What's wrong with Christmas?

As we get well into December, a local writer asks, "What's wrong with Christmas?"

Well, let me attempt to share some of what's wrong with Christmas - which, by the way, comes from Christ mass. This is a holy day based in a lie - not the content, the date. Jesus, scholars tell us, was born in March-April and about 4-6 years earlier than tradition announces. The date we use was actually a substitute to over-run a pagan Winter Solstice celebration. But enough of that particular point - after all we know some who celebrate a birthday in June or July for a Christmas baby, or people born in leap years who nonetheless celebrate an annual birthday. It's just that perhaps the church needs to own some of its own misdeeds of the past, before trying to run everyone's life.

Another wrong of Christmas is lamented year after year, but the consumers don't seem to catch the disparity between their actions and their words. We now have Christmas gear showing up in stores before the Halloween candy and costumes are put away! While I indeed enjoin those who come to Christmas Eve services that Christmas should be year-round, rather than one of the few times they show up in church. Commercialism is robbing this holy day of its true meaning. Gifts are to be given in the name of Jesus, to honor his birth, to celebrate the coming of the beginning of God's recreation of the world into its intended life by the people of God; it is NOT meant to be a season where budgets are blown in our race to outdo others with the gifts we get and give.

Another problem I have with Christmas - we skip Advent to get right to Christmas - sort like skipping what leads to the baby's arrival! Why don't we have a wedding, then rush the blushing virgin bride off to the hospital for darling child number one? Because there is so much more than needs to be there! There is wonderful Advent music that isn't heard in the rush to start singing Christmas carols from the very start! Savor it! Enjoy each week, and learn the lesson of the candles. Learn to practice the virtures that are symbolized, and Christmas will have a much deeper meaning.

Another, and perhaps the biggest wrong for me, is the manner in which the story has been trivialized to the point that it is just so much traditional trapping for our joyful time - and something to be moved through as quickly, but stately, missing none of the "cherished" carols or traditions we think should be there, whether we tell anyone or not. We have become a people so comfortable with tradition's rendering of this story, we don't even try to under the deeper message of a persistent faith that is willing to face social ridicule, isolation and even death to follow the path God sets before us. We don't want to focus on Joseph, because God is the Father - yet family and friends sure assumed he was the father, and it is indeed Joseph who teaches Jesus to know "father" as a revered and trusted figure that will never give us a chore too hard, nor abandon us in our time of greatest need.

We just get so caught up in the glitz that the foundations and tear-drop by sweat-drop bricks of the building of this dramatic introduction of God's chosen and anointed Holy One are forgotten amid twinkling lights, twirling trees, and ka-chinging cash registers.

What's wrong with Christmas? Nothing, when we get back to its true meaning. Perhaps the question is "What's wrong with us at Christmas time?" Peace!