On the Work of Christmas

 

An interesting take, by Howard Thurman, on the proper “Work of Christmas.”

“To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.”

It is not quite what Jesus says in the Bible, however.

His actual commission to the apostles was to cast out demons, heal the sick, preach the gospel, and baptize. Don’t see that here.

“Find the lost” and “Heal the broken” might cover this, but they are at best open to misinterpretation. If “find the lost” equates to casting out demons, it seems an odd way to put it. In the Bible, God finds the lost sheep; it seems presumptuous to suggest the individual Christian should or could.

Feed the hungry? It is incumbent on us to feed the hungry, true. Not just for Christians, but as a universal moral obligation. But Jesus also said “The poor you shall have always with you”; and that worship must be given priority over giving money to the poor. This is not the essence of the Christian mission as such.

“Release the prisoner”? He never says that. He says we are to visit those in prison, which is quite different. This would presuppose that laws and legal systems are illegitimate. Not in the Bible.

It is true that in Luke 4, Jesus says of himself, that he has come “to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” But he is by this identifying himself as “the anointed one,” the Messiah, an exceptional circumstance--not giving a commission for Christians during normal times. He is describing a general amnesty, as in Jubilee year.

“Rebuild the nations?” Jesus stresses the separation of salvation and politics: “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” He confounded the Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be a political figure. He did not commission his followers to re-found the nation of Judea, nor to somehow reform the Roman Empire.

“Bring peace among brothers”? This is almost a flat contradiction of what Jesus does say: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

You might point to him saying, in the Beatitudes, “blessed are the peacemakers.” But the word translated as “peacemakers” is in the ancient documents most commonly applied to Roman Emperors. It seems therefore to refer to those who keep the peace in the sense of a police force or a “justice of the peace”: by mediating disputes fairly, without fear or favour, and by catching and punishing wrongdoers.

So—bring peace among brothers in that sense: by throwing one of them in prison. So much for “Releasing the prisoners.”

“To make music in the heart.” I think Jesus did command us to create art, when he told us to be salty and to shed light; as does the Book of Genesis, giving us a commission as gardeners and potters; as does the Book of Revelations, envisioning the New Jerusalem as a city made of precious gems. But why only “in the heart”? That seems to be there to negate the point. Music in the heart is not audible to others; art that is invisible is not art. Jesus commanded us instead to “let your light shine,” to let everyone see your works, to give light to everyone in the house; to be like a city on a hill.

So it is subtle. Am I nitpicking?

I think not. Friend Xerxes quotes Thurman's poem as justification for a program of left-wing "social justice" as he proper expression of Christianity.

It seems like an attempt to subvert the gospel to worldly ends.

The Christmas Devil

 

No doubt we all make mistakes as parents. 

The thing I feel worst about is telling my kids that Santa Claus filled their stockings at Christmas.

I probably lost many of you there. You think I’m a grinch.

Deal with it. There is no grinch.

We at least never seriously pretended there was an Easter Bunny or a tooth fairy; that was only pro forma, a joke we all shared. We never restricted what they could read or where they could go online. I remembered too well how psychologically valuable superhero comics were to me as a child, and how some other kids were not allowed comics. I did explain to my son that Santa Claus was really Saint Nicholas. But because he was a saint in heaven, I told him, he could still influence events on earth. That left him with the false impression that St. Nicholas brought the gifts. 

I hope he has forgiven me. I need forgiveness.

To be clear, telling children that Santa brings the gifts is a lie. Telling a lie is always wrong. Telling children this lie deliberately teaches them that lying is not wrong, but clever. It is laughing at them behind their back. It is humiliating them, and trying to establish your own superiority. It is manipulating their emotions. It is despicable.

Moreover, the figure of Santa Claus also looks like a deliberate distraction from the real point of the day; and it shifts the focus from the sacred to the mere acquisition of stuff. Our modern Santa Claus clearly derives in part from the old Lord of Misrule, his red nose from partaking of the wassail bowl, his rotundity from overindulgence.

Wrong lesson altogether; it looks like subversion and acedia.

The Devil says the opposite of the truth: it is precisely these things we claim to be doing “for the children” that most reveal our culture’s hatred for the young.

At the breakfast table this morning, I had a good conversation about death and sex with my sixteen-year-old daughter. She agreed with me that people talk too little of death, because we are afraid of it. She agreed that it is dangerous not to teach children about sex. She agreed that the general bowdlerization of kidlit and fairy tales “to avoid traumatizing children” was harmful. The duty of parents is to raise children to adulthood, not to treat them as pets. They need to learn that wolves eat little girls, you ought not to trespass on a bear’s home, and you should not accept apples from strangers. 

