holidays ad absurdum

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”    – Luke 1:78-79.

This won’t surprise most of you who know me, but I’ve never really been the type of Christian to get all bent out of shape when people wish me ‘Happy Holidays’ around Christmas season. My feathers don’t go up at that phrase. People trampling each other in department stores in an orgy of greed? Yes. Spending stupid amounts of money on colorful crap in a world where Kwashiorkor’s Disease is a real thing? Yes. But the phrase, ‘happy holidays’? I let that one slide.

It’s not that this season isn’t sacred to me as a Christian. It’s not that I don’t value this time to anticipate and celebrate Christ’s coming. Actually, it’s because I do, that I’ve just never really measured the Christiness of Christmas by the sheer number of times that we can jam the word “Christ” into our interactions with one another. If it were only a matter of sheer volume, I’d think it impious to stop at “Merry Christmas.” While at “Frosty’s Boutique” the other day—an open bazaar of handcrafted doodads and trinkets held at a local middle school every year—I suggested to my wife that it should be called “Christ’s Boutique” and perhaps the nearby ATM, “Christ’s money-changing station”--you know, to keep Christ in Christmas, after all. But there’s the rub. Christ had one encounter with boutiques and moneychangers that we know about. It didn’t go well.

So I’m left to question whether simply saying something is of Christ really makes it so. Wouldn’t it make more sense, then, to call baseball Christball? You know, just to cover our bases? But then, “ball” is such a secular term, isn’t it? Maybe instead of Christball, we should go with Christchrist, just to be safe.  Does repeating Christ’s name as many times as possible really invoke his presence? If so, where’s the tipping point? If I say the word Christmas 10 times on my trip to the mall, will that be sufficient? What about 50? 100 times, maybe? Will it be a sufficiently Christian trip to the shopping mall, then? Either I’ve failed miserably at this Christian duty and the MLB has been perpetrating a 100 year war on Christball, or such things would be stupid because more of the word ‘Christ’ does not necessarily result in something more Christ-like. In fact, were I to join the crusade to follow this commandment that doesn't exist, "thou shalt constantly impose the words 'Merry Christmas' on thy unchurched brethren," I'd be in danger of breaking one that does, "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain."

In the 1950’s, European playwrights started the genre now known as “theater of the absurd.” As I understand it, what these plays all had in common was they sought to portray life as tragically meaninglessness and did so through devolving language—clichés used several times too many, words repeated, distorted, turned into their opposite and a smattering of illogic and general nonsense. That is to say, once words lost meaning, so too did the plays and with them the lives they portrayed.  

Isn’t this what we do when we seek endlessly to give the Christ name more airtime, tagging it to anything and everything no matter what the association? Is that not the conventional wisdom of every good marketer, flood the TV networks and billboards and internet news feeds with your brand name? Put it at the front of every consciousness so that the masses flock to you not so much by desire but by default, for lack of a more conscious choice. Need a used car? Come to CarMax. Looking for a religious celebration? Have you tried Christmas?

This insistence that everyone say “Merry Christmas” has nothing to do with Christ and everything to do with our culture of market-driven competition. Rather than celebrate the Christ who “brings the powerful from their thrones, and lifts up the lowly” (Lk. 1.52), today’s Christians have, I guess, decided to simply try to out compete the evil secularizers for cultural supremacy.

I’m astounded that there are still some who would equate piety with the sheer quantity of things with which they can associate Christ’s name, saying nothing of the quality. Did you watch to evening news on Black Friday? Shouldn't Christians want to dissociate our Lord from this annual theater of the absurd?

One of the things that the writers of the original, French theater of the absurd actually got right, was that after the communication breakdown, after words were twisted to mean their opposite or broke down or could only be repeated ironically, the play would end in silence.

That’s what I’m hoping for more of this Holiday season. Silence.

I’m fine with both the “Merry Christmas”-ers and the “Happy Holidays”-ers. I’m even alright with the too-cool-for-school “Happy Exotic Festival that I don’t actually observe, myself”-ers.  

But what I’m really interested in this Advent season, is silence. Silence without news pundits, silence without TV ads, silence without any internal voice that might otherwise gnaw at me to flood the airwaves with my Lord’s name because the gossamer thread of faith that links me to his birth feels so tenuous that it needs to be reinforced and validated by the whole society around me.

Just absolute silence. Well, maybe some Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby duets lightly filling the background as my beautiful wife and I set up our Christmas Tree and pray around the candles of our advent wreath in the warmth of the apartment that God has blessed us with. Silence, then, as we pray for those who are in the cold.

Anyhow, I doubt my own capacity to invoke Christ into being with the sheer volume of my words. I figure he pretty much does what he wants. What I would rather model is a quiet soul that “magnifies the Lord” and unclouded eyes, that we may see “the dawn from on high break upon us.” I encourage quiet tongues that Christ might “guide our feet into the way of peace.”

For an inspiring way to participate in what Christ’s birth actually means for the world, “to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,” go to http://www.htflive.org/ and consider giving to the Haitian Timoun Foundation’s “It’s Not Your Birthday” campaign.