If I walk into a store in November and there’s Christmas music playing, I will turn and walk out. Why does it bother me so much? I enjoy making cookies and trimming the tree with a grandchild; I enjoy finding or making just the right gift for someone. I am passionate about the message of Christmas. I enjoy Christmas music on Christmas Eve and Day.
Why does it bother me as a background to our shopping experience? Partly, of course, because it starts at about Halloween. And the music seems designed to push us into a frenzy — “yikes, Christmas is coming soon and we’d better get busy with our lists!” And those lists are meant to get longer and longer — Black Friday, Cyber Monday — stocking stuffers, last minute deals.
Shopping, consumerism, set to, “Oh Holy Night…” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” or “Joy to the World.” It gives me the creeps.
When you think about it, it is a bizarre juxtaposition. Consumer frenzy to mark the birth of a child, who like so many around the world, was born into poverty and who became a refugee. Just as well, the holy family didn’t arrive at our southern border where they would have been separated, and Jesus put in a cage like so many other vulnerable little ones.
Why has Christmas come to mean stuff you buy and frantic preparation?
For one thing, I believe that our country’s real religion is capitalism/ consumerism, so it would make sense that our main holiday would be marked by a whirl of spending. Those Christmas carols are supposed to fool us into forgetting that.
It’s true too, that Christmas has become less of a religious holiday and more of a shopping/ family extravaganza. When I lived in Africa, Christmas morning was like Easter: at our church there were five services, all packed. I suspect that the loss of the meaning of Christmas is related to fundamentalist churches and their lack of attention to Jesus’ life, while over-emphasizing his death.
Great historian and biblical scholar, N. T. Wright suggests: “For many conservative theologians it would have been sufficient if Jesus had been born of a virgin (at any time in human history, and perhaps from any race), lived a sinless life, died a sacrificial death, and risen again three days later.” If we lose the life of Jesus, we lose the significance of Jesus’ humanity, which is what Christmas is meant to celebrate.
It may be, too, that the frenzy also works to protect us from the message we are afraid to, but desperately need to hear. The real message of Christmas is that in the incarnation, God chose to be “God with us.”
This matters, because it means that there is no place that God is not — “God with us” is there in the loss of a loved one, the terrifying diagnosis, the agonizing divorce, the pain of an errant child — God is with us. Let’s not allow our senses to be dulled to this radical message — by wrapping paper or piped carols.
The details are mystery, but orthodox Christian belief says that God, existent as a dance of love from the beginning of time, during the incarnation, was born and experienced human life in all its joys and sorrows. We may never understand the mystery, but we can experience it in our lives. And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the message in some Christmas music.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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