I know what it is like to work hard on a no-win situation and have outsiders criticize and condemn.  I am usually on the other side.  But when a growing number of voices question our list to the dark side, isn’t that the time to step back and consider that something bigger might be going on here?  Treating huge issues like guaranteed appointments, structure, global relationships as one-dimensional is outrageous.  The implications of each are far-reaching and potentially cataclysmic.  Take away guaranteed appointments as a leverage against poor credentialing processes and lack of accountability?  Fine, but how many gifted pastors have come into UM ministry because of the perk of guaranteed appointment?  With every other negative weighing against ordained ministry — pay, hours, stress, esteem — you want to remove a positive as you recreate a “culture of call?”  And for those whom guaranteed appointment has been an incentive to work hard?  Oh, well, they’ll get over it.  And let’s downsize to grow without clarifying the missional goals and objectives that a new structure might achieve.  Who needs a Promised Land?  We’ll figure out where we can go after we gut the structure.  Just as long as we get the power out of the hands of the many and place it in the hands of the few.  And instead of casting a vision for a global church witnessing to solidarity and unity, lets fragment as quickly as possible so that we don’t lose power.  Our theological differences and the 800 pound human sexuality gorilla?  Ah, we don’t have time to address those, we have agencies to close.  Now, let’s cherry pick which agencies to exempt.  We certainly don’t want our pet agency lumped in with “those” agencies.  Everyone quickly scramble around and waste exorbitant amounts of money trying to justify your continued existence!

These are huge issues, and I am not trying to denigrate the work anyone has done — it has all been hard work.  But has it been the work to bring us where we need to be heading into General Conference?  And are we doing ourselves any favors by voting support for half-baked, non-critically thought through decisions?  It is great to vote our confidence in the intentions of those elected to serve the church.  But great effort does not equal great job.  Voices around the world are raising serious and valid questions about our various and sundry reports and recommendations.  All our websites and newsletters and press releases that celebrate the party line don’t make it true.  Preventing alternative voices from being heard may get you your own way, but it will not serve the best interests of The United Methodist Church.  Perhaps the Emperor is not completely unclothed, but he seems to be wearing rags when he could be more finely adorned.  I hope and pray our discussions cut through the rhetoric and the rah-rah and that enough annual conferences declare that they will not merely settle for a poor plan, but will come together to forge something much, much better.

With the exception of UMCs with more than 2,000 active participants, (so I am only talking about 99% of our congregations) the healthiest churches in our denomination are those choosing to excel in one or two areas instead of continuing to be mediocre at a lot of things.  The awakening to the fact that The United Methodist Church” has become the Phoenix University of Christian churches (according to Jon Stewart… I still love this line…) is not something of which we can be proud.  Our commitment to be a “good” church prevents us from being a “great” church.  Becoming “world class” in one or two areas of ministry is open to a much larger percentage of our churches than being great at many things (reminds one of Mary and Martha, doesn’t it…?), but it requires a bit of a sacrifice.  A congregation may find something in which to excel, but it will have to stop doing other things if it wants to free resources and capacity to be successful.

The same holds true for our denomination — if we want to actually make a lasting impact in the world.  Our four focus areas have given some guidance, but how well have we done keeping these four balls in the air?  Malaria looks good — that’s one ball.  Pockets of ministry with the poor pop up from time to time, but more often than not we’re chasing that ball as it scoots under the sofa.  Our Call to Action is calling us to juggle fewer balls, but the balls to drop and the balls to keep are arbitrary.  There is no clear sense of what we need versus what we don’t.  Yet, we will make decisions about what agencies to keep and what leadership to retain, even though we don’t know what we want them to do…

Our focus is too broad.  We are still trying to be all things to all people.  We still want more people, so we cast our nets as wide as possible, sacrificing depth for breadth.  So much could change if we would only shift our primary focus from size to quality, from “big” to “excellent.”

Another result of our unfocused approach to ministry is that it gives us all something to disagree about.  With so many issues big and small to manage, we can ignore the big things we agree on to bicker and snipe about where we’re different.  This becomes a perfect excuse to not be effective at anything.  We are too busy trying to be right to waste time trying to be effective.

This is a fine example of the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Because we are okay with being mediocre, we allow the things we are bad at to drain our resources and prevent us from being great at anything.  The more we try to do, the less we excel, and in many cases the more we damage our reputation and credibility.  An example of this is our current denominational need for leadership.  To attract new leaders, our Ministry Study recommends we lower our standards and shorten our time of preparation, yet we already suffer a crisis of quality in leadership.  Making our credentialing process LESS rigorous not only won’t improve our leadership, but the results promise to be ugly.  The same is true of our denominational plan to downsize before we clarify our missional priorities.  We will simply try to do as much as we always have with fewer resources, shifting our mediocrity to gross insufficiency.  It should be fun.

Form follows function.  Function defines focus.  We have got to be crystal clear about what we are trying to do and why it is so important before we progress too much farther on how and who.  Bigger won’t necessarily give us a future.  Better will.

Lo, and behold, travelers from the east and parts southeast and newer developments more to the south actually than the east, were on a quest — some having traveled weeks, others months, others years — all hoping to discover the Messiah promised to the Jews, but with anticipated collateral benefits for various and sundry gentiles, Pagans, and an occasional Druid.  Dozens of seers, prophets, magi, prognosticators, and visionaries milled together with camels, mules, donkeys, and one totally confused llama.  A few straggled behind.

“Where are we bound this time?” one asked.

“We have heard a rumor that the Messiah may come from Nazareth,” answered a second.

“Nazareth??” exploded a third.  “What possible good can come from Nazareth?  That’s miles from here!”

“That’s what they are saying,” replied the first.  “But the buzz is firstest-rate.”

“Like the last time?” sneered the third.

“How were we to know the father was a pig merchant?” reflected the second.

“Someone should have done some checking, is all I’m saying.  It isn’t likely that the King of the Jews will come with a side of bacon.  Sometimes I feel like this is all a waste of time.”

“Well, it can’t be too much of a waste of time, or that king Herod wouldn’t have gotten all up in our faces,” said the second.  “That man is nuts.  All you said is that we wanted to know if he had heard of a better king being born anywhere and he completely lost it.  He wouldn’t get so upset about a ‘waste of time.’”

“I guess not,” said the third.  “I think I’ll take a pass on Nazareth, though.”

“What will you do,” queried the first.  “Where will you go?”

“I heard about this great inn in O Little Town of Bethlehem, not too far from here.  I pidgeoned ahead and reserved the very last room.  Hey, I have an idea.  There are three beds.  You guys could cometh witheth me-eth,” invited the third.

“What?”

“Excuse me.  My bridge keeps slipping.  You could come with me.  It would be fun,” chided the third.

“I don’t know.  I would hate to pass on Nazareth then find out it was the Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords, etc,” worried the first.

“Look, I can almost guarantee you that the Messiah won’t come from some little backwater bog like Nazareth,” said the third.

“You know,” began the second, “I am a bit weary from all this trekking and questing.  A night out and a comfortable bed doesn’t sound half bad.  We could get all dressed up and treat ourselves like kings!” enthused the second.

“When you put it that way, it sounds great.  I like the sound of we three kings from the orient are looking for a good time.  I’m in,” pledged the first.