Far worse the newer woke versions, in which ogres are simply misunderstood, wolves are actually vegetarians, fairy godmothers are busybodies, and so forth.

We are positively grooming children for predators of all kinds.

Helicopter parenting, drag queen story hour and genital mutilations are just the latest stages in this progression of hatred towards our children, which has been developing since Victorian times.

This Nativity Story

 

Friend Xerxes, for his Christmas column, sought to parse the nativity narrative as a short story. As a pedant, I feel he did not get it right; but the exercise, I think, is interesting.

He had the Christ child as protagonist. But this does not work. The protagonist must be the main character in the story. He must be someone who has a problem, or an unfulfilled desire. The plot is then the working out of that problem or desire.

Jesus does not qualify, as he appears in the story only towards the end. And, even if he is conceptually the main focus, as Logos, he cannot be said to have a problem. Nor, as an infant, can he be aware of many.

Who has a problem? Mary and Joseph have problems; but these are several, and apart from the main theme of the piece.

The protagonist in the story is mankind. Or rather, that portion of mankind who hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Those with whom the Most High is well pleased”; represented in the story by the shepherds and the wise men. Their hope is for a messiah, who, when he comes, will establish universal justice.

Who then is the antagonist? Who is attempting to prevent justice from beginning its reign?

Most obviously, King Herod; who kills every male child under two years old in hopes of preventing the messiah. Less obviously, Augustus Caesar, whose census and tax, his desire for control, has forced Joseph and Mary into a perilous situation—perilous for the child in her womb.

The problem is not Herod alone, but two separate governments. In other words, the antagonist of righteous men is government in general. Government is, literally, in the nativity story, the antichrist.

Not that we can do away with governments. Governments serve a necessary purpose: in the words of the Code of Hammurabi, “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.” In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” There is perhaps a representation of honest government, too, in the three kings. Perhaps—but they are not identified as kings in the gospel.

However, if the purpose of government is “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak,” there is in this an immediate problem: government is stronger than anyone. What is to prevent it from oppressing the weak? Who polices the police?

Hence Locke’s and Jefferson’s concern for government overreach; it is already there at the heart of the gospel. But democracy is itself a flawed mechanism; although a check on the powerful, it also gives power to a majority to oppress a minority. You kind of need divine intervention.

We are seeing unprecedented examples of government overreach right now. We need the Messiah this Christmas more than ever. We must scan the heavens for a star, or some choir of angels

Oddly, we are suddenly hearing many reports of UFOs.

Merry Christmas!

 

Christmas in the Third Reich

 

The Daily Mail has more on this.

The Season's Upon Us

 

All I Want for Christmas...

 

Here's an example of a modern secular Christmas song not written, as Xerxes, complains they all are, by a Jew.

It's the Jews. It's Always the Jews

 

My leftist friend Xerxes surprises me by devoting his latest column to how “the Jews” have 

“re-invented” Christmas. This they have done, according to him, by dominating the music industry and writing Christmas songs on purely secular themes.

This is where we are. It is not a good place.

Xerxes is wrong, to begin with, to suggest that non-religious Christmas songs are any new thing. Christmas has always been a celebration of winter and the solstice as well as of the birth of Christ. It has always had its secular side of general merriment and misrule.

Here is a brief selection of old and purely secular Christmas tunes:

Deck the Halls

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Wren

Jingle Bells

Here We Come a Wassailing

O Tannenbaum

He is wrong too to say that all modern secular Christmas songs are written by “the Jews.” Here are a few secularist songs and songwriters I am pretty sure are not Jewish.

“Little St. Nick” – Brian Wilson

“(Simply Having) A Wonderful Christmas Time”—Paul McCartney

“Happy Christmas (War is Over)” – John Lennon

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” – Mariah Carey

When I was a kid, “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” was a popular novelty song. The author also wrote hymns—not Jewish.

Not that Xerxes is complaining all that loudly. Almost the last thing he cares about is anything going secular. He ends the column saying that St. Paul condemned holidays anyway.

But that leaves the whole point of the column being to blame the Jews for something, anything.

Without demanding punishment, Xerxes includes all the elements of anti-semitism. First, the idea that Jews act as a unit; that they have an agenda. Second, that they are powerful, and more or less secretly powerful. They are controlling things behind the curtain. Third, that their agenda goes against the interests and desires of the majority.

