A Greeting for You

Three Christmases

     As I see it, there are three holidays called Christmas in America.

1.  First there is the federal holiday.  Many workers benefit from it, whether they celebrate the other two versions of Christmas or not.  It is obviously based on the religious observance but has become simply a day for employees to skip work.

2.  Then there is the traditional secular holiday of Christmas.  It grew out of various religious celebrations of Christmas–and not just Christian ones.  Many people celebrate it who have no interest at all in the religious version of Christmas.  Even folks who are not Christians put up greenery in their house, play Christmas music, and send and receive Christmas cards.  In fact, it’s possible to celebrate this holiday without mentioning the etymological root of it:  Christ.  Entire CD albums exist with no reference to the birth of Christ, and many Christmas cards have only  beautiful winter scenes or abstract designs on them.

3.  Finally there is the Christian observance of Christmas as the commemoration of Christ’s birth.  For many Christians this observance is combined with the first two.  Many strict Christians eschew the secular elements and won’t even have a Christmas tree or give Christmas gifts to people. 

     I think it is important to recognize that there are these three different versions of Christmas.  Whenever folks discuss the perceived War on Christmas, I think that they get the different versions conflated with each other.

     Some people don’t see anything wrong with the Christmas holiday or the word Christmas, because they realize that it is just as much a secular tradition and a customary work holiday as it is a religious celebration.  They realize that almost everyone in America celebrates Christmas to some degree or another–even Jews, agnostics, atheists, and a host of other people.  They realize that the folks who are afraid that somebody might get “offended” are allowing a very small number of people intimidate them unfairly.

     There’s a difference between putting up a nativity scene and putting up a Christmas tree.  Isn’t there?  How could anyone be “offended” by a few colored balls and some tinsel on an evergreen tree?  What did that tree ever do to them?  And how could anyone be “offended” by being wished a Merry Christmas?  There will be a Christmas on December 25, whether you like it or not, and it might as well be Merry as not.  Don’t you think?

     If you are opposed to the religious observance of Christmas in public, that is one issue.  I don’t think that the Constitution is on your side, but we can debate that one.

     If you are opposed to just the secular celebration–holly and mistletoe, Santa Claus, sleigh rides, hot chestnuts and egg nog, charity drives, gift giving, company parties, etc.–then I’d say you are pretty narrow minded and mean spirited.  I don’t see much to debate.  I would compare that attitude to that of opposing your neighbors’ planting a magnolia tree because you like sycamore trees better or demanding that they take a certain TV show off the air because, though it has millions of fans, you happen not to like it. 

     If you are afraid of “offending” somebody else by saying Merry Christmas or by calling your party a Christmas party, then you’d better never say or do anything ever again.  Because I guarantee that everything that you say or do offends somebody somewhere.  In fact, your very existence probably offends somebody out there, but please don’t end your life over it.

Angels We Have Heard on High

     This morning I told my wife that she looked like an angel.  Then I said, “Well, actually angels probably don’t look like that.”  She grinned and agreed with me.

     In the Bible angels are not beautiful women with flowing blond hair and flowing white dresses.  Nor are they chubby naked babies with wings.  Don’t believe everything you see in classic artwork or the popular media.  Those depictions mainly symbolize the spiritual nature of angels and not what they actually are.

     Angels are described in various ways in the Bible.  Physically they tend to “look” like men and are primarily either messengers or warriors.  Mostly the Bible describes them as spiritual beings that are neither male nor female and have no actual physical appearance.  Some angels are described as a combination of various animals, sometimes also with human characteristics.  These appearances are always clearly symbolic and given for the benefit of the human witness; never are they to be taken as the actual angel itself.

     One interesting passage in Hebrews says that some people have entertained angels without knowing it.  In other words, it is possible for an angel to appear as an ordinary human being that goes completely unnoticed as a supernatural being.

     Because of the depictions of angels that I have seen, I often imagine the angels in Luke 2 as women with harps, singing in the soprano and alto ranges.  I suspect they looked more like men in tunics holding spears and shields and shouting out the Gloria in thunderous voices.

     People in the Bible are usually afraid when an angel appears to them.  In the first two chapters of Luke, angels say “Fear not,” several times, because the person seeing them is understandably startled.  I don’t think they saw fat little babies hovering in the air or cute little girls with tinsel halos on their heads.  I think they saw hulking men who were glowing with an eerie and extremely bright light.

Ebenezer Scrooge and Charity

     Everyone knows that Ebenezer Scrooge was the meanest and most miserly man in the world. For those who don’t really know, I’m speaking of the main character in the novel A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

     He says in the early part of the book that he pays enough in taxes to support the debtors’ prisons and the workhouses.  He has no obligation to take care of the poor or pay his clerk a good wage or even give a coin or two to a Christmas caroler, so he says.

     The men who are collecting a fund for the poor point out that those institutions are not very pleasant.  In fact, many poor people, they claim, would rather die than go there.  So much for government provision for the poor! 

     What’s interesting to me is that at the end of the story, after his reformation, Scrooge gives the charity collectors a large sum, raises his clerk’s salary, and promises to pay wahtever it takes to get Tiny Tim, the clerk’s crippled son, cured of his illness.

     Notice that he doesn’t insist that everybody pay more taxes or that money be distributed thoughtlessly to whoever is thought to need it.  He supports <i>private</i> charity and takes care of his own circle of people.  I think that Dickens was absolutely correct in portraying that in the novel as the right way to live.

     It’s not Scrooge’s business to make other people kind and generous.  It is only his business to be so himself.  He does not expect the government to take care of the needy, as he did before.  He takes it upon himself to use his wealth to help others.

     I think that he is right.

Top 25 Christmas Songs

     In 2006, ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Puplishers) put out a list of the “Top 25 Holiday Songs.”  The list reminds me and convinces me that Christmas is a traditional American holiday as well as a sacred Christian holiday.  Only one of the songs even mentions Jesus and his birth, “The Little Drummer Boy.”

     From their list, my five favorties are

1. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”  I always think of Judy Garland’s singing it in the movie Meet Me in St. Louis.
2. “Sleigh Ride”  I have played it in bands and orchestras.  It is such a fun song.
3. “The Little Drummer Boy”  Admittedly it is a bit too sentimental, but I think the sentiment is valid and sublime.
4. “Carol of the Bells”  It is an interesting song, musically speaking.  I enjoy the various arrangements that capitalize on the intertwining melodies.
5. “Silver Bells”  My class sang this song back when I was in the fifth grade.  I lived in a big city when I was a child, and this song evokes my memories of the Christmas atmosphere there.

What about you?  What are your favorites from the list?  Or not from the list?