The Reason for the Season.

First of all, let’s be clear: the literal, actual, physical, astronomical reason for the season is… the Winter Solstice.  That is, to people living in the Northern Hemisphere, for six months, the sun appears to be swinging lower and lower in the sky until it seems to stop, and then come back.  That’s why we have seasons at all.  That’s why it gets colder in winter.

Obviously, humans have noticed and dealt with this for millennia.  This time of year became a time of feasting first of all because crops were harvested just before the coming of winter.  And decisions had to be made about which animals to feed for months and which it made more sense to slaughter.  The fact that people had more produce in good years than they could immediately consume meant that they would sell or give away their excess.  The days prior to the Solstice  became a time for feasts and parties, as people prepared to hunker down for the winter.

The Winter Solstice was therefore a holiday long before the birth of Jesus.  In the Roman Empire it was called “Sol Invictus,” which means “Invincible Sun.”  

The early Christians, having no actual date for the birth of Jesus, eventually settled on this time of year for that.  This was, depending on who you talk to, either because they were trying to piggy-back on the celebrations that were already happening culturally, or they wanted to offer an alternative celebration in resistance to the debauchery, gluttony, and general excesses — often at the expense of poor and working people — that were going on all around them.  Christians said that the season was really about the return of the Son, prefigured in creation itself as the return of the sun.  Advent, the Christian season leading up to the Nativity, was originally a preparatory time of fasting, that is, non-consumption, conservation of resources, and generosity to those in need.  

So we see that the conflict between the two different ways of celebrating the season is very old.  (The best book on the last few centuries of this is The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum.)

The Church never wins this battle.  At worst, it gets coopted and subverted so thoroughly that when people go shopping they think they are doing something Christian.  At worst, saying “Merry Christmas” is part of the ethos of consumption, waste, spending, nostalgia, sentimentality, greed, and corruption that dominates the economy.  At this point it is more a confession of Capitalism than Christ.  And that is why many insist on forcing everyone to say it.  They are trying to baptize and apply a “Christian” veneer to an orgy of buying and selling, from which the main beneficiaries are the wealthy. 

If we want to make Jesus The Reason for the Season, and if we want to make “Merry Christmas” a confession of faith in him, then we need to radically change our behavior.  If we pay attention to our mainly Scriptural stories, we find things like: a woman with an illicit pregnancy, a baby born in extremely humble circumstances, the witness of animals, the testimony of working people, a visit from exotic foreigners, signs in the sky, a bloody assault by government troops against an innocent community, a family seeking asylum in another country, and elderly witnesses in the Temple.  

Maybe an authentic Christian response to these stories surrounding the birth of the Lord would pay attention to, serve, advocate for, and associate with the same kinds of people today.  What can we do to support pregnant women and children?  How can we make the lives of the working poor better?  How can we welcome and provide for refugees and asylum seekers? And so on.

It seems to me that policies that cut food assistance to hungry people, maintain an absurdly low minimum wage, slash aid for children’s programs, cut Medicaid and threaten cuts in Medicare and Social Security, and perpetrate acts of barbaric hostility towards people who come to our country feeling violence and seeking shelter, are rejections of what Christmas is really about.  When people who support such policies sanctimoniously mouth the words “Merry Christmas!” is a hollow, cynical lie.

More than an empty seasonal greeting — let alone the self-righteous, sentimental, and angry political slogan it has been twisted into — “Merry Christmas” needs to be embodied in our acts of compassion, generosity, welcome, and justice on behalf of poor, rejected, marginalized, and victimized people now.  Then Jesus will be The Reason for the Season.  

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