Very sinister. And Bob’s your uncle, you have the International Jewish Conspiracy. You have the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This was always the predictable end of “intersectionality.” The inevitable trajectory was to target the smallest distinct group with the greatest available concentration of wealth to pillage. So the scapegoat class who owed reparations perhaps started out as “whites,” but then “white males,” then “cis white males,” or non-disabled cis white males; while the supposedly oppressed class expanded from blacks to blacks and women, blacks, women, and people of any skin tone other than white, but then also Muslims, then also sexual nonconformists of any description. The inevitable end-point was everybody versus the Jews, the smallest identifiable minority with the greatest wealth. Modern leftists see this just as Hitler saw it. 

I expect Kanye West’s recent outbursts have a lot to do with other people feeling freer to go here—although everyone was going here already.

One aspect of West’s argument was “Why can’t I complain about the Jews? I can complain about everybody else, but not the Jews.”

But that is not true. Black people have licence to complain publicly about everybody else, except the Jews. The only people white people can complain about are cis white males. And apart from complaining--the fact seems suppressed, but Jews are, in proportion, the one group most targeted by hate crimes. 

The modern left is not just Fascist. It is becoming Nazi.

A Merry Canadian Christmas

 

We Need to Talk about Santa

 

The kids came to me in great agitation after school one year near Christmas. Other kids at school had taunted them with the claim that Santa Claus was dead, and buried under a pile of turkeys.

Surely the realization that one has been lied to about Santa is one of the great traumas of childhood. Surely others remember, as I do, that moment of realization, that one’s simple childhood faith had been taken advantage of by those you trusted the most, apparently in order to mock you for trusting them. And isn’t it sinister that adults get their jollies out of doing this?

Who is this guy Santa, anyway?

The official story is that he is Saint Nicholas of Myra/Bari—“Saint Klaus.” Saint Nicholas’s feast day is December 6, so he seems to fit as part of the Christmas season. On the other hand, he has no particular connection with the Christmas story, and we know very little about him. Why has he become so prominent?

One answer is the many miracles that have been associated with him, and his relics. This can witness to a saint’s importance in heaven, even if he was not well-known in life. Nicholas was also said to be from a wealthy family, and to have distributed his inheritance to the poor.

There is, on the other hand, an unsettling tale of his slapping some Arian at the Nicene Council. This, whether true or not, suggests Nicholas was not good at restraining his impulses.

The modern Santa, fat, jolly, and red of complexion, indeed suggests a Falstaffian figure. The conventional English “Father Christmas,” who may not have anything to do with Saint Nicholas, is explicitly such, going door to door with his wassail bowl advocating general inebriety. The modern Santa seems to encourage just such self-indulgence. He serves to make “getting stuff” overshadow the spiritual aspect of Christmas. He seems, in this sense, an anti-Christ.

“Nick” is actually a German term for a demon, or even for the Devil; you sometimes hear the Devil referred to in English as “Old Nick.” Has this resemblance in name associated the Devil himself with the reverend Saint Nicholas over time?

Why is his home at the North Pole? Why is this Mediterranean resident associated with the cold and the Far North?

There is another figure whose home is at the North Pole: the pagan god Cronus, aka Saturn, who is said to rule over the Hyperboreans. Cronus is often identified with Time, and so his appearance at end-of-year festivities makes sense. And Saturn’s old pagan feast, Saturnalia, a time of unbridled self-indulgence, corresponds more or less with the Feast of St. Nicholas. 

The most important story associated with Saturn/Cronus is that he ate his own children as they were born. Not a cheerful association for Christmas, the birth of the Christ child. In ancient times, the Greeks used to kill their children in his honour. So did the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians, and the Canaanites. He would perhaps correspond in the Christmas story to King Herod, who ordered every child under two years old slaughtered, in hopes of never being supplanted.

A 19th Century depiction of Cronus as "Father Time."

He represents the implicit and rarely acknowledged hostility of adults towards each new generation.  A selfish adult can look in their child’s eyes and resent the knowledge that the child will live on after the parent is dead.

I think Santa as we honour him today is the bad guy. He is the face of narcissistic parenting.

Merry Christmas.

The Tree of Night

 

What’s with the Christmas tree? Why do we bring a pine or spruce tree into our homes for Christmas?

The conventional answer is that it represents the night sky over Bethlehem, when Jesus was born. 

