Work With Hope

It wouldn’t be Christmas without a mention of A Christmas Carol

In the 1984 version for television with a George C. Scott as Scrooge, there is a repeated carol heard throughout the story. It appears that this “traditional” carol was composed for this version of the story. It is likely that no real song could be found that so perfectly captured the theme of the Scrooge story.

So grant us all a change of heart,
Rejoice for Mary’s son;
Pray, Peace on earth to all mankind,
God bless us everyone!

This focus on change of heart is later reinforced by Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who explains to his uncle the value of Christmas beyond gold and silver.

I have always thought of Christmas time as a kind, forgiving, charitable time. It is the one time of the year, when men and women open their hearts and think of all people as fellow passengers to the grave, and not as another race of creatures bound on different journeys.

One of the greatest things about the Christmas season is the opportunities it provides for change. Buoyed by the spirit of the time, people reach out to estranged friends or resolve to change their life. Though New Years calls for resolutions in the cold light of day, only Christmas gives an opportunity to grow through broadening of the heart and a heightened sense of collective experience, no matter one’s background or faith tradition.

I am grateful for the opportunity to reach out, to reconnect, and to reconcile that this time of year presents. And like a Fred, I say, “God bless it!”

Eighteen days in, time for an odd Christmas tradition.

In Iceland, children put out shoes for thirteen successive nights prior to Christmas Day. If they have been good, they are rewarded with a small gift, not from Santa Claus, but from the Yule Lads (Jólasveinar).

Though this appears to be a very good deal for Icelandic children, the thirteen Santa’s come with gifts, and a whole lot of mischief. Each of the Yule Lads has his own particular area of mayhem from licking unwashed bowls, pots, and spoons to stealing sausages, meat, and candles. There are even Door-sniffer and Window-peeper, who do just that.

Traditionally these figures were seen as ominous and parents frightened children into good behavior with frightening stories. However in the eighteenth century a law was passed banning the telling of frightening stories of the Yule Lads. Since this time, the more sinister side of the Lads has been played down and they are seen as figures of fun, kind of a mixture of the seven dwarves and elf on a shelf.

Since the celebration of Christmas is so loosely grounded in hard facts, traditions of all kinds grow up around its celebration, usually blending religious and secular mythologies. The Yule Boys…cool name for a band, but they would have to be The Yule Boyz…give us thirteen more faces of Christmas.

I read a few articles for this, and they all used this chart to outline the YBs

Tonight I was sitting in a restaurant, when one of the TVs in the bar area started the beginning of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Suddenly throughout the restaurant there was a murmur if recognition and a sigh of comfort. Among all the other Christmas traditions, there is something about this half hour that brings Christmas home like none other.

The show exists in dvd form and several digital and cloud rental forms, but I always hear about people who, like pre 1980s rush home to watch the “special” on network television. It’s like recapturing childhood by watching commercials. For many years the special was sponsored by Dolly Madison treats, which don’t exist ant more, but the show does. I also remember a version of “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” Coke commercial, though I may be wrong about this.

Charlie Brown’s quest for a non- commercial Christmas is ironic, because of course the special was an immense commercial success, but somehow through the years and through the special’s ability to outlast sponsors, it has transcended it’s own commercial roots.

I’m certain that I know every line of the show by heart. There are no surprises from the ice skating scene to the climactic “That’s what Christmas is all about” scene. Yet I drink in every line the same way I take out well-loved ornaments year after year. The joy is in the familiarity, like so much of Christmas. One of my particular favorite lies is a minor character, Sherman, who says, “Every year its always the same thing. I always play a shepherd.”

Even the voices are precious to me. Remember watching other Peanuts specials with other child actors which were entertaining, but without these child actors, nothing felt right (apparently the voice of Charlie Brown belonged to a child who later went to jail for some white collar crime, but that doesn’t change the appeal).