“Me, too,” added the second.  “Do you know how to get there?”

“Oh, you can’t miss it.  They have this great big star sign right over the stable.  Come on, nobody will miss us, and we’ll hook back up with them in a couple weeks.” explained the third.

The trio departed, unaware that they were carving a special place in history for themselves.  Dressed in their finest robes, the three conversed as they approached Bethlehem.

“So, when we find the baby, what are you planning to give him…?” asked wise man the first.

“Well, it was a toss-up between frankincense and costly nard, so I went with the frankincense — since the nard was so costly,” shared the second.

“Take a gander at this,” boasted the third.  He whipped out a small chest, and flashed a small treasure in gold.

“No way!  You know there’s a ten denarii spending limit!  Ah, man, that makes my myrrh look pathetic!” roared the first.

“Myrrh?  Really?  You’re giving a baby death balm?  You’re unbelievable,” responded the third.

“Hey, guys, there’s the inn.  Let’s take our animals to the stable out back…”

On this twelfth day following Christmas, we celebrate the Epiphany event — one that is much more grounded in myth and fantasy more than a Biblical basis.  We don’t know exactly where the travellers are from.  We have no idea how many there were.  They are from the fringe caste of magi (seers and forecasters — magicians), not kings.  The gifts have been interpreted as symbolic since the early first few centuries — gold, frankincense and myrrh foreshadowing the power, majesty, and conquest of death in Jesus’s future.  It was not until college that I realized that Epiphany as a Christian celebration was a “late” addition to our tradition, and that Hebrew culture understood epiphany to mean the revelation of any deity to humankind.  The Hebrew scriptures are filled with incidents of epiphany.  It also came to be associated with the number three in the primitive and premodern superstitious early Christian culture.  The story in our Christian tradition is a capstone to the Christmas narrative, the significance of which is all but lost today.

The angels appeared to Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, and the shepherds to clue them into the miracles as they were about to unfold.  Jesus, as the Christ, came as a complete surprise to them.  Following his birth a wonderful shift occurs.  In Matthew, the magi appear on the scene; in Luke this visit takes the form of Simeon and Anna, but in both cases confirmation of Jesus’ Messianic nature comes from those who were looking for him!  Jesus wasn’t a happy surprise to the magi or Simeon and Anna — he came as fulfillment to what they lived their lives in anticipation of.  The magi KNEW the Messiah was coming and they identified Jesus as the Christ-child they were seeking and searching for.  In the tradition and the narrative this is huge.  This makes it all real.  This gives it weight and truth and credibility.  We often don’t see it this way, or don’t give it the weight it deserves, but the two gospel writers who found such importance in the birth narratives both used a validation story to confirm that Jesus is the one true Son of God.  In both cases, Jesus is not just the King of the Jews, but he is the Redeemer and Savior of humankind — Lord of the whole wide world.  In an age of competing Messianic candidates, confirmation and validation were crucial.  Those with the “special powers” of discernment and perception — magi and prophetesses — knew immediately who Jesus really was.

And so by our faith and by the convictions of our hearts, we too know who Jesus is.  Now comes the hard part.  The infant Messiah has been born into our lives once again.  We have to make some effort to look for and find this newborn King — then we have to make room for him on the thrones of our hearts.  We must nurture the babe and allow him to grow into the Lord and Master of our lives.  We give over our will to his Will, changing our ways to The Way.  We take less and less, give more and more, and we risk being changed from the inside out.  We love the romance and the pageantry of the visit of the wise men, but we too often downplay the sacrifice of the wise men.  The physical gifts they give represent, most likely, their lifetime accumulation of wealth.  The implication of their obeisance to the babe is an ending to a lifelong quest — their reason for being is fulfilled.  They end as the Messiah begins — and so it is for us.  We give our lives to Christ, but do we really?  Are we wise as the wise men are wise, or are we kidding ourselves?  Time will tell, but epiphany calls us to open ourselves to the incarnation all over again.  Thanks be to God.

An even greater mystery to me as a child were girls — more specifically girls who got all excited about getting clothes for Christmas.  I don’t ever remember the clothes I got for Christmas.  I loved the books and toys and gadgets and games and puzzles — the fun stuff.  I had a “games and books” grandma and a “socks and underwear” grandma and I always preferred the former to the latter at Christmas and birthdays.  As I got older I came to appreciate wearable gifts (but I’d still rather get a book — hint, hint) and realized that often it is better to receive something I need, instead of only getting what I want.  And on wonderfully rare occasions, I receive both at the same time.

And this is the miracle of Christmas — looking forward each year to something we want and being blessed with what we need.  We embrace the warmth and kindness and relationships and goodwill, and we receive God’s Son in the bargain.  Stripping off all the layers we’ve heaped on the holiday, we come to the celebration of God entering human experience and changing the world for all time.  Reflecting on the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel, the question “whadjagit?” comes crashing in.  Think about the answers Joseph, Mary, and the shepherds might give to the question?

Joseph got the responsibility for someone else’s kid — and what a kid!  In a primitive, superstitious, and unforgiving culture where bloodline and kinship are concerned, Joseph’s acceptance of Mary’s situation is nothing short of miraculous — angelic visitation or no.  Joseph will have to live with the questions and suspicions of his family and neighbors in Nazareth.  He is responsible for the wellbeing and health of the one true Son of God.  He is not a wealthy man, not a powerful man, not an influential man, nor an educated man.  It is likely that he lived on the cusp of cultural poverty in the first century.  Jesus had more in common with Wiley Mooningham than with any of the rest of us more middle class in my home town.

And what about Mary?  It’s likely that she got a reputation she never sought.  The vast majority of women in the first century Middle East delivered their first child when they were mere children themselves.  The average age of first conception was 12, soon after the onset of puberty.  According to a couple of sources I checked, most women delivered between 7-10 children, and the infant mortality rate was about 4-in-10.  Many women died in childbirth.  Bloodline and family name were valued more highly than gold (which was very hard to come by…).  Did Mary even fully comprehend what was happening to her?  Blessed among women, yes; but burdened as well.  God placed the infant into the care of a poor couple in a high risk world.  What did Mary get when she was so blessed?  Each illness or fever, injury or infection, must have been torture.  And how do you discipline the Son of God?

The shepherds received the fright of a lifetime.  Again, those so poor that they live in the fields where they keep their sheep, would have very little clue what was happening to them.  The shepherds also received a great story — one that they immediately spread around.  The visitation of not a mere handful of angels — a multitude was a shorthand term for “too many to count” (ignoring the fact that most shepherds probably couldn’t count very high…) — but a proclamation that moved them to seek out the family, leaving their sheep to fend for themselves.  Mary, Joseph, the shepherds — all were changed forever.  No matter what path their lives were on, everything shifted with the birth of the Christ.

And it all continues to change.  The Christ is born anew into hearts and minds each and every day.  How we answer the question “whadjagit?” at Christmas says a lot about what Christmas — and our faith in general.  I would answer the question, for myself, this way.  I have been given hope.  I have been given a new opportunity to make my life mean something.  I have been given a responsibility to make life better for those around me.  I have been given a gift of love with strings attached — I am expected to give this gift away to others.  I have been given that which I truly want, but also what I need.  And I have been given the chance to give others the love, joy, kindness, mercy and compassion they need, as well.

