Enduring
Christmas: Escape the
Christmas Convenience Store
by Willard
Spencer
The
term “Christmas” in our culture is a giant collection of meanings. It could be compared to a trip to the
convenience stores found in many highway intersections of our fair city. Have you been to a convenience store
lately? (They are the rebirth of the
old mom and pop, two by four stores that existed in neighborhoods generations
ago.) At a convenience store you can
find aspirin and bagels, coffee and coke, newspapers and fuel injection cleaner. You can find cookies and Spam, windshield
deicer and ice cream. In fact we cannot
take time to name all the things you can find at such a store. You may go there for gasoline, but you can
find a lot more. It is much the same
way with Christmas. The basic plot line
for Christmas is the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. That is the trigger event that is now layered over with all kinds
of meanings, most secular, non-religious, meanings – some fun and helpful, some
not so. All in all we can easily lose
the forest for the trees – the real meaning of Christmas gets buried under an
accumulation of other possible things and stuff. There are many things in the Convenience store of
Christmas.
One aisle in the convenience store of
Christmas displays social gatherings. There are
dinner parties for friends and business acquaintances. There are office parties. There are popular concerts of Christmas
music (not referring to the churches’ wonderful concerts – but to secular
accretions, additions, some wonderful in themselves, but still more things to
do. For example the fine music offered
by the symphony and choirs at Powell.) And there are wonderful holiday movies. Have you seen Harry Potter yet?
I’m ready to go again when the grandchildren come, and I can barely wait
for the premier of “Fellowship of the Ring” in another week or so. So there are many wonderful things in this
aisle of our Christmas convenience store; but they all claim time and energy
and attention.
Another aisle in the convenience store
of Christmas includes all kinds of shopping appeals. Included in this layer of meaning are multiple appeals on TV –
the proliferation of commercials intended to stir up the will to buy stuff for
Christmas. One composer of funny songs parodied
the shopping appeals by writing the following lines to a familiar carol: “God rest you merry merchant may you make
the yuletide pay.” And, “Angels we have
heard on high; tell us to go out and buy.”
At any rate crowded malls, crowded parking lots, and long lines at check
out lanes add to the commercial aisle of our Christmas convenience store.
Another
group of problems occurs – a negative aisle in the Christmas convenience store
– these include the
suffering of the poor. This is
nothing new for them; but at Christmas the abundance of things others have simply
adds another kind of pain for the have-nots of this land.
A
second negative section is provided by those who have suffered some kind of loss at holiday
times and find the season less than happy. It becomes a time of painful memories, when the spirits are gloomy,
rather than the “bright” spirits of Jingle Bells. The song sung by sad folks at Christmas is not “I’m Dreaming of a
White Christmas,” but rather the other kind – the Blue Christmas, a sad song
sung, if I remember correctly, by a sad person some mistaken folks called, “The
King.”
The
negative aisle of our
Christmas convenience store also includes an increase of suicides. This one makes me shake my head. Suicide on the occasion of great joy? That “cannot” be! It boggles the mind, and yet statistics are not lying about the
increased number of self-inflicted deaths during that happiest of all
seasons. So, both the poor and the
non-poor can be plagued by unhappiness at Christmas. It is another layer of meaning in our Christmas mélange. We look for an enduring hope, an enduring Christmas, and yet we can end
up just enduring Christmas. Even
T. S. Eliot, in his Ariel poems decries the real possibility of being “ill at
ease with old dispensations.” Where is
the newness? Where is the hope? Where is the joy of a truly enduring
Christmas? We need it so much. We need to get out of the Christmas
Convenience store and find our way back to the manger.
To
the manger! -- Where the star is not a glittering ornament on top of an
artificial tree, but is a mark of the Messiah.
O to recapture the innocence, the simplicity, of that holy night when
the angels touched earth, routing the darkness with heavenly light, filling
hearts with good tiding of great joy. We
need an enduring Christmas. We need to
re-claim the solemness and the unutterable joy of being loved by an infant King. We need to find our true place in a stable,
kneeling in awe and reverence before the One who came to save us. How we need to know that we are loved with
an infinite love and know that that is enough.
We need an enduring Christmas.
Help
us, Dear Lord Jesus, to find our way home this year. Help us to enjoy friends and families and wonderful music. Help us to note with interest the ways our
pagan culture tips its hat to the King.
But most of all help us to avoid the trap: not too many parties, too many
presents, but the presence of your Son Jesus, the baby wrapped in
swaddling cloths, the Word lying in a manger.
Through candle light, gentle music and soft laughter, with prayer and starlight,
bring us to the manger again. Get us
out of the Christmas convenience store and give us an enduring Christmas.
Willard Spencer
Malachi 3:1-4