The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Somehow, as I grow older, I find myself haunted more and more by the ghosts of Christmas (or Christmases) past. I hate to admit to the jaded cynicism I often feel during the "Christmas" season. I look around me at the tinsel that once had the humility to wait patiently in boxes until after Thanksgiving, now festooning every retail, wholesale, and "for sale" presence the day after Hallowe'en. Images of Dracula, werewolves, monsters and witches seem merely to change costumes as we are bedecked with Santas, reindeer, elves, and miscellaneous nativity scenes (often as an afterthought).

This year, Christians are up in arms about the "de-Christianizing" of Christmas. Political correctness seems to dictate that we must recognize every other religious, semi-religious, and irreligious holiday in the year, but the general thought of our PC police appears to be properly Dickensian, at least according to Scrooge--"I wish that every fool that goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled in his own plum pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. Merry Christmas! Bah! Humbug!" Who knew that the PC police were literate?

Nevertheless, there sometimes seems to be a certain hollowness to our Christian protestations. Don't get me wrong! I also am incensed by the general umbrage that occurs whenever any sense of Christian belief is paraded into the public, even on ceremonial occasions. But I also recognize that this process of de-Christianizing Christmas--in fact, society in general--has been going on for years. For far too many of us, God and Jesus Christ had already been effectively relegated to the background, sort of like those rag-tag relatives from the wrong side of the family that show up unannounced at Christmas celebrations and crassly make their presence known in the most uncomfortable ways.

I honestly miss the days when Henry Harvey, a local television personality, appeared every year beginning in December on afternoon T.V. as a genial Santa Claus. I loved him as a kid. Of course, I can look back now and realize that a major part of the show was the Santa Claus displaying toys that could be bought at various stores around the city. It was, in fact, a daily advertisement for local businesses to hawk their wares to impressionable kiddies. But Henry Harvey was a kind and generous man, who seemed to have as much fun "being" Santa Claus as playing with the toys. He encouraged children to be good, and would always share the true Christmas story on his show. In fact, given how liberal our home church had become, I probably learned more about the gospel from Henry Harvey than I did from our minister.

At that age, I had no problem reconciling Santa Claus and Jesus Christ, because Henry Harvey had no such problem. Santa Claus was always presented as a depiction of the spirit of Christmas, a spirit of kindly generosity and mirth that helped to make Christmas a time of wonder. Mr. Harvey, forever to me the very image of Santa Claus, always spoke of Jesus Christ, born in a manger as the true wonder of Christmas. The tinsel, the colored lights, the Christmas trees, family, and presents under the tree (especially those that I bought for my parents and other relatives) were, in a real sense, gilding the lily. They provided an unmistakable atmosphere of wonder, beauty and joy that a child could understand, but it all framed the wondrous act of God that appeared helpless and dependent as a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in the feeding trough of the animals in the stable. It was a season of generosity and gift-giving, in poor imitation of the gift we had been giving.

I enjoyed going to church, singing Christmas hymns, and hearing the familiar Biblical texts. The choir, in which I was to become a regular fixture until we changed churches (when the new minister came and the sermons had devolved into a string of political commentaries), always sang special anthems on the Sunday before Christmas. Our organist at the time is now well-known around the world, and would play with such skill the instrument would bring forth music of an ethereal beauty and grave majesty. And on Christmas eve, we had a traditional candlelight service, singing hymns and carols together with friends in anticipation of the holiday made holy by the heartfelt celebration of what it represented. Even as a child, time and eternity, heaven and earth, seemed to kiss, and I would feel transported as though I were singing with the heavenly host.

But it has been long since I have had such feelings of wonder. Christmas lights have begun to forsake color for the clean, crisp, oh-so-modern clear lamp (which brings to mind the gaudiness of the parking lots of used car dealers in the fifties and sixties). Retail stores, no longer the privately-owned stores that used to be downtown, with more or less elaborate Christmas windows and down-home customer service, but large chain stores owned by corporations with a desire for bottom-line returns and the avoidance of ACLU lawsuits, have thrown our own inconsistency back in our faces. Truth to be told, we hardly remember Thanksgiving, and Christmas has become a burden. Shopping no longer has the homey feel it once had, but is characterized by a slam-bam-thank you, ma'am approach. Customer service is often perfunctory if it is available at all. Lines for over-worked cashiers stretch back into the aisles while other cashier locations remain empty. There is no quicker way to lose all sense of Christian charity than to go shopping in December.

And we ache. We miss what we remember as the beautiful innocence of it all. Our churches have larger and more "meaningful" Christmas pageants that try to recapture that sense of wonder and worship, but the whole spectacle seems somehow out of focus. Nativity scenes have become little more than sentimental symbolism that carry little of the majesty they once seemed to exude. And we complain, and raise our voices against the de-Christianizing of Christmas. We deride the major retailers who are willing to have their fourth-quarter profits inflated by the remembrance of the birth of Christ, but are too timid to wish people a "Merry Christmas", preferring instead the sanitized "Happy Holidays." But we are grasping at the wind. Like frogs, placed in cold water slowly heated to boiling, we've been lulled to sleep for so long that we wake up frantically trying to save ourselves, but realize to our own despair that we are seeing about us the result of our own lukewarmness.

Perhaps we need to return to the more orthodox understanding of the Christmas season as one of fearful penitence, living in expectation of the return of God to judge the world, but surprised by joy on Christmas day that God indeed did come in Jesus Christ, and became human, in all ways like us, but without sin, so that he could be a faithful High Priest whose humble acceptance of His bloody sacrifice would, in His resurrection, open the doors of hell itself and make for us a place with Him in heaven. We need to again stare in wonder at that point in time when the time and eternity met, and those of us who should have received judgment and death instead were given love and forgiveness. No cheap Christmas trinket this--but a gift whose worth is beyond measure: a gift that cannot be earned, but may only be, in humility, received. Perhaps then we will again be able to look with eyes made innocent by the gifts of the Christ child, and see Christmas for what it is and has ever been in the counsels of God from eternity past. And the lights will regain their color, and Santa Claus, that jolly old elf, will embody for children that merriment and joy that Christ gives us, who were all naughty, but have been declared nice by the only true "selfless" act in the history of the world. Maybe then we will be able to sound less like tinkling cymbals and sounding brass when we defend Christmas and its message before the watching world.