Sunday December 8, 2002

First Unitarian Church of Alton

Ok, let me begin by asking you – would you miss Christmas if we didn’t have it?

Right now at this hectic time of the year I bet many of us would sigh in relief at the idea and mumble something about having more time, spending less money, getting more rest, and maybe not being challenged by friends and family to explain to them why, if most Unitarian Universalists do not consider themselves Christians, we celebrate the most Christian holiday of all?

Well my first answer would be in the form of a question – is this really a Christian holiday anymore? Was it ever, in fact, in modern history meaning the last two hundred years, truly focused on the meaning of the word Christmas as being Christ’s Mass?

I think we as UUs often mistake this question for one of content versus context and I will share with you several readings this morning to illustrate my point. Because Christmas is so much more than the celebration of Jesus’ birth, because it has been appropriated by so many venues, it has lost what to me has always been its true meaning. I think we all inherently know what is to be made of the holiday and what is ultimately meant to happen to us along the way, but we get bogged down in the confusion of secular versus sacred and in signs saying Happy Birthday Jesus or Jesus is the Reason for the Season.

These things cause us to get grumpy – grumpier than normal amidst the inevitable busyness imposed upon us regardless of a desire to ignore or eschew the traditional trapping of the season. We find ourselves suddenly shopping for and wrapping gifts, sending cards, making plans accepting party invitations, stocking up on special foods, keeping secrets.

It is a splendid time of year and only the most hardened Scrooge could truly refuse to have any part in it.

I have been trying to be that this year – I have grouchily said I wouldn’t decorate because who will see it? I would cut down on buying gifts – a very meager assortment I warned my family and friends, no baking – I am on a diet and certainly no parties as I don’t have time. I even questioned the need for a Christmas Eve service – I mean so few people attend anyway – why do we do this? Why Do we Do this – the same question I asked so many years ago when confronted with the traditional Christmas Pageant in St Louis where I had gone to find a way to be different in my religious practice, where I certainly thought there would be an alternative to the usual Christian trappings around the holidays.

I began to ponder that question a month ago and it became the focus for this service especially after someone quite new to this church and way of faith asked me that very question – why do we do Christmas anyway - --

One of the first answers that comes to mind is TRADITION – but that is exactly why I think so many are confused about this more non-traditional church being involved in such mainstream holiday events like tree trimming, special music, and candlelighting on Christmas Eve.

The response to this is not at first apparent – for all intents and purposes this looks like a very normal Protestant church sanctuary today at this time of year. What you don’t see, however is where I believe the answer lies. It is in the meaning of these events and trappings that we find our desire to be different and alternative satisfied. It is in exploring the truths behind some of the more familiar myths of this holiday that help assuage our reluctance to enter into much of it.

I know for myself all those many years ago, it was the realization (albeit several years later) that the Christmas child celebrated during the Pageant was not just Jesus, but every child who participated in the pageant. It was about the bigger things that the ancient story is formed around – it was about love and light and birth and giving and the joy those things can bring us in the middle of a cold dark winter. It was about being open minded and open hearted, things we religious liberals and humanists sometimes find very difficult for fear we will be seen as sentimental or too feeling or spiritual.

But that is exactly the point of this whole season – it is putting away fear and doubt and entering in – being willing to be a participant, practicing that difficult principle called tolerance, and having the bravery to reinterpret the traditions so that we can have the trappings but remind ourselves constantly of their true meaning, or maybe for us, their new meaning.

And new meanings come when we are faced with something profound or different – what greater profundity can there be than the contemplation of new life? When we are presented with a new person, an infant, who holds hope and promise, can we be anything more than joyful and spiritual, inspired to do better if only for that new life to have a grasp at what we have experienced in our life times?

So when I come down to it and have to face it, I have to make Christmas happen in my heart if nowhere else simply because I was once a child who was allowed to experience the fullness and joy and attention that the holiday brought me. I feel obligated to open myself to the wonder to try to recapture what it was that used to make this time of year so magical.

