"Questioning Christmas"

Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
December 21, 2008

Reading: "Mary" by Bertolt Brecht

The night when she first gave birth
Had been cold. But in later years
She quite forgot
The frost in the dingy beams and the smoking stove
And the spasms of the afterbirth towards morning.
But above all she forgot the bitter shame
Common among the poor
Of having no privacy.
That was the main reason
Why in later years it became a holiday for all
To take part in.
The shepherds' coarse chatter fell silent.
Later they turned into the Kings of the story.
The wind, which was very cold
Turned into the singing of angels.
Of the hole in the roof that let in the frost nothing remained
But the star that peeped through it.
All this was due to the vision of her son, who was easy
Fond of singing
Surrounded himself with poor folk
And was in the habit of mixing with kings
And of seeing a star above his head at night-time.

Sermon: "Questioning Christmas" by Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne

Our reading tells the story of the birth of Jesus something like the way Mary would have told it, but that’s not the way we are used to hearing it.  The story got changed.  We are no longer reminded of her shame at being so poor that she had to give birth on the straw with the animals and with some course shepherds as witnesses.  This is how the story came down to us: 

Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright round yon virgin mother and Holy infant. Sleep in heavenly peace.  And when the lowliness of birth in a stable is mentioned, it is immediately juxtaposed with a host of angels singing and shining light down upon the poor family. Claims of divine presence making the birth a joyous occasion already recognized and acknowledged by important people: 

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, come to Bethlehem and behold him, born the King of angels!  Child of God, love's pure light; radiance beams from his holy face.  Shepherds quake at the sight, glories stream from heaven afar, heavenly hosts sing "Alleluia!"  The conception and birth of the Christ child was miraculous; God had come to earth, incarnate, that is in human form, and a lucky few could sense it right from the beginning.  It simply wouldn’t do to leave the story with poor Mary suffering in the dark and dirty stable.

As was the Birth narrative, many of the stories of Mary and Jesus’ life were changed, embellished by those who came later, people who added their own meanings to them.  You can understand how Mary herself over the years might have retold her version of the story with more warmth than was actually present in the stable.  Later, others turned many of the events of Jesus life into miracle stories.  This was probably done to provide their messages the imprimatur of divine origin.  The miracles, “visibly performed before numerous reliable witnesses,” became evidence that God was suspending natural law in order to reveal important truths through his messengers.  According to Dr. Dean Grodzins, biographer of Rev. Theodore Parker, the first generations of Unitarian ministers were taught what we now call “supernatural rationalism,” at Harvard Divinity School.  This theological system said people could, with their unaided “natural” reason discover certain basic religious truths.”    This thread of theology remains with us today in our first source: Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed by all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.”  Although early Unitarians believed people could discover religious truths with their own reasoning abilities, they also thought many would not choose to do so and thus would succumb to accepting absurd and erroneous religious claims.  That piece of theology is evident in our 5th source: “Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against the idolatries of the mind and spirit.

The early Unitarians weren’t ready to accept science as the arbiter of religious truths.  Their solution to preventing absurd and erroneous interpretations of natural law was to look at the miracles in scripture.  They thought “God had given us supernatural revelation of religious truth in the Bible” in order to remove any uncertainty.  Most modern UUs don't believe God suspends the laws of nature to perform miracles in order to reveal truth or for any other reason.  Therefore, they have trouble with the miracle stories.  I tell you about the early Unitarian theologians so you can see that historically, highly educated, deeply rational Unitarians put their faith in miracles, and maybe you can understand a little better why many modern folks do, too.

For those of us who don’t believe God suspends the laws of nature, 21st century American life, in which the miracle story of Jesus’ birth is ubiquitous during the run-up to Christmas, presents a conundrum.  Can we pull the supernatural out of the miracle story and still participate in Christmas?  I think we can.  We can re-interpret the Christmas story in humanistic terms, leaving out the supernatural parts while retaining the loveliness of its message. Was Jesus’ birth a miracle?  Sure it was.  Parents recognize a miracle has happened when their child is born.  The gestation and birth of a child are awesome events, and all quite natural.  And, while not many people’s life stories elicit the kind of resounding praise Jesus’ did, each of us has had to struggle with the same profound questions of life, and have done the best we could in the face of them.  We could all use some appreciation from others for our efforts and for our good intentions.  We would do well to openly praise people when we recognize divinity in them.  In other words, we can look at the Christmas story from a human, down to earth point of view, and translate it in ways that have meaning for us.
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But even after we interpret the Christmas story in our own way, what can we say about all those cute little signs at Garden Ridge, Costco, Target, Kroger and every other store in town that say simply "Believe"?  How are we to interpret that?  If I think of it as demanding me to believe something religious that I don’t believe or simply can’t believe, that little word “Believe” really gets under my skin.  Maybe “Believe” is only asking us to go along with the Santa Claus myth – for the sake of the children, you know. If you have young children, it’s impossible to completely ignore Santa; he's everywhere, but when we buy in to the Santa Claus story, what are we teaching our kids, really?  Let me read you a classic response to that question titled, Is There a Santa Claus?  I have abridged is slightly.