I

Growing up, I was ever aware of the troll-like woman who wandered the downtown streets of Muncie.  I cannot recall the first time I ever saw her, but it was not until she died that I even learned her true name.  Yuletide Carol just was.  She waddled the streets spring, summer, fall, and winter bawling Christmas songs at the top of her lungs.  Remarkably, her voice was not awful, and she had the uncanny ability to recall dozens of songs in their entirety.  Dressed in a worn wool coat – regardless of the weather – Yuletide Carol would wobble, weeble-like, waddling along the sidewalks.  A raspberry colored babushka encircled her jack-o-lantern face – squinted eyes, vegetable-lump nose, picket-fence grin, and potato-shaped, warted chin.  She stood all of five-foot tall, but was a yard wide.  Tree trunk legs propelled her on her way.  Amazingly, most people in town didn’t even see her, so familiar a sight did she provide.

I remember asking my dad – who left home when I was six, so I was very young – who she was.  He looked at her for a moment, pursed his lips, exhaled long and hard through his nose, and said, “I don’t really know.  She’s been around Muncie forever.  When I was a teenager she used to sit outside Central High School.  We all called her Yuletide Carol, because all she does is sing Christmas songs.”

That was the extent of the answer I was given, and it sufficed for many years.  Yuletide Carol was Yuletide Carol — as it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be, myth without end.  Amen.  For the next twelve years I would have various encounters with this woman, but would be none the wiser for any of them.

I recall one winter I was with my grandmother, Dortie, at her yarn shop downtown.  Dortie was (and will ever be) one of the sweetest, kindest, and most generous people I know, but she was terrified of Yuletide Carol.  I didn’t understand this as a child, but learned why when I was a little older.  For a time I couldn’t imagine why this merry troll scared my grandmother so.  All I had ever witnessed was a Christmas chorister – albeit, one conceived by a Charles Addams mind – who seemed fairly safe.  Then, one day, as Dortie and I left her shop, we walked along the sidewalk toward Yuletide Carol.  In somewhat juicy, sibilant tones, Yuletide Carol sang While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.  As the words, “Fear not! Said he, for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind.  Glad tidings of great joy I bring. . .“, I happened to glance at Yuletide Carol’s push cart, which contained all her earthly possessions.  Without pausing for breath, Yuletide Carol grabbed my wrist and hissed, “Touch my f***ing stuff, and I’ll break your f***ing arm,” then finished with “to all of humankind, to all of humankind.”  Dortie hustled me away as quickly as she could.

One of my deepest regrets in life relates to this poor woman.  When I was about twelve or thirteen, I was hanging out with a group of four or five of my friends, smoking and joking and just wasting time.  It had been snowing for a day and a half, and the temperature had begun to climb.  The snow was wet, heavy, and perfect for packing.  Intermittent snowball wars would erupt, then we would shift back and forth from foot to foot blowing on scarlet, chapped hands until next time.  A little toady in the group looked down the street and saw Yuletide Carol struggling through the slush with her cart, pointing her out to the rest of us.  A second brave soldier grinned and said, “Let’s get her with snowballs.”  At the time, I knew that I didn’t really want to pelt this poor woman with snowballs, but the desire to be cool in the eyes of my friends won out.  I didn’t really know this freakish woman, and so what would it cost to terrorize her a bit?  I packed three hard snowballs and took off running with the gang.  Hollering like a posse of vigilantes, we raced at the defenseless woman.  At the last possible moment, she turned her head, and the look of utter fright that I caught in her eyes will stay with me the rest of my life.  We creamed her with a dozen snowballs, and all she could do was drop to her knees and cover herself.  One of my gang reached out and dumped her cart in the slush at the curb, and for a moment I wanted to stop and help her gather her things.  To my deeper shame, I simply ran on.  Throughout her entire ordeal, Yuletide Carol kept on humming Angels We Have Heard on High.  As we sped away, a pathetic wail of “Gloria” snapped at our heels.

The memories I have of Yuletide Carol from my childhood and early adolescence are different from my memories later on.  When I was fifteen, life changed dramatically for me, and I looked at the world very differently.

As a teenager I never fit in with any crowd.  Where I did try to fit in, it was with a crowbar and duct tape – I forced myself in.  I landed in the gentry of drugs and drink, primarily because no one cared who joined this club.  I was one of a vast and growing number of delinquents-in-training.  Days were filled with pot smoke, weekends with alcohol.  I drifted from party to party, un-chaperoned house to un-chaperoned house, in a fog of “who gives a damn.”  My freshman year of high school was a desperate attempt to find a place to call home.  Drinking and drugging was an easy way to make space for myself in high school.  But through it all I was miserable.

Something about the company I kept troubled me mightily.  I really didn’t like the people I was with.  Some of them were okay, but for the most part we were all on the path to perdition.  I look at how most of them turned out and thank God that I found some other way.  But, that other way wasn’t so clear at the time.  Had God not sent an angel – two angels, actually – I might have traveled a very similar road to those of my druggie pals.

One night, as I sat in the living room of a complete stranger, I watched a young girl with owlish glasses sink as far down into a couch cushion as was humanly possible.  She had been drinking continuously for an hour and had twice taken some pills that a friend had given her.  I still remember thinking, “she looks like a cornered squirrel.”  Her eyes were huge behind her glasses, and she watched everyone with a patina of fear covering her pretty face.  She was a blond, with a round face, full lips, and large green eyes.  I don’t remember that she said a single word all night.  She had the appearance of someone hiding in plain sight.  I fell in love with her from across the room.

Around ten o’clock, people began to pair off and disappear to other parts of the house.  Suddenly, I realized that I was all alone in the room with the frightened squirrel.  She was staring at me, looking like she might bolt for the door if I made any sudden move.  I got up – slowly – and walked over to her.  I remember sitting on the floor in front of her, while she watched my every move.  I cannot remember anything that I said or that she said, but I know that we began talking, that we went out for a walk, and that by morning we had held hands and become a couple.  When I walked her to her house she kissed me.  That was my first night with Lisa Jennings.

Lisa was a very bright girl who was tired of trying to live up to her parent’s expectations.  She regularly blew off homework and tests just to keep her grades in the low B range.  She could ace any exam and nail any project without half trying, but the burden of being perfect took its toll.  Lisa was rebelling in a significant way from a life where dad thought she was perfect and mom was jealous of everything she accomplished.  Lisa had an older sister, Elizabeth, who lived up to the expectations – she was perfect, and mom and dad both reveled in holding Lisa up to Elizabeth’s standards.  More than anything else, Lisa was just plain tired.  She wanted off the treadmill.  Drugs had become her escape.  But, like me, she did drugs because nothing better offered itself.  Suddenly, we both provided the other with an alternative.

Lisa and I became a pair – or more accurately, we became one.  My relationship with Lisa offered me a gift that has lasted a lifetime.  I never dismiss the love of young people as “puppy love” – it is no less “real” or significant than “mature” love (whatever that actually means…).  What Lisa and I discovered together was as real and as meaningful as anything I have ever known.  Lisa completed me in a way that I never imagined possible.  She loved books, and learning, and old movies, and walks, and trivia, and gazing at stars at night.  We never found anything between us that we didn’t share.  This is not as miraculous as it sounds, because we didn’t have long to explore.

