About the only thing on which I agree with the fundagelicals is that too many people have lost sight of the true meaning(s) of the holiday season(s) we are now in the middle of. What follows is partially adapted from a Christmas Day post on my own blog a few years back.
I want to stress that everything you read here, except where otherwise attributed, is my own: my own work, my own opinions, my own beliefs. This is one man, one believing man, and his attempt to unpack--even a little--the dense mystery that took place these two thousand years and more ago. I'm going to start with some of one of my favorite pieces of Christmas poetry, W. H. Auden's "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio," which he wrote in 1941 and 1942--as the world was slowly immolating itself in the Second World War, and hard on the heels of his mother's death. It's well worth reading in its entirety, but I'm only taking a few lines for this post:
Though written by thy Children
With a smudged and crooked line
Thy Word is ever legible
Thy meaning unequivocal
And for thy Goodness, even sin
Is valid as a sign.
Inflict thy promises with each
Occasion of distress
That from our incoherence we
May learn to put our trust in thee
And brutal fact persuade us to
Adventure, Art, and Peace.
I think the thing I like the best about this selection is that it reminds me of the saying (often attributed to Raymond Brown, but I think it probably goes back much farther than him) that God writes straight with crooked lines. It's important to remember that while the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, it was written by very human authors--with their own agendas, their own biases, their own prejudices, their own gaps in knowledge and understanding. It is my belief, following the teaching of the Catholic Church, that everything that God wanted revealed for our salvation is in the Bible. But, pace my fundagelical not-exactly co-religionists, that most emphatically does not mean that everything in the Bible is such a truth, or that the Bible cannot contain any errors of either fact or interpretation.
And that is also true of the story I want to meditate on today. A few years back I was castigated for defending the possibility that the story in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke (in which Augustus orders a census of the whole world, and wherein everyone has to go back to their native place to be enrolled) might be true. My interlocutor maintained that this was "absurd," a pure fable, without any precedent in recorded history. I merely pointed out to him that it would not have been that big a deal in a time when most people rarely got more than 20 miles from the place they were born in their entire lives.
In point of fact, I don't know (or particularly care) whether Luke's account is factually correct in any kind of historical sense. I am not a biblical literalist, so I don't have to believe that every single word in this story is factually true. I incline more toward the viewpoint of a cheerful Franciscan priest with whom I have twice had the pleasure to travel to the Holy Land. As he tells each group of pilgrims before the pilgrimage starts, "Everything in the Bible is true. And some of it actually happened." Luke is telling a true story. It matters not in the slightest to me whether he took poetic license with some of the facts, or improved upon the actual truth of the matter to make for a better story: because Luke is a great storyteller, and this is one of his best.
To dig a little deeper into the meaning of the story that Luke tells, I want to go by way of another story, told by another master storyteller, John Shea. It may not be his originally, but he doesn't cite another source, so he gets the credit until I hear otherwise. I'm mainly following his book Starlight: Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long, though I've put in an interjection, and made a couple of changes from the printed text that he did when he told the story as part of a lecture series I have on tape. Here it is:
Adam and Eve woke up. They were hungry and thirsty.
Later, on reflection, they did not know if they woke up and were hungry and thirsty, or if hunger and thirst had awakened them.
But they ate and drank, and they were full. It was good.
Six hours later they were hungry and thirsty again.
They said to one another, "We mustn't have done it right." So they ate and drank very carefully, savoring every sip and chewing every bite, and they were full. It was good.
Six hours later they were hungry and thirsty again.
So a third time they ate and drank, taking even greater care in chewing and sipping. It was good.
Six hours later they were hungry and thirsty again. ["That's four hours for some of us," Shea says on the tapes.]
Then it dawned on them. This is the way it was going to be. Hungry and thirsty, then eating and drinking. Then once again, hungry and thirsty, then eating and drinking. Then once again...
It was not enough.
They shouted out their frustration. "What are we? Asses tethered to a feeding trough? Oxen tied to a manger?"
God heard this shout and took their protest as a prayer. He sent an angel named Gabriel to a town named Nazareth to a virgin named Mary.
Gabriel said, "Adam and Eve hunger and thirst, and you are the feast."
And Mary spread herself like a linen tablecloth on the earth and the Son of the Most High was born. Shepherds attended his birth and found new flocks to tell what they had seen and heard.
One day they came upon Adam and Eve roaming around outside the Garden. The shepherds knew that what they had to say, Adam and Eve wanted to hear. "We bring you glad tidings of great joy meant for all the people. There has been born to you a child, the Messiah and the Lord. Go to Bethlehem and you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger."
Adam and Eve were not sure of all that the invitation entailed, but they decided they needed some direction in their roaming. They set out for Bethlehem, the House of Bread. When they arrived at the birth, they were surprised to see an ox and an ass grazing around the manger. As they walked past them, Adam and Eve nodded. Did they know these beasts? Then they looked down at the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Before long they knelt.
