God Help Us, Everyone: Unweaving the Christmas Fabric

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

This Friday, the people of Kirkland, Washington will not be attending a performance of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, which was to be presented by a private group on the campus of Lake Washington High School. The show was cancelled by the principal in part because he feared it would raise questions about the place of religion in public schools.

The cancellation surprised a lot of folks, including Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, who describes himself as a "secularist and agnostic.” Pointing to a wider trend, he wrote "even a lifelong doubter like me can see that something crucial is being lost, especially in the schools."

Merry Christmas ACLU
Reflecting on this same subject, Blogger-in-law Doug chuckles at the tactics of one group that protested the actions of the ACLU last week by singing Christmas carols in front of their Washington, D.C. offices. Good humor.

Presidential References to God
Presidential speech writer Mike Gerson says in an interview with the Washington Post that some people seem to think that all references to God should be banished from presidential speeches.

"As a writer,’ Gerson says, “I think this attitude would flatten political rhetoric and make it less moving and interesting. But even more, I think the reality here is that scrubbing public discourse of religious ideas would remove one of the main sources of social justice in our history. Without an appeal to justice rooted in faith, there would be no abolition movement or civil rights movement or pro-life movement."

A Christmas Special
On the tube last week, a new kid on the music block made a grievous error, according to a NY Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh, who was upset by the Christmas celebration that broke out during the Clay Aiken Christmas special.

Sanneh writes: “Don't worry: this second act wasn't some vague celebration of friends and family and fun. Since Thursday was the third night of Hanukkah, Mr. Aiken turned his second act into a celebration of Jews. Well, one Jew: Jesus. Whereas other seasonal gatherings evoked a secular or multifaith "holiday spirit," Mr. Aiken's concert was one party where the birthday boy got all the attention.”

Imagine that.

The big problem is that we cannot untangle Christianity from the culture because it is woven so deeply into the fabric. It’s not an accent color, but the weight-bearing thread that holds together the most important traits, institutions, instincts, habits of the heart, the arts, the economic engine, and collective character of the nation.

Cleanse the culture of Christianity and you strip it of much its moral imagination and creative energy. Cleanse the culture of Christian influence and you lose many of its virtuous impulses—which resulted in the nation’s first hospitals and institutions of higher education. Those who seek to remove the Christian thread--we’ll call them the unweavers--are methodically trying to remove that which holds together a nation.

A Secular Christmas?
Can’t we just do Christmas without all of that religious stuff, critics are asking. Mostly without the Christ part, which some people find so very offensive (Jesus found that to be true during the Incarnation, as well).

What does Xmas look like:

Peace on earth is still a popular notion, but no, you can’t have that. It’s the call of the angels announcing the Savior. That’s won’t do.

Same problem with the good will to men bit.

Joy to the world. Nope.

We’re left with Santa Claus. Oh wait, the original Santa Clause was Saint Nicolas, an Eastern Orthodox monk. Really Christian and just not permissible. Scratch Santa.

The holiday is a great time to give to those in need, which is a nice way to celebrate the unweaved holiday. Problem. Giving to meet the needs of the less fortunate in society, although adopted by others, is straight from the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Keep your money to yourself, you religious zealot.

So good we can revert to just Happy Holidays. But wait, my friend Stan Guthrie cites additional consequences to the secularization of Christmas today and he points out that "holiday comes from holy day. Oh well, back to the drawing board!”

Be very careful with the classical music, please. An awful lot of those composers used biblical imagery. Let the Queen stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus. Handel is much too Christian for us Americans.

The dead white male authors are often overly spiritual. Dickens isn’t alone. Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky will have to go. It a good thing there isn’t a fourth The Lord of the Rings book and movie. The Christian thing is getting much too obvious in Tolkien’s material. Can you say book burning?

To paraphrase a quip from Chuck Colson: “If only Charles Dickens were a lesbian Comanche.”

One more thing: Tomorrow has been cancelled. The year 2004 is an A.D. date – literally Anno Domini Nostri Jesu Christi. In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ! We can’t have that.

As Ken Schram of Seattle’s KOMO-TV said concerning the cancellation of A Christmas Carol: "God help us, everyone."

--James Jewell