The Tricky Business of Talking About Christmas

So, I am writing this because my very dear friend sparked the thought in my head.  I wrote a whole novel in reply.  Then, I lost it.  Berated my netbook, although it's possible I am more to blame than the netbook itself.  Then, I told my friend -- Alas, I am going to try it again! She told me good luck with round 2.  After writing, I realized -- okay, that's ridiculous.  That's a blog post.  Into the blog it goes, with some revisions and additions.

Anne's status post:

Repost: If Christmas is all about Christ for you, then so be it. Enjoy it...but Dec 25th is not his real birthday, however it is someone's real birthday and when that guy's followers wish to celebrate it as it is...don't get offended if they insist that Christmas isn't about Jesus. For them, it's not. And don't get offended when people want to celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. Love doesn't insist on it's own way remember? So please don't insist that Christmas is about Jesus. Let people have freedom so they see the kindness of God in you.

For many people, this kind of thing incenses them.  Of course, it's about Christ! Why the heck would 'Christ' be in the name if it weren't?  Very valid question.  And that last bit? Let people have freedom of how they view the day.  That is important.  God did give us a choice.  The why's of it can be addressed another time, perhaps.

Okay, so hard to recapture what I wrote before in reply to her.  It was carefully written.  (dramatic sigh inserted here).  Bear with me as I struggle to put the pieces back together.

You see, it's been awhile since I truly considered what Christmas was.  And I had formulated my thoughts of it, however vague and unsharpened and unclarified it may seem now, before I turned atheist.  I held some of it during my atheism.  You will probably see some of what I mean here.

Easiest starting point: The word itself.  Awesome thing for my brain puddle is that this is easily googled and what is found can be summarized.  Here it is:

Christmas = Cristes missa = Christ's Holy Mass.  That is unavoidable.  The very name of the holiday points directly as Christ for the reason, if not for an accurate birthdate.  The term 'mass' is liturgical -- The Lord's Supper, the Holy Communion, etc.

(Paraphrased from this.  Oh, and this.)                                               

Another fact of the matter is that the pagan ritual of winter festivities and symbolism did have a hand here in the decision of the date of Christ's Holy Mass.  Paganism is older, it is ancient, and it did happen before the birth of Christ as the Holy Man on earth.  Another hand in the date is that it was a calculation from the supposed time He was conceived.    All these facts had an impact and it can be a struggle to understand.

My understanding of it is this, if you will.  Christ is older than paganism itself, He is older than man in general, before He became Man.  When God created the world, He did it with Christ in mind.   (Eph. 1:4; 1 Peter 1:20; amongst many other verses).  God is beyond Time, he looks upon it all as a present moment.  Christmas is about Christ because we made it so.  

However, if you don't believe, that is fine.  It is your right to celebrate the holiday in a way that is not about Christ.  My only hope is that you celebrate what it is about in general: Home, Life, and Family.

If you celebrate something else other than Christmas, like Hanukkah for example, then naturally I, nor anyone else, cannot tell you to celebrate Christmas instead.  Just so we can say Christmas = Christ's day = believe in Christ? I don't think so.  I don't know anything about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.  I cannot speak for it.  I think it's fascinating, and if you believe in the roots of that, then it's easy to see that you should celebrate it!

God did not want man to be robots.  He wanted them to have feelings; to come to understand Love.  That can't be done without some choices on our part.  To do this, Christians, I hope, would show kindness and not insist on their own love to be the way.  Insist on Christ's Love in yourself and fellow believers -- that is, to love with Christ in you and not with conditions or judgment.

Peace be to you.

Unconditional: Impossible?

When I love, I love without expectations.

When I extend mercy, I do it without rewards.

When I'm faithful, I'm faithful without needing reasons.

I don't require justification for the things I do.

I don't require justice for the pain I've gone through.

I look at the changes my soul has undergone,

And I see more beautiful than I see ugly.

You are loved because you are you.

You are needed because you have something to offer.

Broken doesn't cover everything you are,

It's the refining, re-making of you

that raises you above the brokenness.

It is in that alone that you find justice for yourself,

without ever needing to bring justice down on another.

You can be beautiful.

And love unconditionally because of it.

Because Christ in you loves unconditionally.

To Love Anyway

I’m sitting here with a hot cup of tea early in the morning.  It’s the remedy that works for me.  My throat feels shredded, my eyes feel swollen.  Yet I feel optimistic about the day unfolding before me.  I’m having a quiet moment of faith in the world I live in.  I’m glad I chose to keep myself hidden away from the online social world I’m addicted to.  For now, I muse, write, and do my chores cheerfully.