From the Editorial Page of  The New York Sun, written by Francis P. Church, September 21, 1897:
We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
"Dear Editor--I am 8 years old.

"Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it's so.' Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?”
Virginia O'Hanlon

Virginia, your friends are wrong.  They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age.  They do not believe except they see.  They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds…
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.  Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!  It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.  There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence.  We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.  The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus!  You might as well not believe in fairies!  You might get your papa to hire people to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?  Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.  The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor adults can see.  Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn?  Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there.  Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest human, nor even the united strength of all the strongest people that ever lived, could tear apart.  Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.  Is it all real?  Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus!  Thank God! he lives, and he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

The skepticism of a skeptical age. - Well there we go again – those who don’t believe are put down as skeptics.  Many UUs are proud claim the title skeptic or non-believer, but those words are often used as a pejorative, meant to demean those who don't adhere to orthodox interpretations of Christian Scripture.  So, we skeptics are often put on the defensive, asked to explain ourselves.  Family and friends say, “If you don’t believe the… you fill in the blank with whatever theological point that just came up, what do you believe?”  The next time this happens to you on the subject of Christmas, maybe you can use the editor’s letter to Virginia.  He gave us a good thing to say, something consistent with the spirit of the Santa myth, with Christian Scripture, and with a Unitarian Universalist worldview.  The editor says Santa reminds us love and generosity abound and give life its highest joy.  Love and generosity are intrinsic things but real none the less; exactly how they came into being or why they persist is somewhat of a mystery; still we believe it is important to practice them and teach them to our children.  And on those values, all kinds of believers find common ground.
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OK you say.  We can go along with love and generosity; maybe even poetry, but we still have some problems with the romantic view that we should just have faith and we’ll see the “supernal beauty and glory” of creation.  We probably have Saint Francis of Assisi to thank for beginning the romanticism and sentimentality of the Birth story.  His version had the cattle lowing, the sheep curling up sweetly at the feet of the babe, and the shepherds as early spirit filled ecologists standing respectfully by.  According to Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, for Francis, “incarnation was already redemption,” and the feast of Christmas said that God was saying yes to humanity in the enfleshment of his Son in our midst.”  That is, if Jesus was divine, “then all questions of inherent dignity, worthiness and belovedness were resolved – and for everything that was human, material, physical, and in the whole of creation.  That’s why Francis liked animals and nature, praising the sun, moon, and stars, like some New Ager from California.  It was all good and beautiful.”
 
Francis wouldn’t approve of the way some now use Christmas.  He loved poverty and simplicity, and he would be appalled at our materialistic culture in general, and the use of Christmas to promote it.  This year, most of us have to scale back on spending because of the economic recession.  As a result, we are re-thinking the way we live, how we use energy for example, and we are learning to live more simply.  And even being able to talk in terms of simplyfing life is only for those of us well off enough to be able to give up some of our excesses.  For people in poverty, this recession will make for a very bleak holiday season indeed.  As we re-think our lifestyles, we need to redouble our efforts to help the poor.  

Francis would not approve of Bill O’Reilly turning Christmas into a “war,” pitting Christians against non-Christians.  O’Reilly draws on the dreadful example of the purges of the Dark Ages when the celebration of Christmas and its symbols was a way to identify who was a member of the right group.  True Christians are concerned for the well-being of all people, even non-believers, but O’Reilly’s Christmas message is triumphalism, an arrogant confidence in the validity and success of his specific religious beliefs.  Francis was really a Humanist; he would be saddened that what he understood as God blessing all of humanity, especially the humble and poor, has been turned into a way to divide humanity and pit us against them.  Francis interpreted his humanism theistically, but he didn’t need others to share the same concept in order to love them.  We in turn don’t have to share Francis’s theology to be awed by creation or to treat all beings as if they contained a spark of divinity.
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By all means we may reject Christmas messages which interpret human events as supernatural transmission of divine truths, messages which come across as over-the-top sentimentalism, and messages which build ideological certainties out of unverifiable abstractions.  And I urge you to reject Bill O’Reilly’s War on Christmas.  Skepticism toward these kinds of ideas is a healthy practice.  However, skepticism is not an end state.   At the same time we question the misuse of Christmas we should remain open to the possibilities of more life affirming messages: witnessing the miracle of child birth, acknowledging the mysterious persistence of love and generosity, experiencing wonder and awe at the complexity of evolution and the grandeur present everywhere in the universe, and treating all people as if they were divine.  These are messages of Christmas we can live by and teach our children.
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So, whatever your theology and whichever holidays you choose to celebrate, I wish you peace and joy.  I wish you holidays that fill your home with warmth and memories.  Remember to pause and rest sometime in the coming week. Let your mind relax and listen to the songs in your heart. May you have opportunities to practice gratitude for your life and compassion toward others.  May you be a blessing to the lives of those around you.  I wish you opportunities to experience life in all its splendor and difficulty.  May your celebration of the holidays bring you a deeper awareness of both the sorrows and blessings of life, and may those blessings abound in this season and all through the year.