The War on Christmas (or, Tired of Muscular Christianity)

            Let’s be honest. If our children or grandchildren thought that three wise men visited Baby Jesus on Rudolph, the red-nosed camel, we would smile but hardly be surprised. 

            Or, if the kids thought that angels serenaded shepherds in the field with jingle bells, we would  smile, but hardly be surprised.

            Christmas, the religious celebration of Jesus’ birth, is pretty much history. The Grinch has stolen it, big retail has monopolized it, and now Santa delivers it. 

            Starbucks knows this. A few years ago, they began celebrating the season by serving its Ventis in red cups. Some sippers were outraged, claiming that this—failing to mention Christmas on the cups—amounted to war on Christmas.

            Donald Trump addressed the cup controversy on the campaign trail. “Maybe we should boycott Starbucks,” he said. “If I become president we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you.” Maybe. Maybe not. But this year Starbucks cups say, “Merry Coffee.”

Hipster Christmas Creche

            I liked the Hipster manger controversy even better. As soon as Irene, my spouse, saw it, she had to have it. Mary has a Starbucks in her hand. The Wise Men bring baby Jesus Amazon packages on Segways and Joseph is taking a selfie with his iPhone.

            Casey Wright, who created this product, told CNBC about how people react.  “It’s usually, ‘This is hilarious. I need one.’ Or ‘This is sacrilegious, I hope you burn in hell,’ and almost nothing between those two extremes. 

           How do you feel about the commercialization of Christmas? We could fight it. This Christmas we could be muscular Christians ready for a fight.

            But personally, I am not interested in a Christianity forever offering its theological biceps to be felt, thumping its “holier than thou” breast, thanking heaven that it will, ultimately, with an inquisition or two, finally enforce religious uniformity and make North America great again. 

            Similarly, I am not interested in a Herod-type Christianity that insists every wise guy must worship at his alter, in obedience to Fundamentalist pressure politics. I am not interested in a Gilead-type Christianity, as described in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, where what you sing, and how you dress and what you are allowed to think is decided by politicians merely pretending to be religious. 

            I’ll be blunt here. Religious power corrupts and absolute religious power that coerces people either by law or social pressure corrupts absolutely. Too much power for religion looks like residential schools training First Nations kids to pass for white. Too much power for religion looks like social mores that force LGBTQ people or atheists into their closets. And absolute power for religion looks like crusades and pogroms and prison for unbelievers and nonconformists.

            No. we should not defend any attempt to officially put Jesus back into Christmas. There is a reason, according to our stories, that Jesus was born in a barn and laid in a manger. There is a reason he had, according to Isaiah, no form or majesty that we should desire him. There is a reason Jesus chose to be despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, who suffered and died rather than submit to the power of the priests or Romans. There is a reason Jesus fled to Egypt when Herod roared, instead of calling F-18s with angel pilots to blast him away.

            You see, the very character of Christianity is that its persuasiveness never lies in power as Herod or Franklin Graham or Justin Trudeau might conceive of it—the power of a lobby or a union or a corporation to coerce.

            No, Christians choose to sing Advent songs in a minor key. Christian persuasiveness turns on a voice crying in the wilderness. 

            The Christian way, when it comes to the war on Christmas, is to do as Jesus did, to turn the other cheek while clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and providing good-paying jobs in vineyards. Christians choose to let their care and concern turn heads, if there are heads to be turned.

            Christianity is no longer the religion of the mostest for the apparently holiest. Our faith is being marched out of the public square. But that’s okay. We don’t need to be a politically or culturally powerful religion to change the world. Christians are invited, rather, to imitate Jesus, wherever and whenever we can—to bring Christ’s values to our families, workplaces, corporations and politics. With kindness for the leastest and lastest left over.

            So never mind about the war on Christmas. It isn’t a battle Jesus would fight. In fact, I’d say that if you can stand it, you may as well try to enjoy a month’s worth of “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Camel.” In fact, go shop till you drop and open gifts on Christmas morning. Why not enter into the general frivolity and generosity of the most secular season at its best? Tis the season to have fun and family and festivity and who could argue with that?

            Just do it all with the attitude of Christ in your heart rather than with a “Jesus is the reason for the season” chip on you shoulder.

            

Before Christmas; After Easter. (And the Virgin Birth)

            Let’s be honest. Most of us smile, knowingly, when we think of the virgin birth. I mean, you don’t have to have been taught Ontario’s Sex-Ed curriculum to see the problems here. Even Mary understands. She says, “How can this be, since I am a virgin.”

            It’s much the same when we think about the resurrection stories. Luke says that when Mary—yes, the same Mary, Jesus’ mother—when Mary and some other women told the disciples that the grave was empty, the disciples thought it was an idle tale and did not believe the women. 

