Happy Birthday, Dad!

My horoscope said that I should lead more with heart than head today, and that makes perfect sense as I honor my father on his eighty-fourth birthday. As I said in an earlier post, a common response to learning that my birthday falls on Christmas is, “Oh, that’s too bad!” When you know the rest of the story (thanks, Paul Harvey), however, which is that Dad’s birthday is on the twenty-third, then you will understand why there has always been a well-defined separation of birthday and Christmas in our household. Thanks, Dad, for letting me share your special day all these years!

Mothers and fathers are our first acquaintances on this earthly plane, and no one is more blessed than I by my parents. As I am learning with my own daughters, bringing life into this world introduces one more uniquely perceptive consciousness that didn’t exist before that moment. I never once feared for my safety, my welfare, or my survival—unless, as I grew older, circumstances warranted it. I was blessed far more than many by parents who held an extraordinarily wide worldview that encouraged rather than inhibited an almost unconditional curiosity about life and its meaning.

In my almost fifty-eight years, my appreciation of Dad, and my gratitude for all that he’s done and continues to do for me, continues to grow. Dad has been ordained to touch a multitude of lives through his ministry, and I treasure that I am one of them.

Christmas is for Singing

Call me old fashioned. We Three Kings to a swing beat just doesn’t seem right. As predictable as this season’s blending of sacred and secular makes it, the lilting saxophone accompanying the sultry songstress begs the question, what’s wrong with this sound? It works for Winter Wonderland but somehow contradicts the depiction of a first-century Middle Eastern legend. Do you suppose there really was a reindeer with a glowing red nose poised over the manger in that stable of yore?

Christmas is when I most feel my estrangement from the Church. Music is paramount among the profound symbolism of this season which exemplifies the myriad of perspectives that are included in the process of birthing the Christ into the world. It’s hard to imagine that strains of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing weren’t wafting through the ancient air of that first nativity. And let’s face it; a grand choral rendition of O Come All Ye Faithful is probably not on the Top Ten playlist at holiday office parties. One is more apt to feel comfortable singing the lullaby Away in a Manger when in the company of other faithful.

No other time of year seems to possess such a unique and yet eclectic repertoire. Entering the scene shortly after the end of World War II exposed me to a whole selection of favorites which during that horrific denial of peace on Earth and goodwill toward all humankind emerged as music that profoundly affected the sentiments of those generations which immediately preceded mine. And the beat goes on…as the beauty, wonder, joy and hope of Christ born into the world touches each generation it will translate into choruses old and new of God’s transforming love!

Christmas is for All

Between the growing popularity of Halloween and the high holy day of Super Bowl, Americans have developed a season of festivities that now accounts for nearly a quarter of the calendar year. Thanksgiving and Christmas vie for favorite holiday, but there’s really no question about which generates the most parties, has its own unique musical repertoire, sustains the economy, and continues to serve as the centerpiece for all the other falderal. Those who urge us to remember the reason for the season certainly have their point, but they somehow miss the fact that Jesus’ birth (observed) is but one aspect of a much larger phenomenon. The principles of peace, love and goodwill that are lifted up at Christmas benefit from the residue of genuine thanksgiving and segue perfectly into the hopes and dreams for a new year. It doesn’t bother me that the focus has shifted from the manger to the world because that’s what I understand the Christ’s mission to be in the first place. It certainly does no harm to recall the incredibly humble origins of the celebration, but it would be wrong—in my opinion—to restrict the observance to a particular dogma or creed. Christ is for the world! And it would seem that, ala Desiderata; the universe is unfolding as it should.

