I heard from a friend this week who has spent most of her working life in retail. She said that every December is bad, but 2021 is off the charts bad, or, in her words: (a text message that she sent to me from one of her retail jobs, (used with permission)):
If I can make it through the rest of this pandemic without COMPLETELY LOSING MY SHIT in public in a YouTube worthy outburst … I will be AMAZED.
I am so over all this shit. The worst job ANYONE can have right now is retail. People are f*cking insane. One customer dropped me a lovely ‘F*ck You!’ because the store was out of large bags. Another guest LITERALLY yelled at me because I gave him a receipt that was ‘unnecessarily long!’. Another guest who was speaking softly under his mask 6ft away on the other side of the plexiglass said to me, (after I asked him to repeat himself 3 times) ‘Nevermind! I will find someone who can actually speak English.’
It is possible to love Christmas, but to also experience a kind of dread at all that the month of December can demand. How many nights out? How many events for which to prepare? How many gifts to buy for how many people? It’s cliché to point out that it can all be a bit much. However, I have always pushed away a little from the voices that lament how commercial things have become. I’m not arguing for commercialism and of course the gifts and decorations and sentiment can become ridiculous. Doesn’t it have a kind of celebratory joy to it, though? Remember when Jesus answered the disdain of those who condemned the woman who anointed him with expensive ointment by defending the woman and saying that what she did would be recounted through ages to come?
With Christmas, of course people can forget the real reason for the celebration. This is an obvious truth about any celebration. Jesus himself seems open to allowing this. The hopeful Christian message is that God has come to earth in Jesus to be with people. The very nature of the arrival is “good news of great joy for all people”, not a demand for recognition. It is worth considering what it means that the incarnation of Christ is good news even for people who do not recognize it. To say that Christmas is about “love” or “family” is at least partially incorrect in Christian understanding, but whatever - go ahead and celebrate, it’s good news for ALL people.
Were you ever in a church service around Christmas time, maybe even on Christmas Eve, when the minister chided the people who were present for just that service each year? What the …?! People who rarely or never went to church showed up to be part of the celebration and they faced a pseudo-friendly or outright religious condemnation for not being there at other times. It’d be as if baby Jesus got mad from the manger and started miraculously speaking, “Where IS everybody? THIS is it?! A few dirty shepherds and some mangy sheep?”
The good news of Christmas is God with us, not God against us.
Do you have a nativity scene? Did your church have one at Christmas or even put together a “live nativity” for Christmas Eve? A very brief origin story from Slate magazine 2012:
St. Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first nativity scene in 1223. The only historical account we have of Francis’ nativity scene comes from The Life of St. Francis of Assisi by St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan monk who was born five years before Francis’ death.
According to Bonaventure’s biography, St. Francis got permission from Pope Honorious III to set up a manger with hay and two live animals—an ox and an ass—in a cave in the Italian village of Grecio. He then invited the villagers to come gaze upon the scene while he preached about “the babe of Bethlehem.” (Francis was supposedly so overcome by emotion that he couldn’t say “Jesus.”) Bonaventure also claims that the hay used by Francis miraculously acquired the power to cure local cattle diseases and pestilences.
There has been a bit of recent tradition of coming up with contemporary nativity scenes.
I think that the winner for 2021 is the following;
I suppose you could be the curmudgeon who points out that the scene is not very Jesus-y. My response to that correction would simply be (with an eye roll) - “Oh gee thanks! Thank God that you are standing up to defend God.” In fact, I would argue that there is a helpful theological note in this nativity mask scene.
It’s a question put before us.
Even now? God with us?
And that becomes a prayer:
Dear God;
What does it mean that you are with us now, when we are weary? We have become so aware of our mortality and our frailty. The light of the angelic choir overcame the darkness and the source of the light was somehow in a stable, in a manger. Grant me eyes to see and grant me a spirit to enjoy the celebration that this season brings. Amen.