I think that is what the two authors, both eminent Religious Educators, were trying to say in their readings that we read responsively this morning.

Whether we have children or not, and I believe that having them around makes Christmas a much better time, we still have to cling to the memories and either attempt to recreate them or redefine them or in some cases, completely start over, for some of us may not be so fortunate as to have happy memories in all cases.

I think Unitarian Universalists know this inherently and therefore do not attempt to intellectualize the holiday to a great extent but rather seek the metaphors and meanings that make this time so necessary in our lives – WE need Christmas – it does not need us to be worshipful or pietistic about it – it need us to be willing that’s all – just willing to enter into it with peace and acceptance, always important attributes but seemingly more so at this time of year especially this year when we are faced with uncertainty and fear about the future of Peace on Earth.

So some history is therefore in order. ****

Unitarians were calling for the public observance of Christmas by about 1800. They did so in full knowledge that it was not a Biblically sanctioned holiday, and that December 25 was probably not the day on which Jesus was born. They wished to celebrate the holiday not because God had ordered them to do so but because they themselves wished to do so. And they celebrated in the hope that their own observance might help to purge the holiday of its association with seasonal excess and disorder.

They attempted to do this in two radical ways – by closing businesses for the day and by holding services in the local churches. But soon other religions followed suit and the effort was forgotten. Actually, the movement seems to have been part of a larger counterattack. Early in 1820 a religious magazine published in Boston assaulted the idea of Christmas as a public holiday. But its argument had nothing to do with theology, with the dating of Christ’s birth. The magazine acknowledged that Dec 25 was a "time of rejoicing and of religious ceremonies" for many Christians. The problem lay with the other kinds of behavior: an immense majority of those, who celebrate the day , make it an occasion of indulgence and profane mirth, and of almost every species of licentiousness." In any case, within only a few years the movement to close the shops and open the churches was dead.

The years 1817-19 represented a high water mark in the religious celebration of Christmas in Boston. To this day New England’s Unitarian, Baptist, and Methodist churches are ordinarily closed on Christmas Day along with the Congregational and Presbyterian ones.

The effort failed and Christmas became a family holiday, not one focused on the church but one focused on the children.

What happened was that in New England, as elsewhere, religion failed to transform Christmas from a season of misrule into an occasion of quieter pleasure. That transformation would however, shortly take place – but not at the hands of Christianity. The house of ale would not be vanquished by the house of God, but by a new faith that was just beginning to sweep over American Society. It was the religion of domesticity which would be represented at Christmas time not by Jesus of Nazareth but by a newer and more wordily deity – Santa Claus.

And part of that myth begins with the idea of surprise and presents under a tree. The idea of gifts rather than food and goodies was promoted of course by the manufacturers and the earliest advertisement known for actual Christmas presents comes form Salem Mass dating from 1806.

By the 1820s the advertising had begun to proliferate to the point that it was being made the point of jokes as well as warnings.

In 1834 the Boston Unitarian magazine suggested that the available choice of presents and the aggressiveness with which they were being advertised had reached a point where Christmas shopping was becoming a source of confusion. "The days are close at hand when everybody gives away something to somebody the article began:

The same article warned shoppers to "put themselves on their guard, to be resolved to select from the tempting mass only what is useful and what may do good" and to avoid "empty trifles, which amuse or gratify for the day only."

Some things never change!

And as the Children’s story indicated, we are indebted to a Unitarian for the tradition of the Christmas tree in this country – I always explained it to my kids as being a heritage issue – we were German, the tree was very symbolic of Weinachts Abend (Xmas Eve) in Germany and therefore we have adapted the tradition here and it gradually spread to all melting pot cultures over the years.

But it actually is because we are following in the footsteps of a kind and generous American UU who took delight in pleasing and surprising children. The tradition of finding gifts under the tree on Christmas morning derived from his desire to keep the tree secret until the doors were swung open that first time in Mass.