I met Lisa in April of 1973.  From the first night I met her, we never spent a full day apart.  We were inseparable.  I recall the night in June that she told me that she and her mom were flying to Denver to stay with her sister for a week in August when her sister was due with her first baby.  I dreaded the thought of a week to ten days where we couldn’t be together.  That June and July, we spent every possible waking moment together.  Throughout this entire time, neither one of us did drugs or drank or engaged in any other form of self-destructive behavior.  We were straight, clean, and getting our lives together – together.  When I watched her plane take off out of the Indianapolis airport, I felt my heart pulled from my chest – a part of me left that day, and it never came back.  Four days later I got a call from Lisa’s dad.  Lisa and her mom were killed in an automobile accident.  My world came apart.

I honestly don’t remember much of that summer and fall.  I withdrew, both emotionally and physically, from everyone.  I drank a lot.  I smoked a lot of dope.  I escaped into trashy novels and watched a lot of television alone in my room.  And I walked.  One morning I started walking at about four o’clock.  I ended up in Indianapolis – about forty miles from home.  I talked a college kid into buying me a pint of bourbon, and I downed it in about four gulps while standing on Interstate 69.  The last thing I recall about that day was screaming obscenities at God and flinging the empty bottle into the sky, all the while tears ran down my face.  I crumpled in a field along side the road, sobbing.  The next memory I have is waking up back in Muncie on a bench outside of the student center at Ball State University the following morning.  My grades plummeted, my relationship with my mom – strained under the best circumstances – collapsed, and I had absolutely no one to talk to.

That’s not completely true.  I talked to God – a lot, but mostly to curse him (in my adolescence, God was always ‘he’ – the father I never had growing up) and to tell him what a crappy mess he was making of the world.  I had a hateful relationship with God.  The wonderful result of that time was an absolute assurance that God was there, somewhere.  When my life fell apart, I never doubted for an instant that God was really real.  That solid faith has never wavered, and I am who I am because of it.  I also understand true grace by virtue of the fact that God never creamed me while I called him every vile name in the book.  I lived in a state of unmitigated rage for four months.  And as Christmas drew near, the darkness and anger I felt inside grew hotter and deeper.

One thing I am still ashamed of to this day were the acts of vandalism I engaged in that year.  I acted out against God by destroying the property of others.  I took great pleasure and glee in targeting the displays of Christmas that people put outside on their lawns.  Many nights, in the wee small hours, I went on a one-man wilding rampage, ripping lights from trees, smashing snowmen and figures of Santa, and especially delighting in annihilating nativity scenes.  I carried a crow bar, and vented my rage on all the signs and symbols of the holiday.  I kept waiting for a catharsis that wouldn’t come.  I couldn’t deal out the payback that God so richly deserved.

A lot of people tried to talk to me, to help me deal with things, but it just made everything worse.  I fought with everyone.  Each attempt to calm me, to help me heal, just fueled the anger.  I wanted to hurt others the way I was hurting.  I wanted to destroy happiness that I couldn’t claim for myself.

Three days before Christmas I decided to get drunk – not a rare or unusual decision in those days.  I stole a bottle of gin and wandered downtown.  From the first swig of the bottle I knew getting drunk wasn’t in the cards.  The gin tasted sour and metallic.  My stomach clenched and I gagged.  The combination of emotional bile, anger and booze refused to mix, and my body just wouldn’t tolerate any more.  I stood behind People’s Studio – a photography shop – and pitched the pint of gin against the back wall and screamed.  My bellow of rage caused lots of people to turn and look at me, but I didn’t care.  The beast of my anger felt larger than my skin.  Four months of grief and rage at Lisa’s death exploded inside me.   Images of the hunchback of Notre Dame and the Frankenstein monster played in my mind.  My rational side broke.  I walked along muttering at God, swinging my fists and jerking my head.  To observers, I must have appeared to be an escapee from a psychiatric hospital.  In my wandering I caught sight of the crèche scene at the High Street United Methodist Church.  In three years I would join this church – it would be my home church, and its leaders would vote me into the candidacy program which led to my ordination – but for now all I could see was a target for my unhappiness.  I waited and watched and sat for hours until the street cleared.

I found a two-by-four in an alley near the church and started to cross the street.  My focus was glued to the nativity scene in the churchyard.  I drew to within a few steps of the display when I became aware of a sound.  The sound was almost human, almost music, almost melodic, but not quite right.  I stopped and looked around.  Huddled on the steps of the church was a figure, rocking from side to side.  Connections clicked in my mind and I identified the figure as Yuletide Carol.  For a long time, I just stood, not knowing what to do.  I couldn’t very well desecrate the manger scene with an audience.  Once more my rage began to build.  Even my opportunities to be destructive and hateful were being thwarted.  I pitched the two-by-four with all my might, decapitating Balthasar.

“You shun’t otta do that.  Them’s purty.  They’s nice.”

I looked at the woman who sat scratching her elbow through a tattered sweater.  She looked at the baby in the manger and started to sing a snatch of O Little Town of Bethlehem.  It was as if I weren’t even there.  I followed her gaze to the baby and felt a grab deep in my chest.  I wanted to run away.  I wanted to scream some more at God.  I wanted to find something to drink.  Instead, I walked over and sat down near Yuletide Carol.  I buried my head in my arms, leaned on my knees, and started crying.  Without pausing, Yuletide Carol moved onto O Holy Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.  She put her hand on the back of my head and patted me in time to the music.  I let her.

“What’s so bad?” she asked when she stopped singing.

“You wouldn’t understand,” was my choked reply.

There was a moment of silence, then Yuletide Carol said, “Is it your girlfriend, Dan?  Is it the girl who died?”

I was absolutely stunned.  I remember looking into the face of this woman I thought was crazy, and for a moment I thought she might be psychic.  “How do you know my name?  How do you know about my girlfriend?”

Yuletide Carol leaned back and broke into a picket-fence grin.  “I’m crazy.  I’m not stupid.  Nobody looks at us bums, so we can look at anything we want, and you cout’nt believe what we see and know.  I know just about everybody that lives in this town.  I been here sixty years and I been on the streets for forty-five.  I watch and listen and learn more than most other people ever know.  I know you been breaking s*** all over town.  You better stop it.”  This last she said with genuine concern and wide-eyed sincerity. 

“I’m sorry.  I don’t know what to do. I can’t handle things these days, and I sure wasn’t expecting you to know what was bothering me.  I’m having a hard time this year.  I can’t get all excited about Christmas, not when God did what he did to me.”

“What did God do?”  Yuletide Carol asked.

“He took Lisa.”

I wasn’t expecting what came next.  Yuletide Carol threw her head back and laughed.  “Boy, you don’t know much do you?  You don’t know nothin’ about God, that’s for sure.”

“What do you mean?”  I asked, more than a little annoyed by my new troll-friend.

“God didn’t take your girl friend.  God may have welcomed her in, but God didn’t do nothin’ to her.”

“Then why did she die?”           “Why, why, why?  Why am I living on the street?  Why do good people get hurt and bad people get good stuff?  Why don’t somebody give me money?  It’s cause it’s life, that’s why?”