Mary took the hand of Eve and placed it on the heart of the child. The eyes of the child opened and Eve drank from his eyes.
Then Mary took the hand of Adam and placed it on the heart of the child. The mouth of the child opened and Adam ate from the mouth of the child.
Then Adam and Eve spoke as one: "We tie ourselves to this manger."
That story gives me goose bumps every time I hear it or read it. I particularly love the image of Mary as the graceful tablecloth upon which a noble feast is served: an image entirely in keeping with Jesus' emphasis on feeding his flock--which was apparent in the place of his birth as well. The Prince of Peace was laid in a manger, signifying that he would be food for the world. And when Adam and Eve find the babe sleeping there, and find in him satisfaction for their sharpest and strongest desires, and say "We tie ourselves to this manger," that, my friends, is the meaning of Christmas. One sentence says it all.
For those of us who are Christians, this feast is supposed to be about the Good Shepherd who cared for all of his flock, feeding them when they were hungry, succoring them when they were sick or in trouble, and going to hunt for them when one of them got lost. It didn't matter in the least whether they were of the sheep or of the goats, whether they were among the 99 who stayed or the one that had gotten itself lost: they belonged to him, and he was going to care for them. That is also supposed to be our calling as Christians: to do for the least of these Jesus's brothers and sisters (our brothers and sisters, too) what he did for us.
And, quoting Jack Shea again, it doesn't really matter how we go about incarnating the Divine, so long as we do it. "It doesn't make much difference whether you teach theology," he once said, "or make a really fine banana cream pie. It only matters that you do those things." Simili modo, it doesn't really make the slightest bit of difference whether Jesus Christ was in fact born in בית לחם, the House of Bread, at this time of year or at any other, in the manner that Luke or Matthew described. What matters is that the Prince of Peace did come, and that he lives in the hearts of faithful men and women everywhere, and that the world is a better place for it.
Hence my frustration at all the pointless junk we're asked to swallow every year around this time. The marketing frenzy seems to gin up into high gear earlier and earlier. And so does the whining from the fundagelical set about the lack of "Christ" in Christmas, or the "War on Christmas," or whatever else it is they're up in arms about this particular moment. These people are so busy making sure everybody knows that for them, this is the Christmas season and no other that they fail, in the words of Matthew's Gospel, to pay attention to the "weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew 23:23, my translation from the Greek).
For those of you in my audience here who are not Christian, please remember that, while we're trying as best we can, we are nevertheless absolutely going to get it wrong sometimes. ("Though written by thy Children/With a smudged and crooked line...") But that doesn't mean we shouldn't even try. ("Thy Word is ever legible/Thy meaning unequivocal/And for Thy goodness even sin/Is valid as a sign.") This is why, as the old joke says, we're still called "practicing Catholics"--even after more than two thousand years, we still haven't gotten it exactly right. (Just how exactly not-right we've gotten it will have to be a subject for another day.)
So to my Christian friends and fellow bloggers, I say "Merry Christmas." To my Jewish friends and fellow bloggers, I say chag sameach, and "Blessed be the Ruler of the Universe who has performed miracles for our ancestors in those days, at this time." To my pagan and Wiccan friends and fellow bloggers, I say "Good Yule!" And to everyone else, I say "Peace on earth to all people of good will."
Here endeth the lesson. Go in peace, persuaded "to Adventure, Art, and Peace." And to send us forth, a little traveling music, in the form of the World War I-vintage Italian carol Gesu Bambino, presented by Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade:
The text of the song, by Pietro Yon (with my translation from the original Italian and Latin), goes like this:
Nell'umile capanna
Nel freddo e povertà
È nato il Santo pargolo
Che il mondo adorerà
Osannna, osanna cantano
Con giubilante cuor
I tuoi pastori ed angeli
Oh Re di luce e amor.
(Refrain)
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus, Dominum.
Oh bel bambin non piangere
Non pianger Redentor,
La mamma tua cullandoti
Ti bacia, oh Salvator,
Osannna, osanna cantano
Con giubilante cor
I tuoi pastori ed angeli
O Re di luce e amor.
(Refrain)
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus, Dominum.
(Coda)
Ah, venite adoremus
Adoremus Dominum.
Venite, venite,
Venite adoremus,
Adoremus Dominum.
Into a humble hut,
Into frigid poverty,
was born the holy infant
whom the world will love.
"Hosanna, hosanna,"
Sing your shepherds and angels,
with jubilant hearts,
O King of light and love.
(Refrain)
O come let us adore,
O come let us adore,
O come let us adore [Christ] the Lord.
Do not cry, O beautiful child,
Nor weep, O Redeemer;
In your crib, O Savior,
Your mother kisses you.
"Hosanna, hosanna,"
Sing your shepherds and angels,
with jubilant hearts,
O King of light and love.
(Refrain)
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him,
O come let us adore him, [Christ] the Lord.
(Coda)
Ah, O come let us adore,
Adore the Lord.
O come, O come,
O come let us adore,
Adore the Lord.