December 24, 2006

Good morning.

 It’s been a big year. There have been many good events. Many favorable events that make us think the country is at least going down the Path of Destruction more slowly, if not actually stopping or turning around.

 But we still have a war. A war that’s been dragging on now for years. You see it on the news every night. That’s right. I’m talking about the War on Christmas. Here we are in the midst of our celebration of the biggest holiday of Christianity – Christmas. And some people feel the need to attack Christianity’s central – most recognizable symbol – The Christmas Tree. 

Okay, there may be some who say that Christmas isn’t Christianity’s biggest holiday.

   - There may be some who say that the Christmas Tree isn’t even a Christian symbol to begin with.

   -  Some even say that we are not winning the war in Iraq.

But people are a little touchy this year. This month, in the spirit of togetherness, seven Virginia parishes voted to break away from the Episcopal Church.

People are getting a bit prickly about orthodoxy this year. I remember being a kid and hearing people say “Happy Holidays.” This isn’t new. The Charlie Brown Christmas Special decries the commercialization of Christmas. It premiered in 1965.

Prior to movable type – texts were not standardized. Ideas and thinking were fragmented based on what kind of information you could get – from manuscripts. Literacy was not widespread. The printing press created the idea of the authoritative text and made standardized education possible. For hundreds of years – for good or ill – this was the norm.

Even when television came on the scene – there were only three networks and no ability to record or play back video.

Now, of course, anything goes! More than the thousands of television channels we have access to – the Internet has made dissemination of ideas customized. Instead of millions of people watching one of three networks – now we have millions of web sites and blogs. Some of which have fewer than a dozen readers!

There is no longer even the illusion of a “common experience,” if indeed, it had ever been more than an illusion to begin with. American kids do not all sit down to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas on the same December night – the night that CBS broadcast it, the way kids did when I was a child. When I was a kid – most people who put up Christmas trees had real trees and they put them up the Saturday before Christmas.

Nowadays – people are used to doing whatever they want whenever they want. So you have some people who put up their Christmas Tree right after Halloween and you have other people who put up the tree long about December 20th and get around to decorating it maybe for New Year’s. Last year, I was still getting Holiday Greetings on Super Bowl Sunday!

I have a friend who is a Christian, but really hates the War on Christmas. She told me that she feels like writing anonymous letters to the people who have large plastic Nativity Scenes on their lawn and explaining to them that you’re not supposed to have the Baby Jesus in the Nativity Scene until December 24th and you’re not supposed to have the Three Wise Men out until January 6th.

Her take on it is – if you’re going to complain that other people aren’t honoring our Traditional American Values and Traditions, then you ought to be practicing the traditions “correctly” yourself! In addition – this kind of expectation of rigid adherence is problematic because there is always someone who can look at you and point out your “erroneous” behavior. This practice of inspecting one another for heretical thinking and theological error can only end badly.

If you’re talking about going back to a time when the Christ Child was not put into the Crèche until Christmas Eve – you’re living in expectation of a time when we go back to the tradition of fasting for 40 days before Christmas and not putting up Christmas decorations until Christmas Eve. Not likely to happen here in America any time soon, I don’t think. Although, the way some people procrastinate… I think they might be going back to it. Out of laziness if nothing else.

But what we see from this is that once upon a time – our traditions were more homogenous. Now we can watch A Charlie Brown Christmas any time we want. Or we don’t have to watch it at all.

There are folks in our society who feel very threatened by that. They want us all to be on the same page. But they also think that we, instinctively, will know what page that is.

The problem is that the Holidays mean something different to everyone. Every family has its own traditions. So even when you say, “We want to go back to an old-fashioned, traditional Christmas” and you get lots of nodding heads in the crowd – none of those people agree on what an “old-fashioned, traditional Christmas” is!

Now, I occasionally play Santa Claus. I have a Santa costume. It’s not what you would call a typical Coca-Cola advertisement Santa Costume. It’s a little idiosyncratic. It’s got the long fuzzy coat. I wear it with a velvet vest and I think it looks kind of Victorian and kind of nontraditional. It’s kind of unique. Kids never complain. I’ve gotten criticisms from adults that the costume is WRONG. The kids don’t care. But man – do some adults roll their eyes!

Well, anyway, I played Santa for a Christmas Party one time this year. It was a family get together and there were a lot of kids. I came in “ho-ho-ho”-ing and all that. The host of the party had put together a bag of presents so I could give each of the kids one present at the party.

I don’t really like clowns, but I like Santa Claus. Y’see – clowns come in and they’ve got this little “act” that they’ve put together. They’ve got an agenda. But Santa comes in and what’s the first thing he says? He says, “What do you want?” or he might also ask, “Have you been a good boy or girl this year?” He doesn’t ask the parents. He’s all about self-reporting. The subjective judgement of “Have I been good or bad?” Santa comes in and it’s all about you.

So I go to this party and there’s like fifteen kids from as little as three to as old as high school. Plus there’s at least fifteen adults, too. Most of the adults are pretty blue-collar, beer-drinking types. I knew I had to win them over fast. So, I asked the kids and the adults to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with me. Then I asked what everybody liked most about Christmas. A couple of the kids were pretty forthright – about presents, and candy and food, etc. etc. Then I asked the adults and one of them finally said “Being with friends and family.” Which, of course, was the answer I had been casting about for.

So then, I passed out the presents. The kids were great and remembered to say thank you. Oh, they were so excited to hear me say their name and give them their present. Just the idea that I had something for them was the thing that blew their minds. Remember – Santa is all about you. Then a few of them told me what they wanted and we took a bunch of pictures.

Then I said, “You know – boys and girls – this time of year is special to just about everyone around the whole world. The Christians remember the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day. The Jews celebrate Hanukah - the Festival of Lights. Wiccans celebrate the Winter Solstice – the longest night of the year. This year, Muslims all over the world will be making the Hajj, their holy pilgrimage to Mecca, beginning on December 30th. Humanists celebrate New Year’s Day as a symbolic new beginning.”

But I did say – “So remember – all of you are unique and special. You all get different presents and the Holidays mean something a little different to all of you. But whatever it means to you – never forget that the most important thing is your friends, your family, and the people who love you.”