“That doesn’t make sense.  Why believe in God if God doesn’t do anything for us?”

Yuletide Carol rubbed the bristly hair on her chin.  “God does lots of stuff for us, by giving us all the stuff we got.  But God doesn’t do nasty stuff to us.  Why would he?  That’s just dumb.  You know what your trouble is?  You’ve decided to be mad, and sad, and mean.  You don’t have to be that way, you know.”

I stared at this woman who, to the best of my knowledge, had not spoken coherent sentences to anyone in years.  Now she was filling the role of sage theologian, and it disarmed me.

“I don’t want to feel like I do,” I said.

“Yes you do, or you’d feel differn’t.  Nobody’s making you feel like you do.  Look at me.  I used to have a nice house and a family and a job and good clothes.  I lost my mom and dad and my baby and house and clothes in one big fire.  I lost my job, nobody helped me, and I ended up living in a box by the White River.  I have most of my meals from what other folks throws out.  You know how I feel about all that?”

I shook my head.

“I feel like singing Christmas songs.”

“What?!”  I asked, hunching my brow to indicate how crazy I thought that sounded.

“In my whole life I was always happiest around Christmas.  Christmas was the very best time of the year.  When I lost everything else, I thought about what I wanted to keep, and what I wanted to keep was the feeling I get at Christmas.”  Yuletide Carol paused and looked at her bags.  “And so, that’s what I do.”

“It’s not that simple,” I began to explain.

“What’s not?  Why not?  Why does it have to be harder than that?  Why can’t people just decide that they will be happy?”

I looked into the squinting eyes that faced me and realized that they squinted because they were smiling.  I saw this “poor” woman as if for the first time.  I saw a woman who had once been handsome, had once been normal, and who had always been happy.  This was a person whose happiness was not conditional upon any outside influence, but was a result of a conscious decision.  The happiness that Yuletide Carol spoke of didn’t come from some outside source.  Yuletide Carol’s happiness was something I had never even begun to know: joy.

“Look, Dan.”  Yuletide Carol leaned her elbow on her knee and looked like the old philosopher preparing to dispense sage advice.  “You have a life on the other side of today.  It could last weeks or it could last years.  Nobody else can live it for you.  Nobody else can give you happiness, but get this – nobody else can take it away from you unless you let them.  It’s your choice.  If I can choose, you can choose.” 

Yuletide Carol lifted her head back, opened her mouth, and roared “Joy to the world, the Lord is come…”

I waited for her to stop and talk to me again, but she launched fully into her song, and I disappeared from her world.  All that remained was anti-climax.  Yuletide Carol got to her feet, grabbed the handles of her shopping cart and trundled off down the road.  I loitered for a few more moments, then I, too, ambled off.  I walked toward home thinking about the crazy lady I had just spoken to.  As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t dismiss what she said.  I went home and locked myself in my bedroom and stayed there for two days.  On Christmas Eve, I got cleaned up, dressed in a jacket and slacks, and knocked on my mother’s door to tell her that I wanted to go the church with her.

I’d like to say that I felt the loving presence of God, the rebirth of Jesus Christ in my heart, the epiphany of God’s Holy Spirit that night, but it would be a lie.  I felt as far off from God as at any time that summer or fall.  Everything was wooden, somehow false and shallow.  I wasn’t touched by the music or the words of the sermon, but I remember the discomfort of Yuletide Carol’s words, “it’s your choice.”  More than anything in the world I wanted to choose to be happy, but I didn’t know how.

With everything of value, time is the essential ingredient.  It took me the better part of two years to make my choice, but when I did my choice was for happiness, not despair.  I opted for a positive life instead of the anger and hate that I felt.  I chose to see life in all its glorious absurdities as a comedy to be enjoyed rather than a tragedy to be endured.

Two women changed my life – a beautiful young girl named Lisa and a gnome-like woman named – to the best of my knowledge – Yuletide Carol.  Out of the greatest loss of my life came the catalyst for my conversion, through the simple challenge of a homeless saint.

In 1983, one week before Christmas, I saw Yuletide Carol’s picture in the paper.  It was a small photo on the obituary page.  I still recall the shock in finding out that her name wasn’t Carol.  I was also shocked to find that she had a story – a life.  I made the decision that I wouldn’t let this poor woman’s death pass without some loving kindness.  I determined to go to her funeral.

I walked to Meeks Mortuary on the same night – a decade later – that Yuletide Carol had turned me around.  Perhaps it was the power of the anniversary that brought the night so clearly to mind.  I was completely unprepared for what I encountered at the funeral home.

The room was packed.  Bankers and street-people stood shoulder to shoulder.  Some of the most respected members of the community conversed with some of the seediest.  David Meeks himself presided over the arrangements.  My own aunt Chella was there.  I never even knew she was aware of Yuletide Carol.  I stood off to the side, waiting for the funeral service to begin.

The pastor who conducted the service was a jolly round man with a perpetual smile frozen on his face.  Tufts of hair stood from the sides of his head like a clown, and he interjected chuckles and quips throughout the service.  It finally dawned on me that the pastor was Yuletide Carol’s uncle.

He told of his niece who grew up in an abusive home, who ran away early in her teenage years, who got pregnant at 15 and had a child.  She hurried into a relationship, found herself in an abusive marriage, ran back home.  In a fire she lost everything and she ran away again, disappearing for a few years.  Growing up, she knew very little happiness, except at Christmas.  For whatever reason, at Christmas time a marvelous thing happened.  During the month of December, the abuses and strife ended, and they lived in an ideal home.  The family transformed the house into a Christmas village, and happiness and cheer filled every room.  By the turn of each new year the magic was gone, the suffering returned at the hands of her dysfunctional parents.

Carol’s escape from a horrendous marriage only came through the tragedy of fire that cost the lives of her parents and her infant daughter.  She never fully recovered.

Most people thought of Yuletide Carol as a crazy old indigent, but the truth was very different.  Margaret was not poor.  She had active accounts in three different banks, totaling in the tens of thousands of dollars.  Each year, as Christmastime approached, Margaret would seek out families in hardship, children in need, people who suffered, and she would donate large sums of money to their relief.  Many people often saw Margaret enter the Muncie Mission or the Children’s Aid Society.  What they didn’t realize was that she went there, every single day, as a volunteer.  She would occasionally visit her uncle, get cleaned up and nicely dressed and go out for a nice dinner or to a show.  For years, family and friends had tried to get her medical help, fearing that she was bipolar or schizophrenic.  Always she went into the hospital, but then eventually checked herself out.  Whether she was disturbed or not, she often said, at least she was happy.

Her uncle emphasized, — many, many times – that she lived precisely the way she wanted to.  She was not unhappy, not crazy.  Would that we all could live exactly the life we wanted and be as happy in the process.

Yuletide Carol once told her uncle, “I am never poor, never alone, never afraid, and never sad.  You know why?  Because I always have a song.”

We ended the service together singing “Silent Night.”  As the pastor closed with prayer, someone asked if it wouldn’t be “more like Yuletide Carol” to sing “Joy to the World.”  Everyone sang it but me.  I cried instead.

