don't let anyone talk you out of Christmas
Posted by Rebecca Teti
in Faith
on Tuesday, December 02, 2008 10:00 AM
The “War on Christmas” is no such thing, as the spate of stories about Thanksgiving pageants being canceled in our nations schools shows. What’s really under attack is festivity—the notion that there is anything worth celebrating. (Ultimately this attack on goodness is an attack on God, but he can handle himself!)
Here’s a column I wrote about three years ago and offer again not because I like to quote my own, but because I think Joseph Pieper’s teaching about keeping feast days is important for understanding how to keep Advent and Christmas --or any true feast, be it secular or religious.
I hope you’ll read the whole thing, because I’d like to suggest we resist giving in to the notion that this is a particularly “stressful” time of year. (The Good News as bad news? C’mon!) But the most important part is the summary from Pieper’s In Tune With the World of what’s necessary for a celebration. Here’s a lengthy excerpt:
“Nietzsche famously said the difficult thing was not to have a festival, but to find anyone capable of celebrating it. While hardly the Christian’s friend, Nietzsche is unsurpassed as a diagnostician of modernity’s troubles. For people without faith, no true celebration is possible, because all festivity is ultimately an affirmation of the goodness of existence. Put another way, celebration takes place within the culture of life. The culture of death literally cannot celebrate, though it may fake it.
In his In Tune with the World, Joseph Pieper reflects on the elements necessary for celebration. They include: a reason to celebrate, sacrifice, time of preparation and tangible expression of the reality celebrated. Let’s look at these.
A reason to celebrate. Festivals connect us to an actual event. Pieper notes you can’t have a good party about abstract ideas. That’s why there’s no “Democracy Day,” but there is Independence Day. A feast survives only so long as the participants are attached to the meaning of the feast. When we revered the good example of the father of our country, we celebrated Washington’s Birthday. The unofficial change to “Presidents Day” pretty much killed the holiday, because it emptied it of meaning and occasion. Similarly, it is belief in the birth of Jesus and the significance of the incarnation that make Christmas worth celebrating. Generic “season’s greetings,” while inoffensive, undermine Christmas because they detach us from the festive occasion.
Sacrifice. A feast day implies a conscious sacrifice of time and the money that could be earned in labor. Festivity means putting aside usual activities in favor of something which, while not useful in the usual sense, is good in itself. Our inability to see “the point” of Christmas celebrations — to feel ourselves put out by “having” to go through with them — reveals at least in part the idea that nothing not strictly “useful” can be worthwhile. This is utilitarianism, not Christianity.
Preparation. The most important element of any feast is something over which we have no control. It is that indescribable “connection” that sweeps us up into the celebration. We can’t make it happen; it’s purely God’s gift. What we can do is prepare ourselves to receive the gift. The Church, ever the wise psychologist, has given us Advent to make our souls fit vessels for the graces to be poured out at Christmas. The more time we take during Advent to pray, to repent, to remember the poor, the more we connect ourselves to the ground of the coming feast, and ensure that if God sends a special grace our way, we won’t miss it. “Merry Christmas” is more than a variation on “Hello.” It is a way of wishing the person’s Christmas celebration may be successful. “May you be swept up into the joy of the Incarnation.”
Practical expression. This is where the traditional customs that seem to cause such consternation enter in. Decorations and gifts are properly understood as manifestations of an irrepressible joy in our hearts. The coming of Jesus makes us so happy, we want to do something to share the sweet joy with others.
What about commercialism? Of course it is a problem. Every celebration contains within itself the seed of excess, which despoils happiness. We have to practice the virtue of moderation, even on feast days.
But moderation is called for in moderation too!
Is the fact that many people miss the point a reason for Christians to throw out the whole celebration? Embodied spirits need to give joy concrete expression. This is why the carol recommends, “Make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table.” When my local merchants put out their Christmas wares, I have no way of knowing if they are manifesting inner delight at the coming of Christ or simply trying to make a buck. I don’t much care. If the village atheist’s living turns on helping me celebrate the birth of Christ, I have to believe there’s a good buried there somewhere.”
I’ll leave you to read the conclusion on your own if you’re interested, but I can sum it up: the Christmas cookie as resistance movement. Let’s not help drive Christmas from the public square with our own bad attitudes.
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Filed under advent, feast days, liturgical year, pieper, war on christmas
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Comments
1. Posted by Mary W
[website] on Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 2:35 PM (EST):
Rebecca,
Thank you so much for sharing this. Sometimes I find myself asking “What’s the point of decorating for any holiday?” Now I see how much a culture of death influences me as well. I will be more conscience of this and I will try to decorate for most holiday’s. This probably seems so insignificant but you can’t imagine the battle I have within me “to decorate or not to decorate.” =)
2. Posted by Kathleen on Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 3:20 PM (EST):
What a beautiful article! I’m a holiday person from a holiday family - we celebrate big for everything from Easter to Flag Day. (Okay, slight exaggeration.) I’m an eternal optimist when it comes to holidays. When everyone I know has come back from Thanksgiving saying it was “okay” or “I survived” or worse, I’m on a days-long high from the happy memories and amazing food and time with family and friends - never mind that we fought as much as anyone else and it was not always easy. I love the celebration, and for the important holidays like Christmas and Easter, that includes trappings in addition to the deeper meaning. I tend to worry, though, that getting excited about the trappings will obscure the point, but I love this way of thinking of it. I’ll keep reminding myself that the reason I’m trimming the tree and having parties and making presents because Christ is born and we’re celebrating it!
3. Posted by Sandy
[website] on Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 4:35 PM (EST):
I find the perspective interesting that what is really under attack is the idea that there is anything worth celebrating at all. My thoughts were too long to share here, so I’ve posted about them on my own blog. I think you’ve shown us here that anything can be an offering to Him if done in the right spirit- even our modern Christmas.
4. Posted by Sally on Thursday, Dec 4, 2008 2:06 AM (EST):
Thank you so much for this. I especially appreciate your advice to pick just one Christmas tradition and do it more. My problem is that I can get paralyzed by anxiety over the multiplicity of things that ought to be done and so don’t get to enjoy any of them. Better to have just one thing really done up and really enjoy it!
5. Posted by Katerine on Thursday, Dec 4, 2008 5:28 PM (EST):
For those have lost their faith or for someone that is an unbeliever, could not the stores than play Christmas music and having Christmas decoration be a “sacred space” and the secular movies “It is a wonderful life” and “scrooge” be used by God to touch their hearts?
God writes straight with crooked lines. I think we need to remember that anything can be an offering to God if done in the right spirit- even our modern Christmas. We need to keep reminding ourselves that the reason we are trimming the tree and having parties and making presents because Christ is born and we’re celebrating it!
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