Just Another Frenzied Christmas?

Yesterday was the feast of Epiphany and the official end of the Christmas season. It was a great Christmas for me. It was the first Christmas for our daughter, which made it all the more special for Jodi and me. It was also my first Advent at home, which gave me much more time to prepare my heart to celebrate Christ’s birth. However, this Christmas season was not unburdened by clichés. Yes, 'tis the season for holiday clichés. I tend to hate clichés - even the "Keep Christ in Christmas" message has grown old for me. I prefer to proclaim, "Keep the Mass in Christmas," just to be different. However, it would be foolish indeed to ignore the ideas that stand behind these clichés.

One of the worse Christmas clichés is the "Frenzied Christmas" cliché. It is actually just an extension of the larger cultural cliché - the busy life. "Everyone is so busy." To me, it's not a question of how "busy" we are. After all, isn't every moment of life filled with activity of some kind? If I'm not "busy" with my projects and commitments to our parish, I'm "busy" raising my daughter. If I'm not "busy" raising my daughter, I'm "busy" playing video games. Life isn't "busy" in the sense that it could ever not be busy. I think that when people say, "I'm so busy," they are really saying, "I'm not using my time in the way that I find most fulfilling."

The December 25, 2006 issue of the Marshfield News Herald, our local news paper included an article by Matt Crenson from the Associated Press entitled "Christmas has been frenzied for centuries, history shows." The link for the article is below, under a different title. Matt Crenson bases his article on a book by Stephen Nissenbaum called The Battle for Christmas. Of course, Nissenbaum begins his examination of Christmas with the Roman festival of Saturnalia. Saturnalia was apparently a topsy-turvy free-for-all filled with drinking, gambling and sex. Nissenbaum points out that Saturnalia was not unique for winter solstice celebrations in the pre-industrial era. Indeed, as a United States History teacher (and amateur scholar) I have discovered Catholic feast days in pre-industrial England were very often excuses for drinking and carousing. The vision of a peaceful, domestic, Norman Rockwell painted Christmas was nothing more than crowd control imposed by entrepreneurs of 1820s America (specifically, New York City) to keep their unruly labor force in line. And, hey, why not make a few bucks off the poor slobs in the process? Let's sell them the ideal of buying gifts for everyone and his brother. Matt Crenson offers a comment from Russel Belk, "Christmas and America's consumer culture have fed off one another ever since."

The ideas expressed in this article and in the book that it is based on are interesting and, as far as I can discern, historically accurate. However, as are most secular commentaries on Christian customs, these ideas are incomplete. You see, there is a fundamental difference between the pagan celebrations of the winter solstice and the Christian celebration of Christmas. While winter solstice celebrations were narcissistic, hedonistic escapes from harsh reality, the celebration of Christmas is a celebration of love. Specifically, it is the celebration of God's gift of Himself when the Second Person of the Holy Trinity united Himself to humanity by taking on human nature. What we commonly call the "Christmas Spirit" is the realization that such love from God demands a response from us. We are called to give the gift of ourselves to others.

Michael Medved, a Jewish radio commentator, put this all in perspective for me in an interview on Catholic radio. Is Christmas "frenzied" and busy? Sure, for most people it adds a number of responsibilities to our normal daily business. However, as I said at the beginning of this post, what are we busy with for Christmas? All of that frenzied activity is done for the sake of others! We are busy during Christmas making ourselves a gift for others! All of the food we cook, all of the gifts we purchase, all of the time we spend cleaning and decorating the home is for other people to enjoy. Christmas is rarely the peaceful, idyllic season that we expect it to be. But it is a Christian holiday. It is a season of love. I agree with Michael Medved - a Jew who says, "how wonderful!"

In the love of Christ,

Jeff