Whenever I think of Yuletide Carol I ask a simple prayer.  It goes something like this:

Lord, please let me be a gift to someone else.  Let my life be balanced and pure and filled with a peace and joy that allows me to see other’s needs instead of always focusing on my own.  Please allow me to touch just one single heart the way that Yuletide Carol touched mine.  Oh, Lord, O God, please give me a song.”

We all know about the curse of “nice” however.  Nice is dismissable.  Nice is ignorable.  Nice is innocuous.  Nice is essentially meaningless.  Nice does not mean “kind,” or “loving,” or “significant” — no matter how desperately we might wish.  No, our measure is popularity with no knowledge of why we are popular.  Lady GaGa is popular.  American Idol is popular.  Kickboxing is popular.  Gordon Ramsey is popular.  The Real Housewives of Atlanta are popular.  So is The United Methodist Church.  Ah, the company we keep!

What are we doing to deserve our popularity?  ReThink Church?  Change the World?  Imagine No Malaria?  Well, no, research shows that outside The United Methodist Church virtually no one knows anything about these things.  We are the best kept secret when it comes to our witness.  Our position on gays and lesbians?  Uhm, less popular and probably not the case.  No, here is one of those humbling troubling things.  I did a poll a few years ago for The United Methodist Church and discovered that the reason we have a better popularity than other denominations is that we haven’t had as many public screw ups and public relations nightmares as others.  We don’t have the stigma of sexual misconduct that has hit the Catholics, the misogyny of the Southern Baptists or the hatemongering of some of the fundamentalist groups.  We haven’t taken the same unpopular stands as the Presbyterians and Episcopalians.  Our wimpy, middle-of-the-road, try not to alienate anyone while ineffectually attempting to pacify everyone sets us apart from other churches.  These things make us “nice” and “nice” makes us “popular.”

Here’s an idea for the new year: let’s stop being nice and let’s start being Christian.  Let’s worry less about the image and popularity polls and instead shoot for the integrity and impact polls.  Lets work more to actually change the world and less to promote Change the World!  Let’s be known for the strength of our convictions, our commitment to the healing of the nations, and our dedication to caring for those in need.  Let’s measure ourselves by our effectiveness instead of our appearance.  Let’s make sure that we are popular because we are positively transforming the world instead of because we aren’t currently offending too many people.

1. sitting in a coffee shop listening to three women talk about how much they HATE Christmas shopping… yet they are doing it daily, one of them reports that she has spent over $10,000 so far this year (to be fair, including jewelry she bought herself), and the shared an encyclopedic knowledge of sales, stores, and special items they want to buy.  The longer they spoke, the more excited they got, leaning toward each other, raising their voices, becoming breathless and agitated.  What I witnessed were symptoms similar to those displayed by addicts.  One woman confessed that she has a “pact” with her husband — their goal each year is to make sure they spend more on Christmas presents than anyone else in the family.  She said, “It’s a little contest we have to do Christmas the best in our family.”
2. an excerpt from an email where a gentleman’s main point is that I am making a mountain out of a molehill: “I don’t see the big deal about commercializing Christmas.  Religious people have every right and freedom to keep Christmas holy — they simply need to refuse to get drawn into the cultural crap.  Let Christians take Jesus and the star and the wise men and church and let the rest of us have fine food and drink, trees with pretty lights, Rudolph and Frosty and Santa.  I don’t get where you think religion should dictate the holiday for the whole world.  My mom is a Christian and she isn’t worried about losing her faith because Christmas is a whole lot bigger than just Jesus.”
3. a response from the pastor of the southern church I mentioned in my last post about their “religion-free Christmas Eve services.”  He told me this was an evangelism program to draw in non-Christians and give them “a pleasant, exciting, upbeat, non-threatening” experience in a church.  He told me “obviously there is some religion — we sing Joy to the World and Silent Night — undeniably religious songs.”  But instead of prayers they offer personal Christmas memory reflections; instead of scriptures, they talk about the opportunity people have to make a difference in the world by supporting any of the dozens of good projects the church is doing; instead of a sermon, they show clips from old Christmas movies and ask the congregation reflection questions on what these clips are trying to say.  Together, they sing nostalgic Christmas songs such as I’ll Be Home for Christmas, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays, The Christmas Song, and (oh, yeah…) they slip in Silent Night and Joy to the World.  “This is our most popular and well-attended Christmas Eve services — many of our full-time members (note to self: are ‘part-time’ church members a good idea?) also attend; but we ask them to tone down the religious stuff in sensitivity to the audience we are trying to reach.”

“Audience we are trying to reach.”  “Christmas a whole lot bigger than Jesus.” “Do Christmas better than others.”  What inspirational ideas — and yet, they are not rare or unique.  Scary, isn’t it?  Christmas is this big, hairy deal that is completely out of control — we let it happen to us and overwhelm us when we’re not careful (and even when we are!).  All of this, however, is learned behavior — and what is once learned can be unlearned.  Take the shopping for example.  There is nothing inherently consumeristic about Christmas.  Gift-giving began as a simple exchange symbolic of the gifts presented to the Christ child in Matthew’s gospel.  In most cultures observing such, the gifts were given in conjunction with Epiphany or the arrival of the new year.  A single, token gift – given in the spirit of kindness, often hand-made or passing on something of personal meaning and significance.  The core intention was to show appreciation and to honor the relationship.  My wife and I stepped back from the shopping frenzy a few years ago and began supporting charitable causes in honor of family and friends.  Most of our acquaintances don’t need more “stuff,” and the crazed violence of holiday shopping lost any appeal long ago.  We remember people, honor them, and seek to connect over things we mutually care about.  Oh, I am sure some would rather get a box to unwrap, but no relations have been destroyed by our thoughtless digression from materialism.  Shopping is NOT a competitive sport, and we truly need to rethink our current system which sometimes leads to bullets, tasers, pepper spray, and running the person down who bought the last item you were hoping for.  We have systematically taken the joy of gift-giving and turned it into an onerous and unpleasant burden.

I cannot, will not, and have no stake in, denying that Christmas has become “bigger” than just Jesus.  What I contend is that this is not necessarily a good thing.  My waist is bigger than it used to be, and I am not thrilled about this reality.  My nose is bigger than other people’s noses, and I am not thrilled about this either.  I am sometimes sad that such an amazing pair of stories as our two nativity tales are modified and “improved” to the point where they are unrecognizable as anything coming from scripture.  Why do we pastors feel compelled to fix what isn’t broken and pad out what is elegant and sublime?  (I’m guilty of it.  When in the local parish, I used to strategize ways to make Christmas Eve unforgettable and “even better than last year.”)  But bigger isn’t always better, and more is not preferable to less.  I have never asked to get rid of Santa — I just don’t want to meet him in Bethlehem.  Rudolph is not a wise man.  Mary and Joseph were not cute frogs, ducks, snow people, sausages, Precious Moments big-eyed children, or Sesame Street characters.  The baby Jesus was not inflatable, nor did he have a light bulb in his head.  This isn’t about sacrilege but about not cheapening and degrading that which we revere.  I am fine with a reindeer with a shiny nose; not so much with a glow-in-the-dark nativity.  I want those of us who say Jesus is important to us to act like it, and to sort out the egregious hodge-podge of secular and sacred so that we maintain integrity in our faith as we fully engage and embrace in our cultural celebrations.  Too much to ask?

