Christmas Reflection 2023

 

Christmas Reflection 2023

Michael Field

 

Each December, I ask myself the same question; and, each December, I come up with a different answer. The question seems simple but has intriguing layers like the reds, purples, and yellows of the sedimentary rock cliffs in the Southwest deserts. Their colors make them stand out from the monotonic beige of the barren, arid landscape surrounding them; colors that were formed from teeming marine life in the primordial seas that covered them before these towering structures were pushed up from ancient ocean floors. The question is: Why do UUs celebrate Christmas, the holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus? The Jesus commonly said to be the son of God, part of the holy Trinity. The Jesus controversially said to be the Messiah. That Jesus, not the Honduran asylum seeker at the southern border named after him.

After all, the first U in UU stands for Unitarian which a quick reference to a dictionary reveals as meaning a belief system which rejects the Trinity. It would seem a foregone conclusion that people who reject the Trinity would not build worship services around the birth of a person who can’t be part of the Trinity because it doesn’t exist. Yet, we do and, in doing so, we form some of the darkest reds of the intriguing layers to be examined.

The second U in UU stands for Universalist. It is ironic that the Latin root of ‘catholic’ means ‘universal’ while Catholics and Universalists are at opposite ends of a fundamental religious spectrum. The Catholics are very prescriptionist about who gets into Heaven, while the Universalists believe that everyone gets there eventually simply by being human. A side effect of universal salvation. with everyone going to Heavan, is that the role of Jesus in the process is eliminated. This is obviously an issue for the UU Easter services.  At Christmas, it is a layer, a purple-hued layer, as a large portion of Christianity take it a canon that Jesus was born to be the path to salvation.

So, I repeat the question: “Why do non-believing Unitarian Universalists celebrate Christmas?” I have been asking myself this question for three decades, ever since I strapped cardboard wings onto my white-robed children turning them into heralding angels for the UU Christmas pageant.

Many years, I have answered my question with the single word answer, “Light!” Each of these years, I have embroidered the word, “Light!”, with a slightly different meaning. The essence has remained the same - light, from a variety of sources, is core to the meaning of the holiday season. It is not a coincidence that the holidays fall just after the Winter Solstice when light is returning to the world in the form of longer days. From Diwali, through Hannukah and Christmas, to Kwanza, lights are an essential part of the rituals for the same essential reason. Light, returning to our lives, touches our souls in a universal way.

This year, just before New Year, someone posted these insightful lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”:

“Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

that’s how the light gets in.”

These words have resonated with me since I first heard them decades ago. Still, it took a major crisis to show me that trying to be a ‘perfect offering’ to my now deceased mother was destroying me and my family. I then took the word ‘perfect’ out of my vocabulary; it has no use as nothing is perfect.

That epiphany in mind, I was struck this year when everyone was talking about their New Year’s resolutions. With each resolution, people focused on how they could be more perfect, when it is those imperfections which make them human. Their imperfections are how the light reaches them. I reposted Cohen’s words adding, “Important New Year's Resolution - don't just accept, cherish your imperfections! They are how the light gets in - and how your light gets out to the world!” This insight is a succinct statement of what I feel this holiday season is about – sharing our light with each other.

When I thought about my perennial ‘Why?’ question this year, I came up with another answer,  “Why not?” That may seem facetious, but it warrants examination. What reasons could lead Unitarian Universalists to not celebrate the birth of Jesus? Hypocrisy comes to mind but there is a line between celebrating a holiday and buying into a canon. That said, the decoration on our living room coffee table

is Santa kneeling by the cradle holding baby Jesus. Not the Christian St. Nicolas, but the Thomas Nast Santa. The connection is not the Christian canon; the connection between the messages of the two figures is the very Humanist value of the uplifting rewards of generosity.

Concern about appropriating a religious holiday for a non-religious purpose comes to mind. Without addressing the complicated topic of appropriation (or misappropriation), I believe that what I am doing, and what I sense other UUs are doing, is on the spiritual side of the line created by our culture’s appropriation of the Christmas holiday. That feeling is not a justification nor an exoneration but it is enough of a reason to celebrate for me. The scale is further tipped toward celebrating by the fact that many of the things I do to celebrate, such as festooning the house with greens, were appropriated from the pagans. In this case, two wrongs do make a right.

I am not a scholar and certainly not a Biblical scholar; however, I have read enough to realize that most of what I know about Christmas comes, not from the Bible, but rather from Christmas carols, hymns, and holiday songs. It is obvious that most of the lyrics take liberties with the underlying textual material, and it should be obvious that the textual material is not completely accurate. The timing of Christmas itself is not factual as the lambs mentioned in the Gospels set the birth of Jesus in the northern hemisphere spring, not at the winter solstice. It is now accepted fact that the Gospels were not written by the apostles, but rather were set down decades later by people who heard the stories from people who heard the stories.

So, if the Christian Christmas is about storytelling, then it is quite logical that UUs would tell the stories to extract out their inner meanings. The question to be asked is “Why did these stories survive, passed down orally for generations?” The answer is that they reveal universal truths about us as a human family, truths that are important to all of us.

Another reason to revisit the Christmas stories is that the same story can be heard through two sets of ears and to tell two different truths. Jesus, the Honduran asylum seeker at the southern border, would hear the story of the flight to Egypt of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, as they feared King Herrod, and take from it the truth of the need to flee when your ability to survive is threatened and the need to protect your family is paramount. This Jesus would see truth in the grace exhibited by a compassionate country, be it Egypt or America, as it receives fleeing refugees. Religion exists to build compassion for those in need.  Both Jesus and the Biblical Jesus needed food, water, and shelter for those weeks on their exodus and a welcoming community in their new country.

This is the ultimate answer to my question. UUs celebrate Christmas because the Christmas stories contain universal truths about fundamental human values, such as compassion. When I asked my wife, an ex-Catholic, why she celebrates, her answer was, “Because some UUs are Christian.” I will rephrase that to, “Because all UUs are, to some extent, Christian.” Unitarian Universalist principles are universal principles forged from the collective knowledge of many sources, including Christianity and the other world religions. UUs, both theists and nontheists, like myself, see the teachings of Jesus as foundational.

There are other answers to my question, “Why do UUs celebrate Christmas?” I have answered it in the past with words like ‘tradition’ and ‘family’ and these are still true. There is one decoration that gets carefully hung on our tree each year. It is a survivor, a silver and red-painted tin cone for holding candy, which hung on the Christmas trees of my childhood. Visitors to our house are greeted by a folk art creche, hand-painted by my sister-in-law, Pat. Each year, it is one of the first decorations put up. Tradition and family intertwine as Christmas traditions are passed down to the next generation.

As Christians gather in churches on Christmas Eve, Unitarian Universalists gather in their fellowships and congregations and read the same passages from the Gospels. They sing the same hymns and tell the same stories. UUs have pageants to act out the stories. Generations of UU parents have put angel wings on white-robed children, as I did. One of the most universal celebrations is to hold candlelight services to reconnect our inner spiritual light with the symbolic flame of the candles.

Yes, why not celebrate. And let our light shine out through the cracks of our imperfections and join with the light of others in illuminating the world.