In his book, The Battle For Christmas. Author Stephen Nissenbaum says :

"By now it should be clear that the Christmas Tree was spread throughout the United States in large measure by a committed Unitarians. It is time to ask what there agenda was. Why did members of this group care so much about Christmas Trees? One reason is that it led to a theme of less commercialized and more meaningful Christmas traditions that focused on selfless children who not only received gifts but who were taught to give gifts to their parents and siblings.

The British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had once pursued a career as a Unitarian minister, was touched by this important twist of events when he witnessed a tree set up in a home in England with many of the family’s children eagerly preparing gifts to hang upon its branches and to lay underneath it. A series of articles he wrote about this appeared in the official journal of the Unitarian Church in America in 1824 and was later fictionalized by children’s author Lydia Marie Child.

The idea of children giving gifts to their parents was one thought to necessary at the time it appears. It was discovered that children in many European countries followed this custom and the suggestion began appearing in Primers and youth magazines all over America.

"Why was it so important for Americans to believe that this was an old and widespread German custom? The answer surely has to do with the one element in Coleridge’s report that was included in every item: the appearance of children who were behaving unselfishly at Christmas – children who had freely chosen to GIVE presents as well as receive them. This was a point that would have struck a responsive chord in people who worried that the affection they lavished on their children at Christmas – and especially the gifts that were meant to symbolize this affection – were causing those same children to become self-centered and materialistic – in other words, spoiled."

During these times, child rearing practices were directly linked to theological beliefs. Whether parents followed the spare the rod spoil the child dictum was closely related to whether they believed in original sin. One of the most distinguishing facts of early American Unitarianism was its central tenet that human beings were not born for damnation.

Unitarians strenuously believed that human beings were utterly responsible for their own actions. Children there for required constant and painstaking parental training that would enable them to conquer their own natural inclinations and that they should learn it by controlling their own will, not by being punished which was believed to lead to fear. It had to be based, instead, on the firm patient and imaginative use of moral instruction, accompanied by assurances of parental love. This philosophy was best described in a story, very popular in the 1830’s by Elizabeth Dwight Sedgwick:

The hope of receiving their Christmas presents at the end of the year provided a strong internal incentive for character development without the use of corporal punishment. To be sure, this was a "judgmental Christmas Elizabeth Dwight Sedgewick proposed here. St Nicholas leaves no lumps of coal or birch rod for the children who do not meet the goal."

This philosophy became increasingly popular in Unitarian communities and we can see the seeds of some of the later very promiscuous child rearing philosophy when we read that this new and controversial view was widely practiced in Unitarian household in New England and eventually led to the suggestion tat the natural impulses of children shouldn’t be suppressed but actually encouraged and indulged. Perhaps inspired by William Wordsworth’s "The Child is Father to the Man" children were offered adults a model for emulation and not he other way around. Children were not imperfect little adults rather adults wee imperfect grown-up children!

The most famous expression of this philosophy came from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unitarian minister poet and author who advocated a change in the way children were treated. Many similar ideas were springing up from many sources, Charles Follen, of the Christmas Tree story, being one of the interested parties, and they came to a head at Christmas. Those more conservative Unitarians invoked a tragedy of child rearing that implicitly placed children at the center of the domestic universe, a strategy that could easily bring out the very selfishness it was intended to control. For its part, the Romantic wing of the Unitarians explicitly looked to children to find the roots of human perfection, and they found it difficult to acknowledge that children who had been properly raised would show any signs if corruption. They tried hard to believe that children were innately unselfish, and that it was only a corrupt society, and improper educational practices that rendered them selfish and greedy.

But Christmas was one occasion on which even the parents who held to the more traditional idea of child rearing tended to give up any real effort to maintain the balance between restraint and indulgence. For genteel Unitarian families who inhabited a world of relative abundance, that axis involved a brief period of unrestrained affection for their children, an affection made manifest in a lavish orgy of gift-giving.

This tradition of giving to our children (if they are "good") to excess lives on of course to this day. After all many of us will say Christmas is for children – but it is also for us – it is for us to become like children I believe.

