Peace On Earth, Goodwill Towards Men

Year-end 2010 has brought us to a particularly spirited rendition of the portfolio dressing, tax-loss selling histrionics that always seem to characterize December. We are having one heck of a Santa Claus Rally. It also brings us to what seems to have become seasonally affected hostilities over the appropriate expression of the holiday that is December 25. The god haters and various others of the vinegar-hearted persuasion want to tamp down if not snuff out the customary pleasantries that most of the rest of us enjoy. On the other side is that strain of Christians who insist that we all dial down the festivities and keep the focus on “the reason for the season.” I would like to suggest that both sides should back off and let the rest of us enjoy a festival that is deeply rooted in that foundational edifice we call Western Civilization. To the former, I would ask, what part of peace on earth and Goodwill to men (an admittedly dated expression signifying all of humanity, both in the abstract and in the often much more difficult to stomach particularity of the individuals who cross our paths and otherwise disrupt our selfish agendas) do you have a problem with? And to those Christians who insist on being heirs to the very caricature of the Puritans, described by one wit as “distressed by the very thought that somebody, somewhere might be enjoying himself”, I would suggest that you have 365 days per year to honor your Lord, but the rest of us only get to celebrate Christmas once a year. The Christ you say you want to share with everyone else has a compelling proposition all by Himself (“a new heart”, “Life, in full”). It doesn’t need to peddled at every possible opportunity.

It is hardly surprising that a culturally mandated festivity found its way on to the calendar on or about December 25. We all know about solstice, although perhaps the less we know about how some of our ancestors marked that occasion, the better off we might be. Even with all our modern comforts, especially those light bulbs that are about to be mandated out of existence, short, dim days, long nights, and inhospitable weather grow wearisome as the weeks grind by. Imagine not having anything but fire to light things up, and only a few folks having much of anything to burn. Now consider the effect of latitude on this condition, how far north so much of European West that defines our cultural heritage is located. Sunny Venice is as far north as Burlington, Vermont. That wellspring of western thought that was Edinburgh? Follow its latitude line far enough and it clips Alaska. Our ancestors knew about cold, dark and hungry for weeks at a time. They might have been illiterate, bellicose, superstitious, and intolerant of anyone not from the same clan or tribe (but then again, perhaps the weren’t. So much of what we call history is largely guesswork), but they weren’t stupid. The idea of a little communal gathering to fortify themselves against nature’s siege was not exactly rocket science (or even tin smithing!). So as far as we can tell, there has not been a time when people in the parts of the world that, thus far, have mattered most, have not had a celebration of some sort on or about what has come to be denoted as December 25.

And not just them. Where, save but redoubts of the most pathetic personality cults and ideological fads (e.g., North Korea) has the custom of making at least a little merry with Christmas not spread? Despite dogged efforts by generations of missionaries, not even 1% of Japan identifies as Christian, and yet it is not hard to find evidences of the celebration of Christmas in any of its major cities (and not just by the purveyors of consumer electronics). And wasn’t that Dubai, in the heart of the United Arab Emirates, that just set the record for the glitziest Christmas tree ever? Share a Bible and go to jail, but something about Christmas is larger than any faith, and they all want in on it. Christmas is something that everyone can have a piece of, if only in the same measure as folks in, say, Albany NY, might embrace Cinco de Mayo as an excuse to duck out of work early and go pound down some margaritas. With so much at work in the cosmos to divide and alienate people groups, right down to the very fallenness of the human condition, Christmas seems to be one thing pulls in the opposite direction.

I find that with each passing year, the very music of Christmas becomes an ever stronger tether across time, an antidote to that malaise triggered by tempus fugit and the tyranny of the immediate Now. In a world that at least seems to be more and more defined by constant change, there is solace in things that evoke permanence. Christmas music connects us not only with celebrants from generations past, but also with celebrations when we were the young ones instead of the older ones. This is a good thing, worth doing. This year, the meaning of Christmas, or at least a meaning that I think all “men of goodwill” could embrace, came to me in the words of a familiar carol. In “Oh, Holy Night”, we hear the words:

Long lay the world, in sin and error pining
Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.

Now the meaning of words will be deepest for those who have experienced what it is to know Christ, the One who put the “holy” in “holiday”, but one need not take that step of faith to want to celebrate the legacy received as a result of this turn of events. Because, indeed, the world did lay in sin (in the Greek of Scripture, hamarteo, or “missing the mark” like an arrow flying off course) and error (something anyone who practices the craft of investing becomes painfully familiar with). And indeed pining, if we are to believe the Greek philosophers and their Roman proteges. 2010 years ago civilization, which is to say humanity having organized itself enough to have designated note-takers, had been around for a very long time, at least twenty times as long as the 234 years that our experiment in ordered liberty has endured. There was peace, but it was of the iron-healed, nail you to a tree if you piss us off variety: Pax Romana. It has been credibly observed that it was as if the project that was humanity had exhausted itself and rolled over in despair. (See G.K. Chesterton.) And yet somehow, in a most unexpected (prophesied, but only recognized much later) way, something Transcendent entered into humanity, and things were never the same. That this singularly influential person entered what we call Hi(s)story is a fact of record, no longer in dispute. A hundred years later, the changes wrought by His brief life were scarcely recognizable outside of a few enclaves, but a couple of hundred years after that, it had toppled the Roman order. Why? Because somehow, for the first time ever, “the soul felt it’s worth”, and the power of the Presence that makes this happen kept growing and growing. It would be many more centuries before this notion would crystalize into the idea that we are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” (by what power, what sovereignty, could they possibly be deemed inalienable?). This idea, coupled with a few innovations like printing and ability to tap motive power from something besides wind, water or muscle, is what jarred the trajectory of what we like to call progress (or at least used to, before “progressive” got highjacked into a term antithetical to liberty) in way that rushed us to our present lofty, unspeakably prosperous heights.

Compared with even the most splendid aspects of all the interminable centuries leading up to the event we celebrate as Christmas, a great and growing portion of the world is an unimaginably free and prosperous place. And as if that were not enough, there is the reminder of blessings can emanate out of the most inexplicable circumstances. For this pivot point in human destiny was not on some grand stage (complete with tele-prompter). It was peasants, quite possibly teenaged and illiterate, enduring one of life’s most difficult to endure moments, in a stable, in a backwater town. We are told, in accounts whose reliability has withstood the tests of time and criticism, that there were evidences of divine activity on that night, but subsequent events indicate that these were quickly forgotten. In any case, after that night, humanity had a new hope, and things would never be the same. And for this, all of us, regardless of creed or with no creed at all, should be thankful. Our hearts should swell in merriment if we consider just how much this event has blessed us. And so I say, “Merry Christmas!”