I guess I believe it is wrong for churches to offer non-religious Christmas services.  To deny who we are and what we believe to make non-believers more comfortable seems like a slippery-slope to me.  What is our witness?  Come to church so you won’t hear the Christmas story?  I can do that in a bar, watching It’s A Wonderful Life, or seeing the Rockettes at Radio City.  If I want to avoid Christmas, church is the last place I am going to head.  And if I am going to church, I think it should act like one.  Making the church into a holiday Venus Fly Trap to capture unwary agnostics is dishonest and more than a little ridiculous.  Strategically watering down our story so that no one will know what we believe or why is a very bad idea.  I am troubled that the church is capable of generating so many bad ideas these days (see A Call to Action, etc.) and want us to get back to the basics of knowing who we are and why we exist.  If we can’t come up with an answer at Christmastime, we are in big, big trouble.

The three things I “blame” are these:

1. commercialization — the process of exploiting something for profit or benefit
2. secularization — the removal of spiritual and religious meaning from religious practices and observances
3. ignoration (a made up word) — the intentional decision to not know too much about something in order to simply relax and enjoy it

Commercialization — A 1950s Evangelical United Brethren brochure proclaims “Christmas provides an ideal opportunity to raise money to pay off winter bills.”  In the 1930s and 1940s, churches were primary outlets for Christmas tree sales.  Some of the earliest religious Christmas decorations were manufactured and sold by churches.  Churches competed for sponsors to broadcast their Christmas Eve services — as early as the 1920s in radio and ever since the 1950s on television.  Coffee mugs, bumper stickers, refrigerator magnets, and a slew of other junk with religious slogans are a multi-billion dollar industry fostered and supported by the church.  Nativity sets were an early cash cow in religious American society.  Religious leaders were swept along in the profiteering spirit of the American Dream, and Jesus, Mary and Joseph were as sellable as anything else.  Sacrilege is sacrilege only until its price is met.  One Nashville church has over $50,000 in decorations it puts up at Christmastime — in a city of above average homelessness and hunger.  It is not alone — such Christian religious icons as wreaths, trees, twinkle-lights, snowmen, elves, sleighs, snow, candy canes, etc., adorn an estimated 55 million churches in the United States.  (At least the candy cane was designed as a shepherd’s crook — a way to commercialize the poor and marginalized from Jesus’ day!).

Before I get totally dismissed as being a crank, my point is not that we shouldn’t have or do these things.  My point is that our leadership in making such things happen equals a “seal of approval” on them.  Collectively, we have seen the potential to turn a profit by exploiting Christmas, and this is commercialization pure and simple.  The Charlie Brownian lament shared by millions before and since the 1965 Christmas special that Christmas is “too commercial” is our own fault.  Not only have we NOT opposed it — we have propagated it!

Secularization — This term is often used interchangeably with commercialization, but they are not the same thing.  Secularization has nothing to do with exploitation and turning a profit.  Instead, it is about reduction and limitation — the removal of things spiritual and religious from something fundamentally religious.  Communities that prohibit the display of Nativity scenes on public property want to remove any religious overtones from Christmas.  In fact, let’s say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” since we don’t know who we might offend by assuming they are Christian.  A growing number of Americans report that they want to be able to celebrate Christmas in peace without Christians burdening their celebrations with religion.  And the church acquiesces.  Not only that, it colluded.  A church pays for billboard space that promises, “A Christmas Eve Experience for people who don’t like church.  Come for egg nog, hot chocolate, cookies and carols!  No prayers, no sermon — a 100% guilt-free experience guaranteed!”  Jesus wept.

A church in a neighboring community has Santa, hat in hand, standing reverently in the Nativity scene on the church lawn.  One rural church has no Nativity scene, but they do have reindeer, a candy cane, and a snowman in lights in front of the church.  I saw a notice for a “Reindeer Egg Hunt” (!?) on Christmas Eve morning for children, and I cannot begin to count the number of churches where Santa will be stopping by to meet the kids.  It is rare to see a sanctuary without a Christmas tree these days, though we have tried to sanctify the old Pagan symbol with chrismons.  I remember a Nashville church a number of years ago sending us out into the bleak midwinter with a rousing version of “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” as postlude.

Once again — making too much of a little thing?  Maybe.  I certainly feel Scrooge-ish bringing it all up.  But it is evidentiary more than condemnatory — it explains why we are where we are.

Ignoration — I heard this word in a Bruce Cockburn song and stole it, making it my own.  People prefer the myth of Christmas to Christmas.  We love the idea of the holiday more than the actual holiday.  Strip out the fantasy and what are you left with?  We want to sing “We Three Kings of Orient Are” and not have some smug twit (guilty!!) point out all the biblical and theological inaccuracies.  We don’t want to wait until Christmas to sing Christmas hymns — theological integrity be damned!  As I have been told many times the past two weeks by pastors — “People don’t care about that stuff.  They want four weeks of Christmas, not Advent.  They don’t give a flip whether there were three kings or forty magi or whether they arrived before, after or with the shepherds.  People could care less.”  (Unless it is about whether Mary was a virgin or not… then people seem to care…)

I made the mistake of mocking the high-profile pastor who preached about “the birth narratives from the four gospels” and pastors and laity from all across the land — including this pastor’s congregation — let me know how stupid it was for me to make a big deal over such an insignificant thing.  “It’s all in the Bible,” responded the offending pastor.  “Who said what doesn’t make any difference.”  Instead of letting it lie, I idiotically pushed further.  I wrote back:

Were we to take the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke out of the Bible and lay them side by side, not knowing that they were both about Jesus, we would rightfully believe they were accounts of the birth of two completely different children.  They have very little in common, and they contain so many contradictions and divergent points that they are irreconcilable.  Only because they are both attached to the stories of the adult Jesus do we find creative ways to smush the two tales together to make one story — and even then, the story we have contains a whole lot of padding that appears nowhere in anyone’s Bible.

It is one thing to be ignorant of something that is hidden, obscure or difficult to comprehend, but it is quite another to have all the information available, to be connected to a community that supposedly studies and understands this stuff, and then to choose not to accept the best available knowledge in favor of a version fraught with inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and outright fiction.  These same folks will get hostile at the suggestion that the birth narratives we DO have are parabolic or metaphorical and not historically accurate at all.  The only way to contend that these are historical and factual is via the path of ignoration.

The result is that we do not know our own story, and the most holy and sacred night in our ritualized Christian year is a bizarre monstrosity (bright, shiny, fun, festive and pretty, but a monstrosity nonetheless) of our own creation rather than a faithful celebration of the birth of the Savior of the World.

So what?  I am describing the problem, but what’s the solution?

