Now the Work of Christmas Begins....

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flocks,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart.

- Howard Thurman

May the tidings of the season warm your hearts and fill you and yours with love for each other and for our world!

Ah, Christmas: that time of year - thankfully fully coordinated with Hanukkah this year! - when most of us celebrate the birth of our Savior in a stable in a manger by spending way more than is prudent to treat ourselves and others to gifts in His name.  Hmmm.  There has to be a better way....

I really do enjoy the holidays and especially Christmas, but I also really do think that our celebration of Christmas must change.  If there's a war on Christmas - there's not, but a few traditionalists want to think that it's so and involve the rest of us in their dissatisfaction - it's because we've taken the spirit of the day and transformed it into something unrecognizable in a Frankenstein's monster sort of way.  This is what has to change.

Let's face it, in its modern American incarnation, Christmas has three parts: first, ostensibly it's the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Redeemer of the Christian faith/faithful; second, it's a time to gather with loved ones and be renewed by the love (and occasional rancor) that comes with them, too; and, third, in this era, it's a time of commercial excess that is, frankly, sickening.  So much so that we've figured out how to ruin our Thanksgiving holiday so that we can shop/stock up for Christmas.  It's this last part that has to change the most, followed by the first.

I'm all for celebrating the birth of Jesus, though I do think that we go a bit to far when we literalize and mix it as we do.  Though many Christians don't realize it, the only thing that we can say for sure about this sacred day is that it didn't happen as we celebrate it now: there was likely no stable and manger scene with wise men, etc.  How do we know this?  Because the Bible, and specifically two of the Gospels, tells us so:

Luke's story of the birth of Jesus is most familiar: the trip to Bethlehem to be recorded in a census and the unexpected birth of the Christ in the most humble of circumstances.  While this last part is likely correct figuratively - Jesus' earthly family was at best working class and thus his circumstances humble from beginning to end - the former, generative part is likely not: there is no census of record during this time - and the Romans did many things well, including keeping great records to which we have access even today -  meaning that this part of the story is, well, a bit of literary license.

Further, where are the wise men and the star in Luke's story?  Have you read this Gospel lately?  They're not there because in Luke's story, it's about the shepherds and an angel.  You're thinking of Matthew's Gospel, which begins with a genealogy of Jesus linking him to David and then mentions the visit of the wise men (but, contrary to popular belief, no camels on which they were supposed to have ridden).

Finally, the two Gospels disagree about what happened soon after Jesus was born: Luke has the newly expanded family return to Nazareth (where Jesus grows up and is then presented at the Temple) and Matthew has the family flee to Egypt temporarily to escape King Herod's jealously murderous wrath.

The point is that this story shouldn't be literalized and mixed as it is in modern America, because it didn't happen as we celebrate it and fetishize it to our detriment.  What do I mean that we 'fetishize' Christmas?  Just that: we create a comfortable (and historically fictional) story and then insist that everyone agree to and abide by it.  Nonesense!

In my humble opinion, it really doesn't matter what the circumstances of Jesus' birth were because they are dwarfed by the true significance of His life and message.  So, I'm all for celebrating Jesus' birthday, but let's do it in a way that honors who He was and still is for/to so many of us.

We should celebrate that someone so consumed by Love walked among us and that His impact and influence were such that now delineate time based on His birth.  (Though, technically, it appears that we do so incorrectly, as Jesus would have had to have been born between 4BCE and 10BCE - i.e., 4BC and 10BC - for the details in the Gospels to bear any resemblance to the recorded history of the time.)  We should celebrate His Love and Example ... by being loving and emulating his example, which brings me to the part of Christmas that needs to be changed the most....

Do we ever pause to reflect on the irony that we celebrate the birth of a man who was poor and anti-material his entire life by engaging in conspicuous consumption and physical gift-giving?  Do we ever register that Jesus gave of Himself and His heart, lovingly, and eschewed the material (and required His followers to do so)?

I submit that we should celebrate Christmas by being like Christ: loving and proactively so.  Instead of buying ourselves the latest, largest big screen TV and our spouse, kids and loved ones gifts that we likely can't afford and that they likely won't use for very long, perhaps we should get out in our communities and minister to the less fortunate as He did.  Perhaps Christmas should be about our being as Christ-like as possible and about giving from the heart.  Perhaps we should stretch our budgets at Christmas to give to those for whom our funds are beyond their current conception and recent experience.

It seems to me that if we really want to honor Christ on His birthday, then we should give of ourselves freely, totally and "wastefully" as Bishop John Spong describes it.

Think about it: would your life really be meaningfully less blessed if you didn't get a bunch of stuff today?  And what would the impact be on the receivers if we took all the money that we spend on ourselves and instead share it with fellow Children of God who are less fortunate?

I offer this suggestion: that we follow the guidance of the late great Howard Thurman - shared at the beginning of this piece - in his litany "The Work of Christmas Begins," that we invest ourselves today (and every day, really) in honoring Jesus' legacy by continuing it in doing His work - finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, etc.

In this way, we'll actually be living as He commanded us, which is both the best way that we can honor Him as well as to give to and live with each other:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- The Gospel of John, 13:34-35

In this spirit, I wish you a Merry Christmas and hope that His spirit will illumine and guide your life and all of ours toward living the Love that is His legacy.  Amen.