Elizabeth Hunter provides a reminder that Christmas was once less familial, more political:
At the time the poem was written, disturbance on the lawn on Christmas Eve would have been not magical, but threatening, likely caused by drunken youths roaming the neighborhood, demanding gifts from respectable householders.
This was an echo of older traditions, also subversive, which saw tenants and serfs demanding gifts and being given law-like powers in this “season of misrule.”
Some regiments of the British Army still maintain the practice of officers serving men in the mess on Christmas Day. Stephen Nissenbaum’s book “The Battle for Christmas” tells the story of this transformation of Christmas from an “unruly carnival season” to the quintessential, apolitical family holiday.
Christmas then, before being domesticated by the Victorians, was a profoundly political time.
Steve Holmes, a theologian at the University of St Andrews, argues that this political edge is entirely congruent with the biblical stories of the nativity.
December 21st, 2011 | 2:03 pm
I’m sure there are political implications to just about every Christian truth and tradition, but I do doubt the idea that the Gospel and Christmas traditions are first and foremost political statements.
December 21st, 2011 | 2:15 pm
If anyone is interested, here’s a link to the full report by Stephen Holmes (on “The Politics of Christmas”). It’s available through Theos (“the public theology think tank”), which (of course) is Elizabeth Hunter’s bailiwick:
http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/ThePoliticsOfChristmas.pdf
Here’s the final paragraph:
“If the telling of the Christmas story – in the classical form of the nativity play, or in the
original form (at least of Matthew’s narrative) – is to have any place in our celebration of Christmas, it should challenge us in profoundly political ways. The notion that the domestic sphere is apolitical, unchanging, or even worthy of celebration should be challenged by the telling of this story; the story should bring us face-to-face with our views on homelessness, on asylum, on healthcare provision, on intervention in sovereign states whose authorities are repressing their citizens, on our attitude to foreign people resident in our nation, on our beliefs about gender politics. This is not a comfortable fairy story which silently reinforces traditional values, but a disturbing narrative which confronts us with serious questions about our assumptions concerning the way the world is and should be. This story is, or should be, an insistent intervention in our discussions of the common good, calling us to remember the marginalised and forgotten, to be open to the strange of the foreign. With all due respect to Charles Dickens, the last thing the Christmas story invites us to do is to shut our doors and forget about the world outside.”
I dunno. I think charity work is a fine and wonderful thing at Christmastime, but this sounds more like suggesting we turn our household into a faculty seminar on special topics in liberal theology. Thanks, but no thanks.
December 21st, 2011 | 2:43 pm
“With all due respect to Charles Dickens, the last thing the Christmas story invites us to do is to shut our doors and forget about the world outside.”
Huh? “A Christmas Carol” was all about someone whose soul was endangered by his practice of shutting his doors and forgetting the world outside, and his transformation into one who mixed with, and shared with, that world, most particularly the poor and forgotten, because of his encounter with the implications of the Christmas story.
What is he talking about with the “with all due respect” stuff?
December 21st, 2011 | 3:43 pm
Pentamom – I think his point is that we’re supposed to turn our Christmas feelings into a political movement, rather than just loving and caring for the people in our immediate surroundings.
Bob Cratchett should have occupied Scrooge’s bank and demanded something or other, rather than just being grateful for the generosity and rebirth of his boss.
December 21st, 2011 | 4:05 pm
Perhaps, sallyr. He either completely missed the point of A Christmas Carol because he read it with no comprehension, or your explanation is correct — in which case he completely missed the point of A Christmas Carol. ;-)
December 22nd, 2011 | 5:17 am
And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare—
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
John Betjeman
December 26th, 2011 | 9:27 pm
Tell an agent of the Roman empire that Jesus is Lord, and you’d quickly find out whether the Christmas story is political.
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