1. Pastors — do a better job.  Tell the stories from Matthew and Luke together (lectionary be jiggered!) and point out both what is actually there and what isn’t!  Set the context into which the Son of God was born — this means use Advent for Advent, and don’t end the story at Christmas Eve, but let it play out through Epiphany — make sure people see how these things are connected.  Oh, and redeem salvation from the private and personal escape from the wrath to come that modern thinkers superimposed on the story and preach the salvation story of the redemption, restoration and reconciliation of God to God’s people.  Make salvation big and beautiful again — make it be about all of us instead of individuals disconnected from the whole family of humankind.
2. Laity — hold pastors accountable and stop looking for entertainment and pandering.  You get enough Frosty and Rudolph out in the rest of the world.  Get curious about Jesus again.  Ask hard questions.  Read the actual Bible accounts.  Look for contradictions and confusions then figure them out together.  Seek to understand why these stories exist and why Christmas was important to two of the four gospel writers — and while you are at it, figure out why it wasn’t important to the writers of Mark, John, Paul’s epistles and the later authors.  Oh, and check out the birth narrative in Revelation (just to mess with your head a little).  Have fun getting the lowdown on the real story.

Define Christmas as the Twelve Days of Christmas — allow the four-week period preceding Christmas to actually BE Advent, then move into a true Christmastide.

Let Christmas Eve/Christmas day become a religious observance — remember whose birth we are actually celebrating (regardless of when Jesus was ACTUALLY born — we have “officially” designated December the 25th, so let’s keep it simple).  Open our churches for prayer, singing, celebration.  Design services for the whole family.  Design services for those who are part of the Christian community.  Design services to reach and teach those outside.  Give God and Christ the focus for the two days — celebrating Christmas no matter what day of the week it happens to fall upon.  Sing the songs of Christmas for two weeks (following the glorious songs of Advent the month before).

Use New Year’s Day as a time of family gathering and celebration — let the food, fun, sugar, singing, toasting, tooting, fireworking commence!  Let the party celebrating the old year and kicking off the new year shift into high gear.  “Clutter” it up with religion if you want to, but there is nothing wrong with a party of lights, music, refreshments and fellowship that is not “justified” by the faith.

Make Epiphany the gift-giving day that keeps on giving — if it was good enough (metaphorically and symbolically) for the magi, it should be good enough for us.  Closing the festival of Christmastide with the exchange of gifts allows the tradition to continue, but it is tied more to the visit of those honoring the Christ child rather than us getting gifts on Jesus’ birthday.

The basic benefit is that it extends the commemoration while allowing the religious and the secular to coexist in a more elegant and respectful tango.  It gives Christmas back its identity as a religious observance, pulls in the celebration of the New Year, and elevates the Epiphany remembrance both culturally and ecclesially.  It also puts meaning back into the 12 Days of Christmas and allows us to extend the Carol/Hymn/Christmas song season almost two weeks.  This gives churches the opportunity to sing the classics more than one or two services a year.

It would be wonderful to feel that the church universal could reclaim its teaching function and help define Christmas as religious observance from cultural debauch.  I have no delusions that anyone else might take this seriously, but I would love to hear other people’s ideas about the reclamation and restoration of Christmas.  Grace and peace!

And on the night unto which the child was to be born, Joseph and his wife Mary sought shelter, but coming late without a reservation, Mary was vexed with Joseph, saying, “I told you so.”  Joseph, aware that he was on thin ice, comforted Mary and assured her that he would find them a warm, safe, clean environment in which to deliver the one, true Son of God.  He set off on his mission, returning sometime later with the good news (gospel) that, “two out of three ain’t bad…”  Mary trusted Joseph, right up to the point where she realized that their was no room for them at the inn.  She surveyed the stable that Joseph found, counting unto ten.  Then Mary treasured all these things in her heart, being sure to remember them for a more opportune time.  Secretly she hoped her child would be untidy so that through his life she might say to him, “What’s the matter with you?  Were you born in a barn?”

When the time came for Mary to be delivered, she noted with agitation that Joseph seemed preoccupied.  “It’s time,” said Mary.  “Hmmm?” replied Joseph.  “I’m ready to have the baby, here.  What’s the matter with you?” Mary asked.  “Oh, nothing.  But I was just thinking — this has real possibilities.  Son of God, humble beginnings, born in a stable, laid in a manger — it has a real appeal.  In fact, I bet we could make tiny models of this and they would sell like crazy,” reflected Joseph.

The rest of the night was a blur.  The tiny child was born, angels appeared, shepherds stopped by for a visit, but Joseph busied himself with sketches and copious notes.  “All we need now are some magi and the scene will be complete!” crowed Joseph.  “As soon as you’re up and around, we need to take a little trip.  I know a guy in Egypt that can crank out these nativity sets as easy as you please.”  “Joseph,” Mary observed, “I am not sure we should be exploiting this for profit.  This is a most holy night, and I am not comfortable with the idea of commercializing it.”  Joseph, chastened and repentant, answered Mary, “You’re right, as always my love.  This is a holy event, one that should never be exploited for profit.  Let this be a lesson to us all — the birth of the Son of God should be honored and not cheapened by commercialization!” (NKJV)

When Mary was about to have Jesus, she and Joseph realized they were homeless.  He found a place and said, “I think I know how we can turn a profit on this.”  Mary replied, “I can’t talk about this right now.  I’m a little busy.  And besides, I think it’s a stupid idea.”  Joseph thought for a minute, then said, “No, you’re right.”  (The Message)

Oh, what have we wrought? Was it ever in the mind of God that we would commemorate the birth of the Messiah as we do today?  Inflatable, light-up cartoon nativity sets on our lawns?  Angels dancing to “Jingle Bells” barked by dogs?  The three Wise Men bearing gifts of pizza, nachos and a keg of bear?  Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus made of sausage, meatloaf, gingerbread, or jello?  Nativity scenes employing ducks, snowmen, Peanuts characters, Sesame Street characters, Lego, Star Wars, Pokemon… what splendid ways we have created to remember the birth of our Savior!  The problem is, there’s big bucks to be made exploiting religion, and the church generally has no problem with selling out as long as it can turn a profit.

Money is the new Messiah, and popularity is the measure of success.  Keep the customers satisfied.  Case in point: I know of dozens of churches that will not have worship services on Christmas morning, which falls on a Sunday this year (if you didn’t already know…).  Here are actual reasons given by the pastors of those churches:

• too few people will come and it will hurt our worship attendance figures.
• we won’t even take in enough to cover the cost of the heat and lights for the day.
• we don’t want to compete with “family time.”
• we’ll have our big attendance and offerings on Saturday night.
• people will get their fill of worship on Christmas Eve — we don’t need to overdo it.
• I’m not going to put a lot of effort into an extra sermon that almost no one will hear.
• it makes people angry if we hold church at inconvenient times.
• I view Christmas on a Sunday as a paid day off.  Everybody else gets it as a holiday – why shouldn’t I once a decade?

It makes me wonder what we think Christmas is?  Has the essence of Christmas become so usurped by secular culture and modern Western values that it has virtually nothing to do with God and the birth of the Christ, except when convenient and undemanding?  Is Jesus merely a product that the church can hawk and sell?  Is worship a program that we put on or a relationship in which we participate?  Is Christmas really all about us or is their something more important we’re missing?  Truly, is there any more appropriate place for Christians to be on a Sunday Christmas morning than church?  And should the leaders of our churches decide not to “hold” church simply because the least commitment and the least cognizant won’t bother to show up.  The sad reality for me is this:  if Christmas morning offerings were substantial in our congregations, there would be absolutely no question as to whether we would hold worship or not.  Where our treasure is, there are our hearts as well…