So I was at a local Christmas party last night. There I met a most admirable young man with six beautiful and happy children and a seventh on the way. He makes his leaving as a boutique metal worker (cupolas and such), and he’s obviously a fine craftsman and an able entrepreneur. Not only that, he’s quite the connoisseur of fine beer and wine and quite widely read. He speaks with the eloquent sophistication–not often found among cosmopolitan sophisticates–of someone with justifiable confidence that he knows what he’s talking about. He’s a Republican out of personal self-reliance; he has no idea why any responsible person would need or want more than catastrophic health insurance. His knowledge of theology shamed me; he mentioned author after author I had heard of but not read. He and a couple of the other men present had a sophisticated and politely contentious conversation about Calvinism and Covenant Theology. He reported that he and his boss talked theology almost every day over lunch, and that his boss, although good and knowledgeable Christian, had distressing antinomian tendencies due to his neglect of the moral law of the Old Testament.
This guy told me calmly and almost as an aside that, because he’s not a Roman Catholic, he and his family don’t celebrate Christmas. His kids call Santa a stupid fat man. He, of course, is all for Christmas parties, but the thinks the birth of the Lord should be remembered every Lord’s day. The Catholics, he explained, were really good at converting pagans by appropriating their seasonal festivals for Christian purposes. But December 25 signifies, in truth, nothing properly Christian.
Our country’s first Christians, the Puritans, also were against Christmas as nothing more than an invention of popery. And I’ve said time and again, following Tocqueville, that we Americans wouldn’t be much without the enduring influence of our Puritan tradition.
Our Founders tended to slight Christmas as nothing more than an English tradition that deserves to fade away in republican America. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say Christmas almost disappeared from our country in the wake of the revolution. Obviously our nation wouldn’t be much without our republican principles.
But Christmas still reminds us that we’re more than Calvinist or enlightened, principled Deists or even some combination of the two.
Christmas survived in our country as a part of English history and belief that couldn’t quite be extinguished. And, thank God, John Wesley was all for the celebration of Christmas, as were our Lutheran and Catholic immigrants. Christmas really caught on among the slaves brought over from Africa, who saw that it was all about personal liberation. Maybe the best Christmas hymns written in America were African American spirituals–such as MARY HAD A BABY and GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, which are rooted in both deep human longings and the earthy reality of what happened on Christmas day.
The England of the carols–primarily medieval and Catholic and aristocratic and certainly pre-Calvinist England–had it right that Christmas ought to be a joyful festival. It was the successor of the pagan festivals, but still something new, because the news was so much more unambiguously good than anything the pagans ever heard. Surely Tocqueville was right that the Christian message about the equal freedom of us all–a gift of our Creator–is our most precious inheritance from aristocratic centuries, and that Jesus Christ had to come to earth for us really to hear that message or have it become part of ourselves.
I could go on, following Ivan’s fine lead, and talk about the most depressing thing America can do and has done to Christmas is to make it less joyful, to domesticate or banalize it, to turn it into “Happy Holidays” that are neither pagan nor Christian. But it’s easy to exaggerate these criticisms. Christmas remains more Christian in America than we often know.
A joyful Christmas to all…
December 26th, 2009 | 11:16 am
Better a Catholic Christmas than a secular one? Maybe, but I think it would be better still for Calvinists and the heirs of the Puritan tradition (and I do generally try to fit that particular mold) to adopt a healthy dose of Believer’s Freedom from the Lutherans, and enjoy the holiday, without of course forgetting the rest of the year that “the birth of the Lord should be remembered every Lord’s day.” (Though out of curiousity, what does your friend think about the fact that Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, not the Incarnation?)
We ought to take a page from Philip Schaff:
“The Christmas festival is the celebration of the incarnation of the Son of God. It is occupied, therefore, with the event which forms the centre and turning-point of the history of the world. It is of all the festivals the one most thoroughly inter-woven with the popular and family life, and stands at the head of the great feasts in the Western church year. It continues to be, in the entire Catholic world and in the greater part of Protestant Christendom, the grand jubilee of children, on which innumerable gifts celebrate the infinite love of God in the gift of his only-begotten Son. It kindles in mid-winter a holy fire of love and gratitude, and preaches in the longest night the rising of the Sun of life and the glory of the Lord. It denotes the advent of the true golden age, of the freedom and equality of all the redeemed before God and in God. No one can measure the joy and blessing which from year to year flow forth upon all ages of life from the contemplation of the holy child Jesus in his heavenly innocence and divine humility.” (History of the Christian Church Volume 3 Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity, A.D. 311-590, pg 394-395)
December 26th, 2009 | 5:51 pm
Coyle, Great quote…Thanks.
