Christmas has probably never been much about Jesus
As important as Christmas Eve services were to many of my congregants across the years and despite my earnest desires to be creative and fresh while capturing the true spirit of Christmas lore, I misfired frequently, leaving some disappointed and others frustrated, even angry on occasion. My detractors might very well point out that if I had only stuck to “the basics,” everyone would’ve been happy or most everyone. (Complete congregational happiness is a nonexistent state.) Read on please, and decide if I deserve(d) compliments or criticism.
During two consecutive annual Christmas Eve services, I was so heavy-hearted with the tragedies and catastrophes in the world (and this was long before Trump and his demons made things so much worse than I could ever have imagined), I turned a lessons and carols format into a lessons, carols, and current events service. For those who stay away from churches for whatever reason, let me explain very briefly.
A service of lessons and carols alternates traditional biblical readings ostensibly related to Christmas with Christmas music—congregational carols and choral along with instrumental holiday music at its best. I simply tweaked that by working in readings from news stories about circumstances nationally and internationally that desperately needed to be transformed by, let’s call it, the Christmas spirit.
I included readings about hunger and homelessness on our doorsteps and around the world, the ravages of active warring, neglected and otherwise abused infants and young children, among others. I thought I with long-suffering musicians created social justice masterpieces, which, after all, honor the life and teachings of Jesus more than a nativity scene. Following the second one of these two services, my deacon chairperson was sent as an emissary from the larger deacon board representing more than a few congregants to tell me that the “depressive approach” to Christmas Eve was not what they needed or wanted. I heard.
The next Christmas Eve, I tried my hand, as I have done on a few occasions, at setting the dynamics of the birth of Jesus stories in a modern more or less parallel context. This first effort had Mary as a teen, unwed mother-to-be (which was exactly how Jesus’ mother found herself) with her presumptive husband desperately trying to find a place for their baby to be born after having been turned away by the absolutely overcrowded ER of a small city’s only hospital. The only place they could find at hand as the birth was imminent was an unoccupied crack house near the hospital.
Some of my hearers were thrilled with the re-creation, envisioning (could’ve been wishful thinking) a career change for me to become a prominent writer of short stories. Others were unimpressed. And one person, who never attended any other services throughout the year, absolutely hated it and used my story as an excuse to declare that he would not attend services at our church anymore.
In defeat, the next few Christmas Eve services I went back to those tried and true basics, even though I did not think re-hearing the same predictable scriptural texts did justice to what actually occurred or to the implications of being a follower of the adult Jesus. This approach was a lot less work for me at an already busy time of year, so fine—even though I felt I was betraying the original storytellers and the spirit of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now retired from the pastorate, those tensions are no longer my worries. Christmas can now be an entirely innocuous experience without concern for anyone other than my family and myself. Alas, neither my brain nor my conscience allow that.
My hunches during those depressive Christmas Eve services had been correct. A plastic or a wood-carved or a stained glass baby Jesus may stir our hearts to sentimentality, and as tender and touching as that may well be these absolutely do not honor Jesus of Nazareth or the life he lived or his powerful teachings that, against the odds, were preserved for centuries upon centuries after the facts.
Can you imagine having a child of your own and celebrating nothing about that child beyond her or his birth? Can you imagine being the parent of an adult child who is working her or his ass off and taking all kinds of risks and dealing with enormous sacrifices in order to try to make the world a better place and still finding nothing to celebrate other than your child’s birth?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with finding reasons to celebrate family and sharing gifts or not. There is certainly nothing wrong with singing songs about peace on earth. But if there is no concern with trying to bring the teachings of Jesus to bear on pressing national and international situations with a particular focus on the kinds of peripheral people for whom Jesus showed relentless compassion and concern, then we are not celebrating the essentials of Jesus’ life, including his birth. What we have on our hands instead is a Christ-less Christmas.
When I first began hearing frequently slogans about keeping Christ in Christmas I was stirred. The concern behind the slogans was well taken as thoughtful people were noticing that, in the first world at least, Christmas was a lot more about consumerism than about Jesus. I rarely saw, even from those who created or repeated the slogans, much in Christmas celebrations that had anything at all to do with Jesus of Nazareth, and that hasn’t changed.
If we were actually informed/challenged by the teachings of Jesus, at Christmas time we would redouble our efforts to demonstrate active concern (meaning, lip-service doesn’t count) for those suffering from overt injustice, as well as those who have been or are being neglected, ignored, swept to the edges of societal awareness. And preachers worth listening to, many are not, would be prophetically condemning the Trump/MAGAt/bipartisan political abuse of children, senior adults, immigrants and other ICE victims of all ages, the poor, the hungry, the homeless, targets of gun violence and war and genocide.
Nostalgic Christmas carols and preoccupation with angels sweetly singing are literally ludicrous unless we first fight the evils Jesus fought. Maybe to keep us focused we should change our Christmas tree ornaments from Santas and candy canes and stars to Venezuelan fishing boats and miniature ICE detention cells and figurines of emaciated infants and homeless people shivering in the cold.
—David Albert Farmer
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