Christmas is for Family

If memory serves correctly, this is Uncle Dale’s birthday. Had he not succumbed to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) several years ago, I’m guessing he would have been 87 today. Uncle Dale remains larger than life in my recollections of growing up a Hanna, particularly this time of year. Since Uncle Dale had three daughters, I fancied myself the recipient of any toys meant for boys he may have had a hankering to give. Lincoln Logs, flashlights, and model cars are among the many gifts I received from Uncle Dale and Aunt Phyllis, one of the most generous couples I have ever known. It’s that generosity that figures prominently in my memory of Uncle Dale, as it must for many, many others. By any measure a successful farmer, it came naturally to him to freely share his wealth. I learned as much about the stewardship of time and talents from Uncle Dale as I did from any textbook, an irony of sorts since he had a tendency to feel somewhat inferior due to his lack of higher education—guess that’s how I developed my skepticism about the undue emphasis that gets placed on degrees, etc. I think of him often, but especially at Christmas. He never left any doubt in my mind that Santa Claus and the baby Jesus go hand in hand delivering the joy of a life well lived.

Christmas is for Children

A good example of scriptural inconsistency is found in the Christian New Testament, where the Apostle Paul on one hand makes an argument for the merits of growing up to think and act as an adult rather than as a child. The gospels, on the other hand, report a Jesus who attributes child-like innocence as the key to heaven. Such disparity is what lends support to the position that Paul never had any firsthand experience with Jesus of Nazareth. It also serves to illustrate how the emerging institution of the Church wasn’t necessarily faithful to Jesus’ teachings as it developed its own. At any rate, it does seem consistent with what we know of Jesus’ ministry to proclaim that Christmas is most definitely for children. What at first may appear to be a harsh judgment against adulthood actually points the way toward the true meaning of Christmas. If the holiday seems to have lost some of its sparkle and magic, perhaps it is because we’ve forgotten that, regardless of physical age, we are all children of God, the Creator’s created. There’s still enough time left to let ourselves get into that childlike frame of mind and enjoy the best Christmas ever…since we were kids.

In case you missed it…

What Makes A "Good" Christmas? by Ben Stein

It's beginning to look at lot like...Christmas?

I’m all for putting the Christ back in Christmas, but I suspect that we’re first going to have to figure out how to put the Christ back in Christian. George W. Bush is the most glaring example of a growing number who label themselves “Christian” but behave in ways that are, to say the least, antithetical to anything we know about the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. You don’t have to have a seminary degree to know that followers of “the way” weren’t always called Christians. Indeed, little groups of highly factionalized first-century Jews were the first to accept Jesus as the Messiah, but there were many such groups, each with its own messiah. It really wasn’t until the movement spread to the Greco-Roman world that the term Christian was coined, literally meaning “little Christ”. Those familiar with the Christian New Testament know that one of the first real debates in the fledgling religion centered upon whether or not one must first be a Jew in order to authentically claim Jesus as the Messiah, and it was Paul that championed Gentile eligibility. As the early church eventually assimilated non-Judeo cultures, “Christian” became the accepted identifier. I delve into this trivia because of the recent shootings in Colorado, where an armed security guard accepted responsibility for having shot the gunman before it was finally determined that he actually had committed suicide. Armed guards at churches? I’m quite sure that the Las Vegas media were not the only ones asking whether or not this should be the new face of “church” in the wake of the killings. What would Jesus do? The fundamentalists get off easy on this one, because there were no guns in Jesus’ time. But for those of us condemned to think, it taxes our understanding of the Christ to conclude that Jesus would condone such resolution to what appears to be a growing problem in today’s world.

Whenever We're Ready!

Yesterday, I alluded to what Christmas means to me. It was, however, so subtle that no one may have noticed. “The celebration of new life for joy, hope, love and peace” captures for me the essence of what it’s all about (hey, when no one else will, I am forced to quote myself). Emmanuel, literally ‘God with us’, is the ever-present reality that generates peace on Earth and goodwill toward all humankind whenever we allow ourselves to come into full relationship with our Creator, or, as Jesus said, we are born from above. Phillips Brooks was a powerful preacher, author, and poet, perhaps best known to many for his beloved carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. I find the whole poem to be prophetic, but particularly his line:

Where meek souls will receive Him, still
the dear Christ enters in.

This is the spirit of Christmas that will more than likely not be found at Best Buy or Sears, but which stirs genuine hope in the hearts of those who earnestly seek it.

