Give it Back

Like a good Facebook fisherman, I've been trolling through the posts casting out my own nets, sifting through the digital detritus in an attempt to figure out what is important in the collective world psyche in the Year of Our Lord, 2015. 

We spend a lot of time re-posting funny videos of dogs and cats.
We spend a lot of time trying to decide how to view the Muslim religion.
We spend a lot of time attempting to look more beautiful.
We spend a lot of time putting people down.
We spend a lot of time deciding which politician is the worst.
By 'liking' things, we substitute social perusal for actual relationship.

Lastly, Christians spend an inordinate amount of time trying to 'reclaim' Christmas from the so-called 'secular' world.

It's the last one that I'd like to focus on for, probably, the last post of the year. 

If we were to put a token into a time machine and travel back to the arbitrary year of 300 (or even 600, 900 or 1,200) A. D., I think that we'd find a different understanding about Christmas.  According to scholars, the early Christian church had three main holidays.  They were, in order of occurrence in the year, not in significance: Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost.  Notice, in the large scheme of things, there was no importance placed on Christmas.  Why was that?

Christmas, as hopefully most Christians know, began as a pagan holiday, a festival for the longest day of the year and the return of the light, and then Christianity, in order to prove its superiority, subsumed the pagan festival and turned it into Christmas.  (They did the same with some of the pagan worship sites also.  They actually built the church over the pagan churches.)  In essence, Christmas swallowed the pagan festival.  The symbolism is obvious and it made sense at the time.  In order to teach the pagan culture and the traditions of the time about the Light that has come into the world, the Christian leadership wagged its finger at the pagans and said, 'Let us tell you about the true God that came as a baby.'  But as the years have gone on, even in the last century, that Christian message of Christmas has actually started to be swallowed by paganism again.  This time, the pagan god is called 'materialism' and it is a powerful idol seemingly imbuing the worshiper with strength to overcome any anxiety they encounter in life, especially the 'idea' of sin and the impending understanding of death.  This pagan 'god' is a tsunamic force in our 21st century culture and in some ways what I'm thinking, and about to propose, might cause some tension. 

But really, who am I but one more blogger in an ocean of blogsites.

As I reflect on the tidal wave of consumerism and advertising that destroys the irenic coastlines of our lives, I think to myself:  "Give it back."

Why not give Christmas back to the pagans?  Why not let them have the holiday for avarice and greed; of gluttony and pride?  Let them call it 'X-mas' or 'happy holidays' or whatever replacement that is out there in an attempt to not actually speak the name of Christ.  My thinking is this:  Is it really helping for Christians to batter their collective hands against the closed door of corporate greed?  Do we not actually turn people away because of our pietistic railing against something that most people really desire?  Why not the same righteous indignation over Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost? 

So, I see the collective, shrinking Christian community battling against something that really isn't that important.  What I mean by that is, the ancient Christian church put no large emphasis on the birth of Christ other than that of its miraculous nature.  Paul places significance on Jesus' birth; Peter does not speak of it; the epistle writers don't even mention it. 

All of the strength of ancient Christians' argument for Christ has nothing to do with his birth and everything to do with his death and resurrection, which makes me wonder why we are so bent out of shape about Christmas sinking into the consumeristic hole at the end of December.

I say, "Give it Back."

C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity writes this: 

"Enemy-occupied territory  -  that is what this world is.  Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.  When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.  He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery."

How many times does this play out in our 21st century Christian culture?  We presume that recipe for the contemporary Christian life has significant portions of the ingredients of conceit (in the form of superiority over those 'unsaved' people) in laziness (if I just tell people that I will pray for them, that is all that God really needs me to do) and intellectual snobbery (Let me tell you why my understanding of Christ is unlimited in the way that it gives me power over you).  When we attempt to 'take back' Christmas, we actually reconstruct the wall that Christ tore down at his death and resurrection.  We tell people who, while becoming at least partially subservient to a culture of consumerism, that they are sinners if they don't recognize the Christ of Christmas. We attend church, the listening in to the secret wireless, for the second or third time during the year because it's socially acceptable to do so; and we build up, brick by brick, a barrier between 'us' and 'them,' which, in essence, is the biggest problem of all, because whether we admit it or not, we see the 'non-Christian' as the enemy, not the true enemy - as Luther puts it, the devil and all his empty promises.

We, as Christians, can give up the necessity to feel like we need to protect 'Christmas' and do what Lewis calls the 'campaign of sabotage' not by railing against misunderstandings of the meaning of Christmas, but by being enemy agents against Satan by reclaiming God's children through the love that came down at Christmas, the light that came into the world (Epiphany). 

I say, "Give it back."  Enjoy the festive celebrations, and if your own piety allows you to experience Christ at Christmas, you are truly blessed because the Light that came into the world illuminates everything.  Go to church on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, or the Sunday after and listen in to God's plan for the world as he came to us in disguise. 

Enjoy listening to the battle plan for God's will in our lives.

Merry Christmas.