It is our one chance ot be greedy – to admit we want things even if they are not material things. We feel entitled to make a list and to hope for things unseen. We desire surprises we enjoy creating them but want some ourselves.

Christmas then as a UU means that we do not necessarily focus on the traditional Christian meaning of the holiday, but that we see beyond that to what first created the need for such a holiday .

Our forebearers, the Puritans saw no reason to import the celebration to the New Land as it had no Biblical basis nor was it accepted that Dec 25 had any special meaning regarding the birth of the Christ Child – these were all Orthodox observances decided upon by Catholic church fathers and had no grounding in the free faith of the Puritans. Business was as usual and it was not until as we learned earlier, that Christmas became a public holiday in the New England states. Our reluctance to observe the holiday religiously then stems from this early protestation of an invention of something that was certainly not central to the faith of those early literalists. The Puritans were correct when they pointed out quite often that Christmas was nothing but a pagan festival (that of the solstice) covered with a Christian veneer, not to mention the fact that it often was centered on revelry and wanton behavior. So the question Why Do We Do This is a very appropriate one for us.

In the early days of our particular Unitarian and Universalist traditions there were marked differences in attitudes, Unitarians – holding to older Puritan beliefs – rejected this celebration as they did as a "Popish superstition." Universalists, however, were Christmas oriented from the beginning.

Eventually, as we have seen, the Unitarians joined in the festivities, climbed onto the sleigh singing Jingle Bells, written by the son of a Unitarian minister, bringing the Christmas tree tradition to America as well as the idea that children deserve to be enabled to give as well as receive.

Theologically, one of the most essential understandings of Christmas is that of Incarnation, that God came to earth in human form. Even the most Orthodox of Christians will accept this as the most inherently symbolic meaning of Christmas and that which is embodied in Christ’s birth.

But the eternal difference that we claim as Unitarian Universalists about this traditional interpretation is that we believe in a universal incarnation – that we are all children of God and are born with a divine spark within us that we seek to ignite and fan into flame so that we may become the best people we can be.

In other words, there is that in each of us through which we transcend the narrow bounds of individual sefhood and by the power of which we can raise our own lives and the lives of others to higher levels. Different persons who realize it in so high a degree that around them myths and legends become real and are hailed as saviors.

We can best look at this process through human creation, for as I mentioned earlier, we can hardly attempt to intellectualize Christmas – it demands more creative and feeling responses – so we rely on poetry, music, symbols, representative gifts and by sharing love for one another.

That is one of the reasons why UUs often "do" Christmas so well – because we find the symbolism of Christmas so largely satisfying and the theology so largely unsatisfying.

The idea of Christ is you and me – yet he is ourselves transposed, as it were into a higher key, to save us into deeper wisdom and larger love and is manifested supremely in thos e person who have done the most to lift the whole human race towards higher levels of life.

It is at Christmas time that we pause and take note of those people in our lives who mean so much to us – the helpers who get us through the day, the week and the year. The neighbors and friends who allow us to be ourselves and who may help us to maintain hope in the world. But it is mostly our closest humans - those of our own tribe, our families, our church community and especially the children of those groups, who make us realize what the meaning of Christmas holds for us. It is the mystery and wonder of life itself.

This universal truth is the innermost core of the meaning of Christmas and it is one which Unitarian Universalism can fully share. In fact, it was a great Unitarian, James Martineau, who said in memorable words a century ago:

"The Incarnation is true not of Christ exclusively but of Mankind universally."

In celebration of this deep reality Unitarian Universalists join, and it gives meaning to all that is said at Christmas about peace and goodwill. For it is upon these potentialities within humanity that peace and goodwill in the last resort depend.

So we "Do This" because it is part of our heritage, our tradition and because we believe in love and human potential and the wonder of birth. We Do This because we need one another and we need a time like this, during the deepest and darkest part of the year that causes us to become like children, willing to be surprised and indulged and willing to be givers as well as receivers of life.

May this holiday bring you a renewed understanding of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist who celebrates Christmas because this is What We Do.