glimpse, a foretaste of what God’s Kingdom might be like. This glimpse, this foretaste, fills us with love and, as Fr Huntington tells us, Love Must Act. We are not given a glimpse of God’s Kingdom as a private reward. We have an obligation to share it with all of God’ creation, those we love and those we don’t love. This glimpse is not unique to Christmas – it is a feature of all our liturgical life.
I hope you will join me in making a mild adjustment to Luke: Let us offer Glory to God in the Highest by making peace on Earth, by making justice on Earth. And to that end and that beginning, I wish you a merry, happy, and blessed Christmas.
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