This works very well. Those round ornaments we conventionally hang in the branches: these are the planets. The Christmas lights are the stars. The silver garland is the Milky Way.

Trees are sacred almost everywhere, because they represent the night sky—the cosmic order.

However, the star on top of the tree is not really the Star of Bethlehem. The Star of Bethlehem moved. “The star which they had seen in the East went before them, till it came to rest over the place where the child was.” Understand the tree as the spinning night sky, and the star on top is at the very point where it does not move. It is the North Star, and the trunk of the tree is the North Pole. It represents God the Father, around whom all creation revolves.

Christmas is at least in large part a celebration of the Winter Solstice, and of the turning of the year. Not that this means it is at root a “pagan” festival—there is nothing non-Christian or pagan about a reference to nature. Nature, after all, is God’s creation, and is an important way in which he speaks to us.

Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

The turning of each year is a divine parable of salvation history. Jesus’s birth is the birth of the light, corresponding to the Winter Solstice. “I am the way, the truth and the light.”

A Child Is Born

 

Theologically, Easter is more important than Christmas. In the cycle of the year, it would also seem that at Easter we have more to celebrate—the return of Spring. Yet Christmas holds a special magic.

I think because it is about the birth of a child—ultimately of all children. In the mystery of consciousness, the entire universe is born again whenever a child is born: it is born in his or her eyes. Each child, at his birth, redeems the universe.

In the Puranas, we read that one day the friends of the infant Krishna alerted his mother that the baby had eaten mud. Yasoda ordered him to open his mouth. When he did:

She saw all of outer space in all directions, mountains, islands, oceans, seas, planets, air, fire, moon and stars. Along with the moon and the stars she also saw the elements, water, sky, the extensive ethereal realm along with the ego and the products of the senses and the controller of the senses, all the demigods, the objects of the senses like sound, smell, taste, touch, and the three qualities of material nature. 

And she saw within his mouth all living entities, eternal time, material nature, spiritual nature, activity, consciousness and different forms of the whole creation. Yasoda could find within the mouth of her child everything necessary for cosmic manifestation. She finally saw, within his mouth, herself taking Krishna on her lap and having him suckle at her breast.  

Merry Christmas.

A Nazi Christmas

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nazis-fought-original-war-christmas-180961513/

A Canadian Christmas

 

From Lucy Maud Mongomery.

Twelfth Night

Tonight is Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas. My last chance this year to post the ultimate Canadian Christmas carol.

Mark Steyn Christmas Show

This is objectively pretty lame, but for some reason, I love Mark Steyn's Christmas shows.

Live from Montreal!

Mariah Carey IS Christmas

Giving it the Gospel feel.

A Breton Carol

Did you know that Celine Dion was Breton? Did you know that Jacques Cartier was? Pack of Celts...

Hunting the Wren

Hunting the wren on the Isle of Man

Another tradition for this second day of Christmas. The wren is hunted in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Britanny, southern France, and Spain. And Newfoundland.

The significance of the wren is probably the same as the significance of the Christmas tree: it is one of the very few birds that do not migrate south for winter. And so they are a symbol of life beyond death; of the resurrection.

Hunting the wren in Dingle, Kerry.

The traditional Scottish song:

The traditional English song:

Irish version by the Chieftains:

Christmas Night

Wrapped was the world in slumber deep,
By seaward valley and cedarn steep,
And bright and blest were the dreams of its sleep;
All the hours of that wonderful night-tide through
The stars outblossomed in fields of blue,
A heavenly chaplet, to diadem
The King in the manger of Bethlehem.

Out on the hills the shepherds lay,
Wakeful, that never a lamb might stray,
Humble and clean of heart were they;
Thus it was given them to hear
Marvellous harpings strange and clear,
Thus it was given them to see
The heralds of the nativity.

In the dim-lit stable the mother mild
Looked with holy eyes on her child,
Cradled him close to her heart and smiled;
Kingly purple nor crown had he,
Never a trapping of royalty;
But Mary saw that the baby's head
With a slender nimbus was garlanded.

Speechless her joy as she watched him there,
Forgetful of pain and grief and care,
And every thought in her soul was a prayer;
While under the dome of the desert sky
The Kings of the East from afar drew nigh,
And the great white star that was guide to them
Kept ward o'er the manger of Bethlehem.

-- Lucy Maud Montgomery

Did you know that the author of the Anne of Green Gables series was also a fine poet?