Holy Night
It’s easy to be cynical about Christmas; it is for me anyway. I grew up watching Charlie Brown’s Christmas every year, internalizing the plot. Charlie Brown is depressed by the rampant commercialization of Christmas. He wants the season to mean something, but everyone around him, his friend Lucy, his little sister Sally, even his dog Snoopy, is completely focused on receiving the exact gift that they want and flaunting gaudy decorations. When his attempt to save a sad little tree fails, Charlie Brown cries out in despair, “Isn’t there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about?” Linus, his innocent and unassuming sidekick, pipes up that he knows what Christmas is all about and tells everyone about Jesus being born, quoting from the Gospel of Luke. Finally, hope and joy fills Charlie Brown’s heart, and he’s able to love his tree despite its flaws. The act of love transforms the rest of the Peanuts, they come to love the tree as well, and together they sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
The arc of Charlie Brown’s Christmas was what Christmas was all about to me. We, like the Peanuts, live in a world that cloaks Christmas in consumerism. It is a season of getting gifts and spending time with family. Which is okay, but it’s to the exclusion of the real message of Jesus’s birth, God’s great advance in the process of global redemption. As a Christian, I was waiting for the world to ask, “Isn’t there anyone who can tell me what Christmas is all about?” and I would be there like Linus, speaking with full assurance and proclaiming the Gospel. And once I did this, once the world finally knew, all would be changed in the twinkling of an eye. Everyone would be transformed, God would reign, and Jesus himself would lead us with the Herald Angels, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will towards men.” Until then, I’d wish Christmas was really about Christmas, and be cynical about all the money that was needlessly spent.
But now, I think that’s wrong, maybe even contrary to the heart of Christmas. My wife is much more into the celebration of Christmas than I am (here are all her thoughts), so this year I’ve watched more TV Christmas specials than all the previous years combined. Instinctually, I cringe at Christmas episodes in sitcoms like the Office or New Girl, and not just because Christmas seems to bring out the worst in Michael Scott and makes all of Jess Day’s relationships that much more complicated. To me, these episodes, with their flippant use of Christmas for comedic purposes, is trampling on something sacred. Christmas, the second most important and holy day in the Christian calendar, is stripped of all sacredness and becomes just another situation for characters to be awkward in. Jonathan Haidt, a moral philosopher talks about ‘sacredness’ as a pillar of morality. My own sense of morality is very strongly built upon a foundation of sacredness, and I’m very sensitive to violations of what I consider sacred. Even very normal things, like my marriage, fall under my expansive definition of sacredness, and it’s like pulling teeth for me to share openly. For example, I still feel a little bad that I didn’t tell a close friend I was dating until after I’d been engaged for three months. As such, TV Christmas episodes feel like an affront to me. They take something sacred and treat it without the reverence I feel it deserves.
Christmas is a holy night, and for a long time, I saw it as my job to keep it holy. To clearly delineate between the true, sacred Christmas, and the deceptive, secular Christmas. What I’ve been learning this year is that my idea of the sacred is too small. It’s not my job to make sure Christmas is sacred. Haidt writes that in general, American conservatives include sacredness as one of their moral pillars while American liberals do not. As political concerns often dominate our minds and fill our imaginations, it might seem the answer is just to jettison sacredness all together as a moral consideration. I want people to know about Christmas, I do want the world to be transformed by a wonderful act of love, so I should get over my squeamishness and celebrate that everyone is incorporating Christmas into their lives. I should be excited that the Office is talking about Christmas because at least people are hearing something. This is the argument of Community’s Christmas special ‘Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas’. At least people know that Christmas is a time of meaning, even if that meaning may be up to them.
Again, I think this approach, while also well intentioned, misses the profound truth of Christmas. It isn’t that my categorization of sacred is too broad, rather, what I consider sacred is too limited. What was holy about Christmas night? What was sacred about the night we read about in Luke? Certainly it wasn’t the feeding trough where the Child lay. It wasn’t the lowing cattle, or the farm laborers who probably hadn’t showered in months. Holiness, as embodied by the priesthood, is burning incense and golden lampstands. It is cedar wood, sacrifices, and meticulously crafted garments. Sacredness comes from washing with blood, oil, and water, all to carefully observe the word of God, Almighty and Infinite. There were neither priests, nor ritual purity to make the night holy, but nevertheless it was holy. This is the nature of my God.
In the book of Isaiah, when the prophet has a vision of the throne of God, he cries out in terror, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” That’s how I typically reacted to Christmas episodes. Woe to them, for they come from a place of unclean jokes, and they dare to look upon the King. But God does not strike down Isaiah. An angel takes a coal from the altar of the LORD, touches it to Isaiah’s lips and says, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” My conception of holiness makes Isaiah 6 impossible. Holiness and unholiness cannot mutually exist, just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light. But God transcends all things, even holiness. As Isaiah writes, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
The Holy Night is Holy, not because of any sacrifices or ablutions but because Jesus, and God in Him, is there. We do not achieve holiness by the cleanness of our lips, but by the gift of God. His presence makes us holy, and his birth on earth begins the transformation of the world, filling the secular with the sacred. In Jesus, God emptied himself that he might fill all things. Most of my life, I’ve been trying to keep God out of what I deem profane, and confine Him within what I consider to be sacred. Christmas, however, is about filling the unholiness with holiness. It is the hope that even sheep and manure can be holy. It's the hope that even I can be holy, and this whole corrupt and dying world with me. Now, I think New Girl might have done it best. There’s a Christmas episode where Jess gets pulled over after a disastrous string of parties. Everyone else is drunk, she can’t get past her ex, and she’s literally dripping with booze because someone threw a drink on her. Desperately she tries to explain all this, and the police officer, shocking everyone, believes her. He wishes her a happy holiday and lets her go, and the world is a little bit more holy, even in the bungled world of New Girl as the various cast members reconcile with each other. The episode, for all its flaws, reminds me that while relationships and people are a mess - even when we give them all we’ve got - on Christmas we know a deeper hope that we, and everything else, can be made right.
