Tell all the truth but tell it slant. ~ Emily Dickinson
TRUE CONFESSION: I’m not a big fan of the clichés that often arise in Christian circles. One that arose a couple of decades ago and still hangs around each Christmas like a chubby angel with a multitude of lazy heavenly hosts is “Put Christ back into Christmas.” It tries too hard to make a point. It’s clever—slightly—but is it accurate or true? It smacks of misplaced (albeit feigned) indignation since it is almost always connected to blaming the big bad secular culture for what, in fact, is the church’s own fault.
First, no one has the power to take Christ out of Christmas. Second, if anyone is missing at Christmas it is not Christ but us—those who self-identify as Christians. Jesus isn’t AWOL. We are. If we were really seriously bothered about a Christless Christmas, we’d put ourselves back into the season of Advent about which it appears most churches, let alone the culture, know very little. Of course, the dominant culture gets along just fine without Advent since Christmas in our consumer society begins the day after Halloween, but Christian families and communities would benefit from connecting Advent to Christmas since it is a particular way of preparing for the celebration of the incarnation.
The third thing for those who are especially concerned about Christmas being commercialized or secularized is to be more deliberate and creative about marking off and celebrating the season of Christmas not merely the day of Christmas. Despite the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” my guess is that most self-identifying Christians don’t know that Christmas runs from Christmas Midnight on December 25th until the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th. I wonder how many radio stations that use the adjective “Christian” continue to play Christmas carols—of any kind—until the Feast of the Epiphany. Not many, if any, I suspect. Those who complain, “put Christ back into Christmas” might let Christ stick around for more than just one day. We could learn a lesson or two from our Muslim brothers and sisters whose families celebrate Ramadan each year for an entire month giving special attention to fasting, praying, and practicing faithful intention.
Today is the ninth day of Christmas—in case you were wondering about the nine ladies dancing on your front porch as the UPS truck drove away. This morning my writing notebook opened to a quote from the Catholic philosopher, teacher, and contemplative Beatrice Bruteau. It is timely, I think, given that we are still bathing in the light of the Christmas mystery—Emmanuel, the self-gift of God as the enfleshment of love. Bruteau is writing about the meaning of self-giving which, in addition to giving birth, are the two primary actions and embodied truths not only about God but of this resplendent season and the Christian faith. Therefore, these actions are integral to the significant life form self-identifying Christians are meant to take on willingly as our patterned way of being in and for the world. Bruteau explains self-giving means
to give what one considers oneself to be as distinguished from what one has, to give what cannot be separated from oneself: in order to give it, you yourself have to go along and be present—you can’t send it by messenger.
Simply, but not simplistically, stated, the gift of Christmas delivered by way of the courtesy and courage of Mary of Nazareth is the Ineffable One we call God—the Holy One among and with us. (SEE “Sharon’s Christmas Prayer” here). As is the case in human-to-human giving, the best gifts are not the most expensive ones nor the biggest or rarest ones, but rather the gifts that have the most of the giver within them.
“We” have made the Christmas creche scene so cute and quaint and precious that it is easy to pass over and miss altogether the radical, paradoxical, and subversive indirection of the incarnation, the truth it embodies, and the implications it holds for all those wise, brave, or foolish enough to assume it as our way of living in the world. The Christ-child in the manger, looking nothing like the hoped-for, imagined, anointed and almighty messiah (in Greek Christos meaning savior) is the slanted truth and indirection of God’s love personified in the weak, vulnerable infant of a couple considered nobodies. It is the implications of this counter-cultural and counter-intuitive truth we celebrate this season and dare to re-member ourselves to that is our daily modus operandi: to give ourselves away in life and in death for the sake of love.
Jesus is the self-gift of God, not a gift card, not a monetary donation, not a proxy or a messenger or an ambassador, not something we want, but rather someone we need. The paradoxical mystery of Christmas is that the self-giving solidarity of Divine love embodied in the withess of Jesus (Emmanuel) is what gives us inspiration, direction, and immediate, ongoing, and infinite life.
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