You know that headspace of quiet faith I’m residing in at the moment? Let me tell you more about that.  I feel joyful in God today, thankful that I believe again.  You see, when I was young, my faith was unshakable.  It was a certainty I lived in.  I was a deeply emotional and disturbed child, but that was okay with me.  God made me the way I am and I would come through it into a better person.  I was unconquerable.

Fast forward to my teenage years.  I guess that was my years of rebellion, although it didn’t feel like it to me.  I felt shut away from the world, I saw words and intentions that I never wanted to see, my safety was shattered.  I wasn’t in rebellion.  I was in fear, shock, dismay, and pain.  Uncertainty crept in and paranoia took residence.  The world wasn’t against me, because the world had enough troubles of its own.  I wasn’t against the world, because it was far more personal and familial than that.  My comfort rested in stories and structural rhymes.

The Bible wasn’t any help to me at the time.  I saw more of the world inside it than I saw what I wanted to see.  There were things I couldn’t make sense of -- massacres in the name of God, sacrifices of firstborns, contradicted verses.  There were hints of violence, hatred, and shame tucked in the Old Testament, which I was told I couldn’t just separate from the hope and renewal in the New Testament.  I wanted to feel safe in my God when no one else could comfort me. Thus, I turned to atheism. I believed, then, He wasn't real because He couldn't comfort me.

This renewed faith is much different than the faith I had as a child.  Rather than blind, angry, aggressive, zealot faith, this right here is a newborn babe finding comfort in a Father.  Picture a child in a superstore right now.  The child wants a toy.  The mother would love to give it to him, but she only has $5 left right now after the items she needed to get.  The child cannot understand why a $5 could not pay for a $10 toy.

What’s next at this point? There’s two possible scenarios.  The first one: The child is angry, the mother is frustrated.  He doesn’t understand the mysteries of the adult world.  What difference does a $5 and a $10 make?  All he wants is the toy.  It’s a simple thing that could take care of both people’s frustration right now, right away.  The mother is frustrated trying to explain to him while hurrying to get the items paid for so they could go home.

The second one: The child is initially frustrated, but the mother has made it clear to him that the toy is a possibility.  Just not right now.  In the mean time, she tells him other possibilities while calmly paying for her items.  She lets him vent his anger, comforts him, gets him to laugh, and they both are cheerfully leaving.  The child has somehow has this subtle faith that while he doesn’t understand, his mother will help him to.

I want the second one.  It’s a simplified metaphor for feeling frustrated with God not visibly answering all of our prayers.  I want to be the parent He has shown Himself to be, be the friend and person Jesus has shown us how to be.  Trust and hope.  It’s the metaphor for why we, in faith, often tell others: “God works in ways we don’t understand, we must have faith.”  As a child does not understand the ways of his parents just yet.  But it may be too simple a metaphor, because it doesn’t encompass the full pain and agony of the world.

I believe I will never fully understand the world around me, nor will I understand why things happen the way they do.  I am just a child in so many ways and many of us will always be.  The pain we all feel -- we share it.  We weep with each other for it.  And we don’t sit there and pretend that we know why things happened.  We don’t.  But the best scenario we could have is to love each other anyway.

That’s my goal.  To love anyway, even as I cautiously step through the rubble of my own past and the uncertainty of my future.  To trust anyway, reaching out once again to the Father who means so much to me.  To believe anyway, past (and within) the Bible and towards the joys of His hands reaching into our lives and changing us in ways we never imagined.

Hell is not within a child who trusts.  Heaven is within a blossoming and strengthening relationships we are all capable of cultivating.  Trust and hope; there is wisdom in that.  Believe in it, even though faith can be such a tender and shakable thing.  We’re all stepping through the fire.  And it will be okay.


ETA: And because friends have a way of adding additional insights, I'm going to add this:

On children: What it comes down to, honestly, in that metaphor is trust.

Once the trust is deeply embedded, the child is able to navigate the world on his own.

And yes, that trust will get shaken,

but he will always remember it.

He will learn from it.

It's like my previous post on that quote.  People will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but they will never forget how they made you feel.  I honestly see the Bible this way, too.  What people said or did... I forget about it.  I don't always remember the stories.

I just remember how they made me feel... and how God makes me feel. He makes me feel safe.  And I'm okay.

I would never trust in a Being that couldn't make me feel this way.  I still have to walk through fire and suffer, but He has my back anyway.  That's the parent I'm going to be.  And a friend, too, dear.