Christmas is about the familiar. There is a part of me that regresses to the child who couldn’t wait for the night of Charlie Brown and the Grinch and Rudolph. The constant availability of the previously rare Christmas specials does not change their appeal or their ability to bring me back to my childhood.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

I was listening to this familiar carol the other day when I started to wonder about the focus on snow in the Christmas story. The many references to snow in a Christmas Carols is not strange. Throughout much of the northern hemisphere snow is the order of Christmas Day, so a white Christmas is what people know (it’s interesting that the snow iconography of Christmas show how completely it is originated in the north…Southern Hemisphere countries are shown as foreign to “real” Christmas with their hot temperatures and long daylight hours).

The setting of Christmas in winter…not mid-winter by the way, since December 25 is only four days in…was of course the baptizing of an existing feast, and the date had little to nothing to do with the historical birth of Jesus. I have read different suggestions regarding the actual time of year, though I leave this type of interpretation to those with more skill…and who care.

The Middle East has had snow at Christmas, though not often, and certainly not “snow on snow.” The average high temperature in Bethlehem in December is 60°. There is no mention of snow (or even cold) in the Bible. Any snow on the Christmas scene has been put there by us.

So moving to the whys for this desire for a White first Christmas, I have two possible explanations. First, symbolically it feels right for the savior to be born in the depths of winter. The dead earth greets the dawning of new life, and the mild Middle Eastern winters don’t cooperate with this symbolism. The second is a tendency for us to appropriate the Christ story to our own reality. The Middle Eastern Jesus has been colored lily white since near the beginning. Most English speakers hear him speaking in English…yes, they know he didn’t speak English, but it would be disturbing for many to hear the words in the original Aramaic. Likewise the winter of Christ’s birth has to be a white with snow as the rest of the story.

I love the song, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and fir goodness sake, I’m not suggesting we stop it (I don’t want another “Baby It’s Cold Outside” fiasco!). But it’s good to call to mind from time to time how our Christmas celebration is made in our image. God was made man, and then made Western European.

As always, I welcome your comments.

This has been a crazy weekend, both for the number of things I have done as well as the strange things that have happened. I’m processing so many things right now that I can’t write a coherent post, so this will have to be my post for today. I will try to be back into writing full posts tomorrow.

Tonight I went to my friends’ yearly Christmas party. It was a wonderful time as always, but I didn’t have time to write a post today. Back at it tomorrow.

I started working on my Christmas cards today. This year’s cards have a bit of a story.

As I cleaned out my Mom and Dad’s house in preparation for sale this fall, I came across a large stash of unused Christmas cards. These were the extra cards from many years gone by. Mom and Dad never used the same card twice, so any extra cards were simply set aside, I’m sure with intention of somehow using them in a future that never happened. Some of the cards are quite old, and quite dated, while others I recognize from the last few years, no more than three, or five, or ten of any design.

So I gathered them all up and decided that I will use them for my Christmas cards this year. Almost none of these are designs I would have chosen myself, and many are not my aesthetic, but it feels like I’m keeping my parents in Christmas this year, and I’m expressing my gratitude for the Christmas card tradition they instilled in me.

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the Americas.

Today is also the birthday of my friend Father Jerry. I’ve know Jerry in one way or another for about 20 years, but for seven years when I was superintendent of the Diocese of Orange, he was my boss. Whenever I introduced him as my boss to others, he would quickly correct me, “colleague” and he meant it. For seven years we had a highly collaborative and supportive relationship that was one of my best parts of my time as superintendent. Jerry had been superintendent before me, so he had a true understanding of the joys and challenges of the position. I spent many an afternoon in his office strategizing, sharing details of my day, or commiserating over a failure or frustration.

