The alternative title for this thread was “Get your stinkin’ hands off of our message!” but I preferred the above.
Anyway, this is prob the first Christmas I’ve really paid attention to the “message” that gets bandied about this time of year. Honestly, for a society that prides itself on tolerance of all faiths, its scientific rightness, and political correctness, it sure makes a hash of representing even the basic tenets of the Christian Christmas message, instead deferring to a lot of sentimental, traditionalist dogma, which reeks of irony to me.
Today’s SMH Op-ed had me fuming over my oats:
In A History of Christianity, the former Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, Owen Chadwick, reminds us that Christmas as we now know it was originally a combination of three distinct elements. These, he writes, were “the junketings of the Roman crowd trying to relieve the gloom of winter; the Roman cult of the sun and its light; and, at the heart, the memory of a birth in a manger in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem”. At this time of year, Christians recall the last of these but they do so amid the distractions of the modern-day equivalents of the other two (merry-making and the commercialised myth of Santa Claus). Often those distractions are so powerful that it seems the third element - the memory - is struggling to stay alive.
There is nothing new in this. The Gospels, of course, give no indication of the date of the birth of Jesus beyond Luke’s reference to it being “when Cyrenius was governor of Syria” and Matthew saying that it occurred before the death of Herod (in 4BC). The earliest Christians do not seem to have placed much emphasis on the birth of Jesus as an important feast - Easter was the focus of their religious calendar - and its celebration on December 25 is first attested in Rome in AD336. The day set aside for Christmas was most likely chosen to oppose a Roman feast that coincided with the winter solstice. This feast, says Chadwick, was observed by the Romans with “drunkenness and riot” and although the church sought to bring a more purposeful meaning to these festivities, Christians - then, as now - generally ignored appeals from their religious leaders not to drink and eat to excess in the manner of their non-Christian neighbours.
Keeping alive the memory of that birth in Bethlehem, however, can be tricky for other reasons. If Christmas is the account of how God became incarnate in human affairs, then it is likely to take forms as diverse and as parochial as the people who do the recounting. The original birth narratives in the gospels are only two in number, they are sketchy at best and then often contradictory. This has encouraged a certain freedom of imagination in filling in the gaps so that the Christmas story that has evolved over the centuries reflects the adaptations and embellishments of virtually every culture that has embraced it.
Only after Matthew wrote his gospel was it decided that the “wise men” he refers to were three in number (since they bore three gifts, of gold, frankincense and myrrh), that they must be all kings (since the psalms mention three kings bearing gifts), and that their names were Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. The now familiar nativity scene also includes the ox and the ass, of which the Bible makes no reference. When Christianity reached northern Europe, snow was introduced into the Christmas landscape. German folklore added the Christmas tree to the season’s symbolism and the Dutch added “Sinterklaus” (hence Santa Claus) or Father Christmas, who was modelled on the 4th-century bishop of Myra in Lycia, St Nicholas.
But beneath all these accoutrements is the message carried by the story, most forcefully articulated in the opening of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” The spirit of God, in other words, dwelt in every human long before the events of that first Christmas night, long before the Christian faith and its church were conceived. God took human form in Jesus of Nazareth so that this cosmic knowledge could be made known to all.
What this knowledge means in terms of Christianity’s understanding of its place in a world of many religions has only relatively recently become a subject of serious theological debate. But that debate will dominate not only theological circles for years but also, in many respects, the cultural and political agenda, too. How we can live together in a way that affirms life, in a way that expresses the divine presence in each human being, is the question that needs to be addressed. The events of September 2001, and the conflicts between Jews, Muslims and Christians the world over are proof enough that if answers are not found, hatred and violence will take their place.
F GOD has always and everywhere been active in history, then this activity must be reflected in the different religious traditions. Are they then equal partners, if not in salvation as understood in the Christian sense, then at least in the expression of God’s regard for humanity and humanity’s response to that regard? If so, what insights do they offer? How can - and should - the practitioners of these different religions participate in each other’s insights?
These questions may not seem novel but the approach that is now required is - as far as the modern world is concerned. That world has been built on the idea of toleration, understood in turn as the idea that religion is essentially a private concern and so religious differences can be glossed over and their individual contributions diminished because nothing of public importance hangs on them. This approach has encouraged claims to exclusive truth - and the division and conflict these spawn - because we no longer seek a sharing of the different experiences of our common humanity. Instead, what is asked of us is that we bear with each other by respecting our separate beliefs.
What is needed is more positive: the encouragement of genuine mutual understanding. For this to happen, the memory of Christmas is a good starting point. In its essentials, the story of Christmas is the story of a child - everywhere a source of new life - whose immediate fate is dependent on the loving environment of a family, just as our common fate rests in nurturing human relationships. It is a story of courage and of hope. As such it is a source and inspiration for each. Both will be needed to reach beyond the frontiers of our respective religious certainties and to explore the deeper mysteries to which they point.
Where to start? Christians ignoring “appeals from their religious leaders” and behaving like naughty non-Christians? What?! The “sketchy” and “contradictory” gospel accounts of Jesus birth that *shock* don’t explicitly state if an ox really was present? Oh my! The twisting of one of the most profound statements of Christian belief into the idea that “The spirit of God, in other words, dwelt in every human long before the events of that first Christmas night, long before the Christian faith and its church were conceived.” That’s just offensive!
Then the old chestnut, religious tolerance. This has apparently become a priority post 9/11, because religion is (a) synonymous with planes flying into buildings (b) the obvious scapegoat for everything wrong with my government, my lifestyle and my beliefs and (c) it threatens my delicate sense of security in my personal wealth and my dreams that one day I too may participate on Extreme Makeover to get the look I always wanted.
No religion = no “unpleasantness”. And anyhow, despite the religious climate into which Jesus was actually born, we know that “God” was working away in all religions all along! Now if we could only get those pesky religious people to see they are all really singing the same tune ahd have been all along, then all the better for society! Christmas isn’t about salvation or anything, its about the far more important virtues of “courage” and “hope”. To what end these virtues lead is not the point, just so long as all religious pretensions to anything other than these most holy virtues is stamped out post haste. Then we can tolerant everyone equally!
If I was an unbeliever, I’d almost blindly turn to Christianity purely as the rational alternative to the nonsense that is secular humanism.
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