Today — Monday, Dec. 25 — is, as virtually everyone knows, Christmas Day, an occasion that has not always been about “peace on earth, good will to men.” Perhaps it was always thus, but it has become particularly more so in our politically divisive times.
There are those who resent what they see as their holy day being coopted by the commercial holiday. And then there are those who don’t want secular culture subsumed by what is essentially a religious tradition. What both groups have in common is that they see Christmas as an either/or proposition. In reality, it has always been a mix of the sacred and profane, as it were.
Begin with an irresistible story — a babe born in a manger to offer each of us personal salvation. It would be developed by a Jewish sect funded by wealthy widows and ultimately promulgated by the persecuting Pharisee who would become St. Paul, apostle to the Gentiles. Add the disseminating influence of Greek, the lingua franca of the Roman Empire thanks to Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire; and then the muscle of that Roman Empire, which would ultimately decide that if it couldn’t beat Christianity it would join it.
Setting aside the theological aspect, consider that it is from a public relations perspective, a marketing dream: A terrific story of humility, innocence, self-sacrifice, redemption and transcendence with ready-made listeners and the powerful vehicle with which to communicate it to them.
But in celebrating the birth of Jesus on the appointed date of Dec. 25, Christianity also adapted many of the traditions of the classical celebration of the winter solstice, which marks the triumph of light over dark as the days grow longer. Through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, various other traditions — cleaning the house before the holiday and festooning it with greenery; feasting before the leanness of the long winter and Lent; exchanging gifts; and general merriment — added to the feast, so much so that by the time we get to George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” (actually an 18th-century Easter tradition); Pyotr Ilyich Tchakovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” Prince Albert and the Germanic custom of the Christmas tree that he brought to England when he married Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” (the 19th century); and Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,”Frank Capra ‘s“It’s A Wonderful Life” and Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” (the 20th century), we’re all a long way from Baby Jesus in a manger in a desert country.
But as the Rev. Cedric Pisegna, C.P., noted on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) Sunday, Dec. 24, all of these secular celebrations — the Santa Clauses and sugarplums — exist because of that child in a manger, not despite him.
For some, Christmas will never be anything but a secular feast. For others, it is primarily a Christian feast, though some Christian sects like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists don’t celebrate it.
But for many more, the cultural transformation of Christmas is a protean metaphor for the feast day’s capacity for transcendence and our own. When a face lights up with an unexpected gift, isn’t that Christmas? When you overlook family slights of old for a get-together, isn’t that the Christian message of forgiveness? When you put a pause on holiday magic to help a friend in need, isn’t that the spirit of the season? When you see a man selling flowers on a roadside late on a cold Christmas Eve and are moved to empathy for someone trying to make a meager living, isn’t that Christlike?
Not everyone will find the religious meaning in the season, anymore than everyone will care about its culture significance. But as the Grinch discovered, Christmas comes whether the world is indifferent to it or not. And those who savor it should not be denied regardless of their motivation. Christmas is a big tent moment with plenty of room in this inn.
As Scrooge’s nephew Fred describe’s it to him in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”:
I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!‘”
Yes, God bless it and everyone.
And to everyone, a Merry Christmas.