Party Like It's 4 BC!

Merry Christmas everyone! It's off to church this morning for our 10:30 worship and who knows who will be there. It's just important to come together as Christ's people, whatever the numbers.

Every year Ruth and I hem and haw about giving each other gifts, as we attempt to keep the commercialization of Christmas at bay. We feel so blessed and there really isn't much that we can't just go and get for ourselves if we consider it a priority. We tend to have a year where we give to charitable causes instead, then return to gift-giving for each other.

There was a good editorial in the Christmas-ish issue of the Christian Century reminding us about the origins of Christmas based in the Roman blow-out soltice party called Saturnalia. Christians celebrated the birth of Christ under the cover of these celebrations so they wouldn't be noticed, not because this was the actual time of year when Jesus was born. The editorial writer draws on the work of Donald Heinz.

Nobody was as hard on Christmas as the Puritans, notes Heinz. "They argued that December 25 was not biblical but heathen, that Jesus would have disapproved of his birthday celebrations, and that Christmas was just an excuse for . . . gross behavior, social upheaval, and drunkenness, no doubt aided by the lull in agricultural life." The Puritans ordered shops to stay open, insisted that work go on as usual and banned holiday cakes and candles. They also managed to have Christmas declared illegal by the Massachusetts legislature from 1659 to 1681. Heinz reports that the U.S. Congress even remained in session on Christmas Day from 1789 to 1851.
The Puritans did a lot of good things, but banning Christmas because of eating, drinking and celebrating, not to mention pagan customs like kissing under the mistletoe, was not one of their more admirable ideas.
After all, incarnation means that this world is God's creation and that God loved it so much that God came here to be with us. The story could not be more this-worldly: pregnant, unwed teenager, perplexed fiancé, arduous journey, inn full of raucous guests, barn full of animals, labor, pain, blood, birth and shepherds.
It could not be more human or more earthy, and that is the point. Incarnation means that God is with us in this world, the sacred in the secular, the holy in the profane. It is this world that God entered on that first Christmas and enters again and again.

So folks, party like it's 4 BC (estimated year of Jesus' birth) and lovingly embrace the contradictions of this season and this day.

Thank you for reading so faithfully.