            So, a virgin birth. A dead man walking. Either way, “How can this be?”

            It’s a big, serious question. And so, every Christmas and every Easter, in liberal churches like mine you will hear sermons about how Bethlehem stories are a metaphor for the possibility of new life; and you will hear that empty grave stories are, well, a metaphor for the possibility of new life. 

            Meanwhile, in more conservative evangelical churches sermons will argue for the literal truth of these stories. Preachers will explain how, after not breathing for three days, Jesus gasped, wiggled his toes, and then walked out of his grave without being a zombie. 

            I don’t say so to mock either liberal or conservative Christians. Like I said, “How can this be?” is a weighty question, a teeter-totter sort of question at the heart of our theological playground. We ought to toss this question around, from time to time.

            And yet I want think we focus far too much on such questions of historical fact. In fact, if we become too preoccupied with, “how can this be,” we might miss the rest of the story, the heart of the story, the bulk of Jesus’ life. My best friend, Nick, pointed this out to me. Nick is interested in the philosophical challenges surrounding the writing of biographies, and how this relates to the gospels. In that connection, Nick recently recalled an event that many of you will remember.

            It’s like this. You will remember, the Nixon White House tapes. President Nixon 

Rose Mary Woods demonstrating how she allegedly
erased 18 1/2 minutes of Nixon's Whitehouse tapes.

recorded all of his conversations on a tape recorder. Later, these tapes became evidence for the Grand Jury that was investigating Nixon for the Watergate break-in. The tapes were damning conversations about Nixon’s ruthlessness, his disregard for the law, and so on. 

            What really led to President Nixon’s resignation, however, was not the tapes themselves, but an 18½ minute gap in the tapes, during a conversation between Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, and Nixon himself. At the very moment where Nixon was most likely to confess how much he knew about the Watergate break in, the tape goes silent. Rose Mary Woods, his secretary, took the blame for erasing the tape, but Nixon took the fall. He resigned soon after.

            It’s not the beginning and end that matter most, in the Nixon Tapes, but the missing piece in the middle.

            And, before Christmas and after Easter, it sometimes feels to me that much of what really matters, everything between Jesus’ birth and death, has been erased from our Christian consciousness, and we are far poorer for it.

            It is the same in the Apostle’s Creed. The Apostles’ Creed describes Jesus’ life this way: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his son, who was born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.”

            Nothing is said here about Jesus’ baptism by John. Nothing about the parable of the Good Samaritan or the Lost Coin. Nothing about Zacchaeus in his tree or Mary Magdalene forgiven or dinner at Mary and Martha’s. Nothing in the creed about riding a donkey into Jerusalem as an argument against conquering Roman emperors who rode their war horses into Rome.

            The Apostle’s Creed moves from Bethlehem to Golgotha as if Luke chapters 3-22 don’t exist. It’s an 18 ½-minute—no an 18½-chapter gap—which, if we read it, would convict us, but in an entirely different way than the gap convicted Nixon. 

            So, let’s move beyond controversies of beginning and end, about how such things could be, about whether or not Mary was a virgin, whether or not wise men came from the East, whether or not there was a census while Quirinius was Governor of Syria. Let’s consider the whole gospel, and especially everything between the beginning in Bethlehem and the end at Golgotha.

            You will find there, in the missing 18 ½ chapters, that Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.”

            You will find there that Jesus also says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

            You will find there, in the excluded middle, a divine longing to heal the sick, to bind the wounds of the broken hearted, to call out hypocrisy; a longing to forgive people who messed up and to live for the love of your neighbours.

            You will find there, in the missing chapters, that Jesus prays, “give us this day our daily bread.”

            You will find there, that Jesus says, “Do not worry. Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. . . But seek first the kingdom of God and these things will be given to you as well.”

            You will find there, in the middle passages we have erased mostly through neglect, that Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.”

            It’s beautiful stuff, as moving as ant star in the east or manger filled with straw.

            A final, concluding thought. I have to laugh sometimes about the movement to put Christ back into Christmas. I suppose, at some level, I get it. Santa Claus and his pretty elves in their scarlet miniskirts sitting for pictures in the mall, and Season’sGreetings, and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells playing on an endless loop, and of course, the “ka-ching!” of our credit cards getting their annual workouts—it is all a bit too cute, too hollow, too distracting. It can be hard to focus on Jesus when so much is going on.

            But actually, we shouldn’t blame our culture for doing what it wants to do, and we shouldn’t feel guilty for joining in on the fun. Jesus wasn’t a killjoy. But, if we really do want to focus on Jesus, like the first Gospel of Mark, we actually don’t need any of Christmas or much of  Easter. In fact, instead of worrying about taking Christ out of Christmas, let’s try to think, instead, about how to bring the missing 18 ½ chapters back into the rest of our year.