In the Spirit
This week I succumbed to peer, or should I say, neighborhood pressure. I put up our Christmas lights, and with the help of two grandsons, decorated our tree. Imagine that, and November hadn’t yet breathed its last! What many of us now do is a far cry from what our parents chose to take on in getting ready for Christmas. Before there was an internet, cable TV overloads, and the commercial thrust that has stores stocking their shelves with lights and tinsel before Halloween candy has been digested, most people regarded Christmas as a four week festival that began when Santa arrived on a Macy’s parade float. Even Black Friday, I’m told, sprung from that culminating moment, a 1955 insertion into our culture by department store marketers back East that quickly became our most sacred day of capitalistic frenzy.
In terms of decorating, I think my family’s pattern from the 1950s was fairly typical. Since cut trees have a half-life of maybe two weeks before they turn into a cascade of dry and incendiary needles on the floor, people rightly waited until mid-December to buy one. Many of those trees stood in water buckets in basements or garages until Christmas Eve, when lights, ornaments and tinsel were ceremonially hung. Those of us raised with a live or cut balsam or spruce came to treasure the aroma of the woods that each infused into our living room air. Oh there were artificial trees back then, but they often resembled some laboratory concoction of aluminum and wire cast in gaudy hues of white, silver or paint-can green. Tree technology has advanced since then, with today’s manufactured facsimiles often looking and feeling better than those carefully tended and pruned on tree farms. Yes, Virginia, I too now have an artificial tree. With its pliable branches and easy set up, it has passed the sight and touch tests for me, even if it fails the smell test of an authentic conifer. But never fear, the scent of the forest is only a spray can away!
With tree decorated and garlands positioned, lights strung outdoors on fences and porch railings, wreaths and candles in the windows—not to mention the colorful pillows, afghans, table runners, Santas of all shapes and sizes, snowmen, nutcrackers and stockings that my wife lovingly places around our house—it has, indeed, begun to look a lot like Christmas. And we still have 24 days left to get ourselves ready for the grand night when dancing sugarplums, terrified shepherds, migrating magi and a plump elf steering his bovine steeds will all converge. Oh by gosh by golly!
One would think this exertion of late November energy would be enough to get any of us in the Christmas spirit. But does it, has it, or will it this year? From where does that spirit emanate and how does it manifest itself in our attitudes and behavior each December? Is it in the “doing” of Christmas that we step into that Dickensonian mood of “keeping Christmas”, or does it come from somewhere else? For most of us, there is no getting around the doing aspect of it. All it takes is time, money, and a carefully orchestrated calendar of shopping, school programs, concerts, parades, tree lightings, gift wrapping and package delivering, the latter made so much easier than when snail mail was the only conveyance available. And let’s not forget the buying, addressing, sending and receiving of those yearly-carded messages that remind our extended family of where we are, what we now look like, and how we’ve made it through another year. Certainly the Christmas spirit emerges and overtakes us in all of this activity. Why is it then that amidst all this doing that we often sense other spirits are at work too, those that do not fill us with joy as much as they drain us in despair over the so much we have to do in so little time, and with so little money to do it.
In spite of its hectic pace, at Christmas most of us do become aware of a deep-seated and often ignored desire to be spiritual in some fashion. I don’t mean this in any holier-than-thou pretense for the benefit of our children and those we’d like to impress. Rather I’m thinking of the holier-than-usual sentiment that often overtakes us in listening to certain carols or tearfully catching the last few minutes of It’s a Wonderful Life on TV. There is something about Christmas that, more than any other occasion of the year, warms our heart with sentimentality and serenity. Yet at the same time, Christmas can stir other feelings that are much darker and ominous. Who hasn’t been gripped by an inner skepticism and resentment about what this all means, why we are doing it, and how we’re going to make it through one more holiday of too many and too much. Christmas seems so overblown these days, drowning us in a sea of expectations from our neighbors, our colleagues, our churches, our friends, and our families. And if we have children yet living at home, or grandchildren whom we’ll see, their excited faces and elevated energies only add to a feeling that we are caught in a whirlwind of forces well beyond our control. What a far cry from the brevity and simplicity of the Christmases we once knew and now treasure. No wonder the spirit of Christmas today often brings with it a melancholy and gloom that can depress and immobilize, linking us in sympathetic outlook to that literary money-lender who declared it all a big HUMBUG!
As I take in and try to sort through the many things Christmas has come to represent, I recall the words of the biblical writer of I John in counseling us, at all times, to ”test the spirits” to see if they are from God or not. The Apostle Paul viewed this ability as a gift, the gift of discernment, that he believed each of us would do well to cultivate lest we find ourselves deceived by error or lost in darkness. Obviously Christmas is no longer owned by Christianity, its message of the Deity being fully with us in the birth of a baby who would become the very Word of God is a bygone irrelevancy for many. For the faithful, however, the story of love and truth offers a counterpoint to our world’s infatuation with power, political and military might, status and dog-eat-dog survival. Yet it seems that bit of good news has been transformed in our age into a feel-good Hallmark and Disney production that brings us to Bethlehem with contented smiles and open, gift-seeking hands, instead of on bended knees with humbled faces and reflective hearts. In our recasting of that nativity story today, Herod is grinched, Mary and Joseph are immigrants seeking asylum in an unwelcoming land, and Jesus plays the part of the unwanted Kevin who befriends the aged and homeless while wrecking havoc on those evil-doers intent on harming him and his family. This entire drama of modern conception plays out under the watchful eye of a red-suited divinity who sees and knows all, assisted by his angelic host of flying reindeer, snowmen, elfin helpers and kindly Polar Express conductors. The spirit implicit in our refashioned Christmas is one of happiness and generosity to be sure, but one set in a never-never-land where all wishes come true and good always prevails over evil. If that is the Christmas spirit I’m to seek and cultivate, then I’m afraid it is one that will neither move nor motivate me this year.
The Christmas spirit I’m hoping to discern this year calls to mind what I first encountered when I had the pleasure and privilege of being a member of Rotary Club International some years ago. A very old and very positive service organization it has taken on both local and international causes dedicated to helping those in need, among them the worldwide eradication of polio. Each week Rotarians uniformly recite these four fundamental values, which they call their Four-Way Test of the things they think, say and do:
To my way of thinking, this is what spiritual discernment really entails in everyday life: an honest and proactive search to determine the credibility, justice, community and utility of each of our thoughts, every one of our expressions, and all of our actions and conduct. I should add that the Amarillo chapter to which I belonged always added a fifth test qualifier: will it be fun—an admission that life lived with joy and laughter is far more realistic, and sustaining, than one lived in hair shirts and monastic solitude.
So as I settle into this month of holiday hype and overindulgence, I will be seeking a Christmas spirit that I may embrace and share with others. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to hold myself accountable to the standards and aspirations of the Four Way Test. For if I can live up to those lofty yet life-enhancing goals, even if only for this season, I believe I’ll draw closer to the enduring meaning of Christmas. And in catching that spirit, I might even sense some of the exhilaration of shepherds startled by the singing of herald angels; or grasp the pondering of heart that made a young mother wonder what child is this, or even possibly discover the courage of magi who chose to ignore a tyrant’s command and went home by another way. If I, if you, if all of us can somehow discern this spirit, the spirit of Emmanuel, from among all the other spirits that overwhelm and entice us in our time and culture, then just maybe we will discover a Christmas worth keeping once again.
Oh come to us, abide in us, our Lord, Emmanuel.
Adoration of the Shepherds, by James Tissot