ARE WE STILL DOING CHRISTMAS?
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That's a good question, I guess.
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Actually, it came to me as a question
about the Christmas Eve Service we have done at the Old World Deli and Pub
for all these years.
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I keep wondering myself. I keep thinking
it will run down and we won't do it any more. But it hasn't yet, so we keep
buying insurance and putting some ads in the paper and getting some haloes
and crowns and shepherd's staffs collected and candles enough to go around.
And wondering again about whether there will be a baby.
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Yes, I assured the lady, we are still
doing Christmas.
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But the question rattled around in my
head. So here I am at the cabin, the day after Thanksgiving, thinking I’d
better start doing something about Christmas. Unlike church-bound clergy I
have few pressing duties. The only things I do clergy wise about Christmas
are an Advent Season Brunch and the Christmas Eve thing.
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With that in mind I sent out word of
the date and place for our Brunch.
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You would think I would be satisfied
to go to my files and pull up something from one of the services I've done
during the past 50 years. I'm sure my mind goes fishing there. I have memories
of some great moments of warm fellowship during brunch time and then a gradual
getting into some feeling of Christmas as Paul got us singing some familiar
songs.
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The problem with me is that I always
want to understand what's going on. It is hard for me to get it in my head
that Christmas is not about understanding. It is especially true for those
of us in the western world where we want to hear words as history and seem
unable to see through story to profound meaning.
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Worse than that, it's hard for me not
to try to “explain” my understanding of the “story.” (In quotes to suggest
there is no one story)
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How can you “explain” the various Christmas
texts without forcing people to give up long held ideas that these stories
are about things that actually happened?
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And how can you go on to explain how
what the stories that are not history speak profound truth? I mean, only a
preacher is dull enough to try to reduce history to legend, and then turn
legend into living faith.
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As I think back over the years I see
that I have tried two strategies. One is to simply tell the stories, pretty
much as written, with all their mystery. Then let the mystery be. That's probably
the best approach. Trust people to wonder their way to deeper meaning.
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What always bothers me is that little
kids are growing up and doing some thinking in the night. They figure out
that there isn't any Santa Claus. And also that Mary isn't a virgin and that
angels don't sing. That doesn't stop them from hanging up their stockings
by the fireplace when they are in college or singing “Silent Night, Holy Night”
on Christmas Eve. What bothers me is that they may grow up wondering why
I didn't let them in on what the stories are all about.
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I liked myself best when I found other
metaphors for the grand notion that the divine presence doesn't float around
in the sky or appear only in Cathedral ceremonies, but appears wherever compassion
is shown, or self is sacrificed for sake of love. We can buy that in a Mother
Theresa, but it takes a bit more awareness to see that this presence appears
in many, many humble people and places. I liked myself best when I could say
that the Christmas idea is not so much about Jesus as about the idea that
the great spirit and force of love manifests itself in as humble a personage
as a Jesus from Nazareth. And sometimes in ones such as ourselves.
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So, are we still doing Christmas? If
you are asking, have we given up trying to make sense of this story? The
answer is, no. It's too good a story not to tell. That Jesus was idolatrized
and proclaimed a divinity to replace the divine Caesar's of the Roman World
is not the issue of the moment. That's for another time. If you have a better
story, tell it. Until I hear of a better I’ll keep on doing Christmas.
— Art Morgan, December 2005
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