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| Among the decorations in Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, 2015 |
Yesterday (December 26), I saw a cartoon about someone's having their house already decorated for Christmas 364 days early. Then, a perceptive wag corrected the math to 365 due to 2016's being a Leap Year. In mid-January 1972, on a research trip, I interviewed a retired National Guard officer in his middle-Tennessee home. A very large, very brown Christmas tree commanded a prominent place in the living room. And, Jack and Violet, long-ago acquaintances, left their outdoor lights up year round. Why take them down, Christmas is coming !
I remember being sad as a child on the evening of December 25--the huge build-up and poof !, it was gone, just like visits with Santa. [ Do you remember your first Santa sighting? Only later did I learn that Mr. Walt Hatley had been subbing for Santa that day. I was not as brave as my friend Danny who tested the authenticity of the beard (see his hand).]
By contrast, the experience of advent, or preparation, of anticipation, has long been overwhelmed, drowned out, as it were, by the culture's commercial co-opting of 'christmas' (lower case deliberate). With few exceptions, liturgically focused churches retain and promote the understanding that the festival of Christmas begins on December 25 and continues for the next twelve days. When a parish minister, I steadfastly avoided Christmas songs during the Sundays of Advent, much to the consternation of some. (There just are few singable Advent hymns.) By now, though, many people are past-ready for the music to stop, the decorations to come down, and let's move on to New Year's Eve and all that comes thereafter. Little wonder, given the duration to which we have been exposed and over-exposed. Even given the symbolism encoded in its words, The Twelve Days of Christmas remains one of my personal least favorite "seasonal" songs, right up there with Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer.
While the ornaments and other decorations soon will be returned to their places in attics and basements and Santa will go into hiding to await next year, I have been periodically reflecting about other aspects 'Christmas'. Re-reading Borg and Crossan's, The First Christmas, has provided reminders of the subversive and counter-cultural dimensions in Matthew and Luke's nativity stories, as well as offering alternative interpretations of enduring Christmas. A motif that continues to resonate for me is "Light". In the Genesis account of Creation, the first words of the Holy One are "Let there be Light!" . . . not the reflected light from the sun, moon and stars, those come later. (The Reverend Doctor Harrell Beck used to maintain that the words were not spoken, but sung joyously to the initial four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony !) Much of human experience has been a striving to realize or avoid that command. Long, dark Winter nights loom just ahead. Leaving festive lights burning (literally and symbolically) is a good 'push back' against 'the hopes and fears of all the years' that have accumulated, individually and corporately. Maybe, Jack and Violet had it right, after all.
"LET THERE BE LIGHT !!"
Satchel
One of my favorite parts of Christmas are the lights (or should I say "The Light"), which in my house will not come down until after January 6.
ReplyDeleteThis year, I found that one of window candles that I use during the season was defective and did not follow its eight hours on, sixteen hours off cycle...it simply stayed on all day and all nigh long. I deliberately did not replace it or fix it. Because it was the one in my bedroom window, I thought it comforting to let it shine all day and night, reminding me always of the Light that we celebrate during Christmas.