Christmas Is Not Suitable This Year?

Did the world end on December 12, or December 21, or any day you know? If everything came crashing to an end, I guess we missed it. Unfortunately, we could not miss the foolish mass hysteria and childish fears. So many predictions about “the end,” so much money made on selling such nonsense, so many unsuspecting young and more gullible adults taken in. Now, what is the next date of the imaginary “end”? December 31? Or 13/13/13? Oh, no! Or maybe several years from now--allowing predictors plenty of time to hype the event (remember Y2K?) and rake in plenty of fresh dough. Don’t hold your breath waiting for an imagined “end of the world.” That nonsense is an escape from reality and from doing one’s real duties.

Because the world did not “collapse,” we are here to thank God for life in this world, and for the greater Life, the divine Life, that breaks into our hearts and minds, and which is endless. For those who follow him faithfully, Christ is indeed “the light shining in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” Not even the darkness of human foolishness and gullibility.

Darkness. Even evil. We recently learned of the massacre of innocent little children and their teachers in Connecticut. Yes, the deed was extremely evil, and left in its wake human agony beyond imaging. Apparently, Newtown, CT, decided that they had to take down public Christmas decorations this year. I suppose the town leaders thought the decorations for Christmas meant good times, joy, pleasures in abundance. Long forgotten, perhaps, is that the red of Christmas is for Christ’s blood, and that what we celebrate is not a party, not a good time here, but the reality of God coming to free us from evil by dying for us. Some will say of mass murder: What evil? “Just mental derangement.” If the slaughter of innocent little ones was not evil, what would be? Evil is a lack of goodness--and extreme evil, such as we saw in Newtown, displays a radical lack of goodness, and most likely a deliberate and sustained playing with evil in various forms. If this inverted, radically fallen Adam did indeed spend hours with violent video games in which murdering human beings was made a sport, and “fun,” should we be surprised that a sick mind would attempt similar deeds in “real time”?

In the face of evil, should we refuse to celebrate Christmas? Should we strip down our churches and homes because of so much evil in this world, even at times in our hearts and minds? Or should we all the more renounce the darkness within ourselves and in our human condition, and turn again and again, with longing cries, towards the Light that no darkness can ever overcome? Stripping away Christmas decorations in the face of evil shows that the officials calling for de-decorating do not understand the meaning of Christmas at all. Folks expected Christmas to mean parties, and booze, and care-free laughter. Now they wonder: Who can have “fun” when murder destroys so many lives? We need Christ far more than most people realize. Without Christ, we would all be like that radically fallen Adam in Connecticut.

"O Israel, Prepare To Meet Thy God"

Driving through Colorado in the 1970’s, a sign on a barn caught my attention. Weather-beaten, dangling from the sagging old barn the sign warned: “O Israel, prepare to meet thy God!” The sign’s dilapidated condition added authenticity and urgency to its message, penetrating the heart. I stopped my car and photographed the sign, whose message was made more poignantly powerful and effective by its fading condition. Recognizing the words of the prophet Amos, I realized that I, too, living in withering time, stand exposed not only to the elements, but to the approaching Judgement of God. Although a young man in my twenties, I knew that I could escape neither the ravages of time nor the pending Judgment of meeting God “face to face.” The thought that life is brief indeed, that very soon in the sweep of time I would die, and must live now prepared for that reality, burned itself into my mind as I headed back towards our family home in Missoula.

Advent-Christmas tells a similar message, if we will but listen. The world and all we know of it is passing away. “You see this building? Not one stone will be left on another.” “Even now the ax is laid to the root of the tree.” In its sober wisdom, the Church’s ancient tradition proclaims the ever-pending end of the world as we know it, and God’s Judgment, at the same time we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ. Lest we turn our eyes away from the truth of passing reality, the day following Christmas the Church celebrates the death of Stephen, the first disciple to be martyred for his faith in Christ. Death in the world / life in God remain the two inextricably bound themes of Advent-Christmas. The poet T. S. Eliot gives voice to the wise men who travelled to Bethlehem to witness Christ’s birth:

“... Were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different: this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.” (Journey of the Magi)

Many of us clutch our gods on the edge of death: beer, mixed drinks, perhaps other drugs to numb awareness of the encircling night. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow....”

The birth of Christ is joy to those on their journey into God.