December 28th, 2009 | 1:56 am
I remember reading a book years ago called Why Catholics Can’t Sing. It made fun of Catholic liturgy, but it was somewhat was true given the lack of great Anglican hymns in Catholicism. Of course, we Catholics sang those hymns too–but we did it poorly. As an altar boy at 5 pm Saturday mass, I remember many moments ripe for spoof and parody. But I would never do it given the earnest solemnity of the matter. If I did, it would have to be handled delicately–with the warbling Hosannahs and off key Amens.
Nonetheless, I remember growing up in the 70s and 80s when the church, allegedly post-Vatican II, was trying to update itself to the democratizing and modernizing and Americanizing tendencies of divine worship. To be sure, I never experienced the stereotypical singing nun (but I did have Sister Peggy who decided t take us on a “trip” one time in our minds), but my experience was close enough in that I was taught by a nun (the same Sister Peggy) that Bob Dylan was a spiritual singer–and indeed he is so and even more.
being a neophyte in such matters at the time, I didn’t know what all the fuss was all about. I had no basis from which to discriminate. I simply liked good music, for instance, that spoke to my soul. I remember singing songs like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” which Peter reminds us is an old “Negro” Christmas spiritual song. I suspect that this experience, as well as as singing “Were You There When They Nailed Him to the Tree” at Easter, made me amenable to arguments defending an immensely particular version of the universal message of Christmas (and Easter too).
The strange thing is that this was a school mostly white, with a lot of Hispanic kids, and a few black kids, singing old Negro spirituals. I would like to think that I am sophisticated enough to give an account regarding why I sing what and what is good music.
I can’t do this. I only know that “Go Tell it On the Mountain” is a beautiful tune. And if it is laden with the 400 years of oppression and violence, than I must say that when it was introduced to me, it was a song of joy and liberation which spoke to my childlike soul. I still think this to be the case.
December 29th, 2009 | 2:36 pm
Quick correction: I happen to know the young man you met, and he is a woodworker, not a metal worker. My daughter is currently using a booster seat he made for her as a gift. It is probably the nicest piece of furniture I own.
As to the substance of your comments, Matthew Milliner has an interesting post that ties in nicely to your comments: http://millinerd.com/2009/12/christendoms-ghost.html
I, personally, would argue that the essence of Christmas is, and has always been, its emphasis on common sacramentality. That is, not an emphasis on the final union of God and man, or the perfection of Christ in heaven, but the quiet intimations of God’s presence that can be found in the basic, the ordinary, and the human.
Thus, the young man’s contrarian theological position belies a deep, underlying sympathy for what Christmas is meant to celebrate. He recognizes the goodness of children and the goodness of beer. He spends his days working passionately at St. Joseph’s profession. The joy in these things is meant to be illuminated by the Christmas season as intimations of God’s goodness and His presence.
December 29th, 2009 | 3:48 pm
Mr B, Thanks for your correction. Leave to me to be so un-manual as not to notice the difference between metal and wood. Your last Percy-style par. is right, even if this young man seemed more complicated to me than the St. Joseph of popular peity, at least. And that’s what got me thinking. I hope you and your own growing family had a good and joyful Christmas. Needless to say, we saw plenty of pictures and heard lots of stories at said party.
January 5th, 2010 | 12:42 pm
“even if this young man seemed more complicated to me than the St. Joseph of popular peity, at least. ”
That’s… that’s putting it lightly. But, I think we’re both citing him more for rhetorical effect than for biographical accuracy (seriously, how could you really describe the man?). For what it’s worth, I can think of no better way to honor our mutual acquaintance than to use him to add force to argument.
Thank you for your generous well-wishes. We have had a peaceful Advent, and have had much occasion to think of you and yours. Your host was especially impressed with your lovely wife, and spoke of her glowingly to us. A friend also lent us a copy of an interview you did with Mars Hill, and we listened to it just last night. Certainly brought back memories.
Blessings and peace.
January 7th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
For all the learning your young man displayed, it’s a shame he’s ignorant of alternative explanations of the origins of the Christmas holiday. He’s accepting too easily what may be merely the lazy assumptions of our anti-Christian culture.
February 3rd, 2010 | 11:07 pm
See my post, Christmas, Saturnalia, and Sol Invictus, at http://rasmusen.dreamhosters.com/b/2009/12/christmas-saturnalia-and-sol-invictus/
It looks to me as if by far the best explanation for the Dec. 25 date is NOT Roman holidays, but that it’s 9 months after the estimated date of the Crucifixion. Thus, it is not a good argument against Christmas that it is pagan,tho one might argue that it’s papist.
July 28th, 2011 | 9:05 am
nTxJdi http://fnYwlOpd2n9t4Vx6A3lbk.com
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact