Summary: Christmas is a pain in the ass. Crises, snits, and quarrels, ridiculous culture war confrontations, fights over politics, and disappointment at the failure of unrealistic expectations for the season are often enough to cause many of us to growl “bah, humbug!” and to retreat from Christmas altogether. Our surly moods often express themselves in such things as retreating to our places of work, to try to get some work accomplished during the silent time when nobody else is around. Yet in the silence, we cannot avoid contemplating the subversion the Infant in the manger came to set in train. In a time and a society that demonizes the powerless and punishes the poor, we may yet acknowledge some incremental steps toward satisfying our duty of compassion toward the neighbors Christ our Savior called us to love as we love ourselves. The works of justice to which He called us are still incomplete; “substantial additional work” Bush v. Gore (2000) 531 U.S. 98, 110, is still needed, but on this Christmas, we may still, with full consciousness of the subversive nature thereof, dare to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him.
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It’s easy to hate Christmas. It’s a pain in the ass. Start with the canned Christmas music and the pre-Yuletide shopping season whose beginning advances ever further into the liturgical season of Pentecost, add to that all of the various other crises, snits, and quarrels that seem to erupt around this time of year, throw in a generous helping of the culture war bullshit that crops up right around this time (think of Bill O’Reilly and his idiotic “War on Christmas” screeds, together with his whiny criticisms of the Roman Pontiff and of aggressively ignorant bigots in so many jurisdictions and their aggressively ignorant defenders), and finally layer on top of all of that the various expectations we all seem to entertain about what Christmas should be —-and our disappointment when those expectations are not met. All these things together are a recipe for a lousy holiday season. To riff on playwright Larry Kramer’s famous line, “I have seen the Christmas season and it shits.”
So, like a lot of people for whom late fall and winter are a time of torment, my response to the overload of saccharine inherent in this season is to growl a well considered “Bah, humbug!”, together with an off-color homage to Bette Midler’s character in The Rose: “fuck this shit.” It does not take a lot to understand my own surliness of mood as we approach yet another American Christmas. Certainly, such a mood is hardly enhanced by nosy neighbors who want to know why I have put up no lights on my house. Such a mood is not enhanced by neighbors giving me stink eye after noticing that, rather than put up a Christmas tree, I make do with an Advent wreath (complete with three purple candles, a pink one for Gaudete, and a white one for the Incarnate Savior). Indeed, my mood usually gets so surly by Christmas Day that it’s become a personal shibboleth of mine to go into my office and get at least some work done.
Yet, in the lonely quiet of the office on Christmas day, far away from the importunings of co-workers, the ringing phones, the canned music, and the endless advertisements for products I neither need nor want, the silence lends itself to contemplation, and to a realization that, stripped of all the accretions of bullshit we have piled onto it, Christmas is a subversive time. We cannot avoid contemplating the subversion our Savior came into the world to set in train.
Alan Jones, sometime Dean of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, once noted that "We live in an age in which everything is permitted and nothing is forgiven." Certainly, in a time of culture wars, pandering political grandstanders, and aggressive, triumphalist ignorance, it is easy to fall back upon a judgmental posture that sees little redemption in anything. Yet, the Savior is at hand. Come let us adore Him.
What, indeed, would our culture war hardliners have said about a pregnant teenager traveling with an older man who is not the father of her unborn child? Would they have appreciated the weary dignity —– that weary dignity which is so often the lot of the poor among us —- with which this couple sought lodging on a cold night in winter in an occupied territory? Or would they had seen this couple’s choice of a manger as a place to rest as nothing more than an example of freeloading by the "undeserving" poor?
What would our culture warriors think of the events described in the Lucan infancy narrative were they not possessed of the pre-knowledge that comes from that particular Gospel story, a sacred narrative that has become, over 2000 years, one of the most special and precious possessions of the Western mind? I think the answer is simple. Mary and Joseph and their unborn child would have been described as freeloaders at best, welfare cheats at worst, and instead of being acknowledged as Our Lady Queen of the Angels, Mary might well have been derided as nothing more than a welfare queen, living in the projects and sucking off the largesse of society.
Indeed, applying such a narrative, many of the right-wing culture warriors who have made a fetish of insisting that Jesus was white might well have assumed the blackness or brownness of his unwed mother, sleeping rough in a manger and giving birth therein. For across 2000 years, we have yet to heed Jesus’ call, prefigured in the Hebrew Scriptures, to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And herein lies the subversion inherent in our celebration of the Incarnation of our Savior, the Word made flesh, come among us to dwell full of grace and truth and to draw us all to Himself. For indeed, the whole infancy narrative, the whole narrative of the suffering Savior Who offered Himself upon the bitter cross for our advantage, stands at fundamental variance with the way in which our world organizes itself. For His light shines in the darkness, and the darkness, as St. John’s gospel assures us, has not overcome it.
The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
In a society that regularly demonizes the poor and powerless, the very idea that the Savior of the world should have come into it as the child of a homeless, unwed mother is both subversive and confrontational. For the Infant Jesus did not come into the world to bring peace, but a sword. The Infant Jesus did not come into the world to comfort the comfortable, or to afflict the afflicted, but to remind us of God’s preferential option for Lazarus over Dives, of God’s awesome compassion for those unloved with none to love them.
The radical and subversive teachings Jesus brought to the world call us across 21 centuries to an ethic of justice, inclusion, compassion, and compunction. As we feel a sense of inchoate obligation toward the Infant in the manger, so that Infant calls us to feel that same sense of obligation toward our neighbors.
And indeed, in this year 2014 we may perhaps feel a sense of having in some incremental way done right by those to whom we have so often done wrong. Though the Senate has shamefully left in the lurch more than a million American veterans at risk for suicide or other self-harm, when 22 vets take their own lives every day (Thanks, Tom Coburn, you soulless creature!), the effort to raise the minimum wage to something liveable, to provide some degree of a better life for millions of the working poor, continues to gain momentum. Though jurisdictions throughout the country have had to be chivvied, dragged, and ultimately sued, the corner has -irrevocably, we hope- been turned on marriage equality. Two thirds of the states now embrace marriage equality. And to the everlasting irritation of many on the American right, we’re finally beginning to acknowledge that black and brown lives really do matter, that the Infant in the manger came to proclaim salvation to all of us, irrespective of our skin tone. The Savior is at hand; come let us adore Him.
Yet, in the sacred silence of this time of Incarnation, we need to realize how much more remains undone, how distant we yet remain from the Kingdom of God. To borrow from the language of the egregious Bush v. Gore opinion, “substantial additional work” is still needed. 531 U.S. 98 at 110.
In this sacred time, when we recall again that we are the people of a passionate God, Whose passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation, Passion, death, and Resurrection of the Infant in the manger, it is for us, as Abraham Lincoln reminded the nation at Gettysburg, to be dedicated to the unfinished work, to that great work spoken of by the prophet Isaiah:
“to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” Isa. 61:1-2.
And to say “bah, humbug” to all the naysayers who believe on this Christmas that we can neither attain social justice nor proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
“Substantial additional work” is still needed. Let’s get about doing it.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
The Savior is at hand! O come let us adore Him!
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PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served two terms as a member of the city Council. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be taken as, legal advice. This post is an updated adaptation of this blog’s Christmas post for 2013, because the work of building the Kingdom remains as yet incomplete.
