Celebration
I must ask to be excused these day leading up to Christmas.
In the middle of this past week, I underwent a procedure called root planing. A periodontist cuts and peels back your gums, he scrapes away excessive plaque that's built up on your teeth below the gum line, and then he stitches it back into place. Or so I'm told. As all this was happening to me, I was gaining firsthand knowledge of the combined effects of valium and demerol, so I don't remember any of it.
In any event, it gives me something to blame my Christmas malaise on this year. The malaise, to be honest, isn't all new. It goes back at least as far as the family tension and fights during the holiday when I was a boy. But something has me more deeply discouraged than I've been in a while, and I can't put my finger on any one thing.
The furor or the so-called "attack on Christmas" has something do with it. No question this commemoration of Jesus' birth is under siege, but exactly what the siege consists of I can't sort out. Some people insist that they have a fundamental right to display symbols of a religious holiday in government locations where those who don't believe in the holiday don't want to be exposed to it. Being prohibited from putting up Christmas trees and wreaths and nativity scenes in government buildings, by this view, somehow has the power to undercut the guiding star, the wise men, the chorus of angels, and all the other miracles that accompanied the original Christmas. If that were so, if a few legal barriers coud have that much impact, I wouldn't count Christmas much of an event.
Then there's a whole set who see Christmas by the dollars consumers manage to dole out in the mad weeks beforehand. These people measure the event by "shopping days" and "consumer confidence" and how deeply discounted the after-Christmas sales will need to be to round out fourth-quarter retail balance sheets. Christmas becomes the department stores' equivalent of "Sweeps Weeks" on network television: Bonuses are made or broken; dividends are set or withdrawn; and the engine of the economy roars to life or sputters out the last days and minutes of the year.
My confusion, though, runs deeper than these Christmas-meaning dilemmas. I seem to have become one of those hard bitten souls who can't get into even the perfectly normal Christmas spirit: houses decorated in lights and reindeer and neon Santas stepping into cardboard chimneys. I pass the neighborhoods cordoned off, parents walking past the displays with wide-eyed children, Santas on motorcycles, wooden cutout shepherds and sheep, elaborate strings of lights woven into gleaming electric sculptures. I know they are supposed to awe me, to give me warm feelings. And sometimes I do appreciate the effort and human energy that has gone into creating them.
But the older I get, the less I understand; the less I see what any of it has to do with setting aside time to become more consciously aware of the presence of god among us. The way the stories goes, Jesus didn't show up with much in the way of man-made fanfare. A stable is a small, dirty, smelly space, but if the light of a baby's face isn't enough to make it glow, then it seems to me we're looking for the wrong kind of glitz.
I want to prepare for the miraculous by shutting my mouth and opening my eyes and my being to all the things of grace and beauty that I can't begin to embellish with my small gifts. I want to clear out all the clutter and stuff, stop all the activity and getting and running around, and just be still enough to wake up to the transcendent. And to me, the only response to the miraculous that's honest and makes any sense is humility, is the realization of how much I forget how awesome (in the best sense of that word) ordinary, day-to-day existence can be. I want to remember that god's right here every minute of every day, 24, 7, 365.
Maybe if I were more at peace with myself, all the other things that come with the season wouldn't get in the way of my experiencing what I think Christmas is really about as much as they do. Maybe, after all, the problem is me; certainly it feels that way to me. I don't get the sense that anyone else shares this disssociation I feel--political, economic, spiritual--or even really knows what I'm talking about. And maybe, in the end, that's what makes me feel loneliest during the holidays, the sense that my reticence is just a nuisance and I should get with the program or keep this stuff to myself.
Instead, I find myself diligently trying to scrape of the old and calcified, to get to something so fresh and alive it even hurts a little because it washes over all my sensations. I'm just going to sit in that and be in it, quietly if need be. And that will be my celebration.
In the middle of this past week, I underwent a procedure called root planing. A periodontist cuts and peels back your gums, he scrapes away excessive plaque that's built up on your teeth below the gum line, and then he stitches it back into place. Or so I'm told. As all this was happening to me, I was gaining firsthand knowledge of the combined effects of valium and demerol, so I don't remember any of it.
In any event, it gives me something to blame my Christmas malaise on this year. The malaise, to be honest, isn't all new. It goes back at least as far as the family tension and fights during the holiday when I was a boy. But something has me more deeply discouraged than I've been in a while, and I can't put my finger on any one thing.
The furor or the so-called "attack on Christmas" has something do with it. No question this commemoration of Jesus' birth is under siege, but exactly what the siege consists of I can't sort out. Some people insist that they have a fundamental right to display symbols of a religious holiday in government locations where those who don't believe in the holiday don't want to be exposed to it. Being prohibited from putting up Christmas trees and wreaths and nativity scenes in government buildings, by this view, somehow has the power to undercut the guiding star, the wise men, the chorus of angels, and all the other miracles that accompanied the original Christmas. If that were so, if a few legal barriers coud have that much impact, I wouldn't count Christmas much of an event.
Then there's a whole set who see Christmas by the dollars consumers manage to dole out in the mad weeks beforehand. These people measure the event by "shopping days" and "consumer confidence" and how deeply discounted the after-Christmas sales will need to be to round out fourth-quarter retail balance sheets. Christmas becomes the department stores' equivalent of "Sweeps Weeks" on network television: Bonuses are made or broken; dividends are set or withdrawn; and the engine of the economy roars to life or sputters out the last days and minutes of the year.
My confusion, though, runs deeper than these Christmas-meaning dilemmas. I seem to have become one of those hard bitten souls who can't get into even the perfectly normal Christmas spirit: houses decorated in lights and reindeer and neon Santas stepping into cardboard chimneys. I pass the neighborhoods cordoned off, parents walking past the displays with wide-eyed children, Santas on motorcycles, wooden cutout shepherds and sheep, elaborate strings of lights woven into gleaming electric sculptures. I know they are supposed to awe me, to give me warm feelings. And sometimes I do appreciate the effort and human energy that has gone into creating them.
But the older I get, the less I understand; the less I see what any of it has to do with setting aside time to become more consciously aware of the presence of god among us. The way the stories goes, Jesus didn't show up with much in the way of man-made fanfare. A stable is a small, dirty, smelly space, but if the light of a baby's face isn't enough to make it glow, then it seems to me we're looking for the wrong kind of glitz.
I want to prepare for the miraculous by shutting my mouth and opening my eyes and my being to all the things of grace and beauty that I can't begin to embellish with my small gifts. I want to clear out all the clutter and stuff, stop all the activity and getting and running around, and just be still enough to wake up to the transcendent. And to me, the only response to the miraculous that's honest and makes any sense is humility, is the realization of how much I forget how awesome (in the best sense of that word) ordinary, day-to-day existence can be. I want to remember that god's right here every minute of every day, 24, 7, 365.
Maybe if I were more at peace with myself, all the other things that come with the season wouldn't get in the way of my experiencing what I think Christmas is really about as much as they do. Maybe, after all, the problem is me; certainly it feels that way to me. I don't get the sense that anyone else shares this disssociation I feel--political, economic, spiritual--or even really knows what I'm talking about. And maybe, in the end, that's what makes me feel loneliest during the holidays, the sense that my reticence is just a nuisance and I should get with the program or keep this stuff to myself.
Instead, I find myself diligently trying to scrape of the old and calcified, to get to something so fresh and alive it even hurts a little because it washes over all my sensations. I'm just going to sit in that and be in it, quietly if need be. And that will be my celebration.
posted by A Pilgrim at 9:32 PM
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