Beyond work conversations, Jerry and I enjoy talking many other joys in life. He has an endless capacity for whimsy and enjoyment. We bonded over our common love of movies. No one sees more movies than he, and no one has more successfully woven movie stories into homilies at mass. He instilled in our office a sense of fun and play that wasn’t felt anywhere else on campus including Admin Assistants Day celebrations with boat rides and water guns, a yearly Epiphany party with trivia contests and hilarious gift exchanges (I have to write about these some time), tiny gifts for virtually all holidays and Saint days, and a fascination with Minions.

From the first Despicable Me movie, Jerry loved the Minions. He had pictures in his office, wove regular mentions into his homilies, and shared with me with glee when he discovered an online English-to-Minion translator. One year about five years ago, the members of the office bought him a blow-up Minion Christmas decoration to greet him in his office on his birthday. His laughter is infectious and his love of life is unbounded.

We left the office on the same day, and though we went somewhat separate ways, we have stayed in close contact, having wonderful breakfasts, dinners, and drinks, with fond (and not so fond) memories, new experiences, and lots of laughter. I am so grateful for his friendship through the years.

Jerry has had health problems this year, and he has been caught in Italy for the past few months during his time of recovery. However, he is coming back home this weekend, a wonderful birthday present for him, and a wonderful Christmas present for all of us who love him.

Banana!

Once a year during this blogging marathon, I delve into the truly bizarre world of Victorian Christmas cards. These early Yuletide greetings capture a very different Christmas spirit (and world view) than the saccharine Hallmark cards we send today.

This year’s card depicts a fine gentleman, probably returning from a Christmas party in his festive top hat and yellow bow tie, startled to see a smiling malevolent snowman in wait for him armed with a snow club. Appropriately the caption says simply, “A Jolly Christmas.”

Trying to discern the message of this tableau, I’ve come up with three possible explanations. First, the man is obviously drunk and seeing things as he returns from his party. He has clearly had a jolly Christmas. Second, the snow mugger was built as a prank by neighborhood children in the much rougher traditions of early Christmas. Third, it is a card intended for murderous snowmen who would clearly see the scene as jolly.

A Victorian Christmas (even a jolly one) was not for the faint of heart!

One Christmas tradition that I inherited from my mother was collecting and displaying Santas throughout the house every Christmas season. It was always fun every year to take out the collection and greet old friends after their eleven month stay in the North Pole of the rafters of the garage. I had a large variety of Santas made of different materials, different sizes, and even different outfits. But there was one Popular Santa figure that I never had, and never wanted, the Santa kneeling before the crib of the baby Jesus.

The reason this figure was developed (and I’m sure loved by many) is obvious. By combining the two Christmas stories, the statue coalesces the entire Christmas message while giving clear preeminence to the nativity story. Parents can point to Santa, the greatest example of goodness, omnipotence and omnipresence in the life of a child and say without words, “See, if even Santa worships the newborn king, then you darn well better behave yourself in Christmas mass.”

I’m not entirely sure why I have always found the many forms of the kneeling Santa to be somewhat distasteful. I suppose the mixing of stories might have something to do with it. Each story has its own integrity, and forcing them together seems to lessen both. Is Santa brought into the Jesus story, or has Jesus been brought into the Santaverse? Are Santa and Jesus friends? Does Santa still talk with Jesus regularly about naughty and nice children since Jesus has a direct line through the confessional? If a fully realized Santa was present at the time of Jesus’ birth, why did he not start giving presents for nearly two millennia? These are just a few questions that come to mind when I see kneeling Santa…this is probably also the reason why my parents never liked to talk theology with me.

When my daughter was young, she watched Barney the dinosaur and loved him as much as Santa (and probably Jesus). I always wondered why no one ever marketed a “Kneeling Barney,” showing the beloved character recognizing the divinity of the Christ child (and singing “I love you, you love me…”). If you think this sounds crass and commercial, you’ll start to see why I find Kneeling Santa upsetting. Keep Christ in Christmas (if you would like) and/or keep Santa in Christmas (if you would like), but for goodness sake, give them separate shelves!

I am grateful for the many images of Santa I enjoy every year…except this one.