The Killing Season

A growing interest of mine is the qualitative perception of death by human beings. We definitely assess certain kinds of death as worse than others. This fact started seeping into my consciousness in the wake of 9/11. The death of those 3,000 souls was deemed “bad” enough to warrant the United States’ preemptive attack upon the sovereign nation of Iraq followed by a war that continues to this day. The death of U.S. military personnel is “worse” than the death of Iraqi civilians, at least when the media attention given to both is compared to the actual numbers. Back in the United States, we slaughter somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 each year in automobile accidents, but this seems to be a more acceptable loss than, say, the 14,274 murders committed in 2002. This is again an issue as the Christmas killings in Nebraska and Colorado take on a more poignant significance because of the season in which they occurred. Any time a gunman goes berserk is tragic, but when it occurs in the midst of the celebration of new life for joy, hope, love and peace it is understandably weighted more heavily than if it happened in June. It’s beginning to dawn on me that this must serve to explain to a greater or lesser degree the diminishing reverence for life that seems to accompany an exponentially growing human population. Of course our prayers are with the families and friends of the victims of recent yuletide tragedies, but our better understanding of the reason for the season is more apt to take place when we begin to regard the phenomenon of leaving this earthly plane with greater equality.

Silent Night?

This season has the ability to bring out the best in us, and the worst. Our family has done Christmas shopping at Omaha’s Westroads Mall, and so I can vaguely identify with the horror that took place there yesterday. It recalled a young parishioner in the church I served there who was certifiably pathological, but a misguided and erroneous conception of what is “Christian” thwarted my efforts to get the professional help that was so obviously needed. Fortunately, to the best of my knowledge, that person never went berserk—an argument for the grace of God. As we ask ourselves what goes on in the mind of a perpetrator of massacre, I suggest that we ultimately end up asking what goes on in our own minds, as well. How has the commercial aspect of Christmas become so ingrained in our society that the national economy is directly tied to our level of consumerism? Why are we so enamored by the quest for more that we literally let those in desperate need of our attention fall through the cracks? Just what are we celebrating, anyway? In my opinion, we will do well to focus less on outspending one another and more upon the image of the love borne of a mother, a father, and a child. Mary and Joseph deserve some of the credit for raising a child that didn’t have to seek celebrity through violence and destruction, and therein may lay the true meaning of Christmas.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

I want to thank the cowardly jerk who collided with the front bumper of my Prius yesterday and then fled the scene leaving the innocent victim parked in the Clark County Garage (oh, yes, they probably have you on video tape, but with my luck you’re some uppity-up that has immunity from prosecution). But as I’ve had less than twenty-four hours to reflect upon your foul deed, it really has challenged the authenticity of my Christmas spirit. How I might have reacted any other time of year I’ll never know, but I’m trying very hard to employ my belief in peace on Earth and goodwill toward humankind even for a Scrooge like you. In the name of Christmas, I’m going to forgive your blatantly criminal behavior so that you won’t suffer the angst of a guilty conscience this holiday season (obviously, I’m giving you credit for a degree of intelligence and moral conscience that most of you Neanderthal types don’t possess; I’m probably lucky that I wasn’t present at the scene because your type usually shoots first and asks questions later). I’m just sorry that you didn’t get far enough into the body to be electrocuted by the gazillion volt battery. It would have been nice to have apprehended you lit up like a freaking Christmas tree.

Not!

I am well aware that this is not the most wonderful time of the year for many. Personally experiencing the “empty nest” syndrome with neither daughter home anymore, I can empathize with the feeling that Christmas isn’t quite all that it’s cracked up to be. Nonetheless, I know of no other season that so dramatically affects human rhyme and reason the way this one does. It occurred to me that the first two songs I remember Mom teaching me were Away in a Manger and Jingle Bells. Among my earliest memories is of a Christmas gathering in the basement of the Platteville church at which Santa Claus made an appearance. Holy smokes! What other holiday assimilates both the baby Jesus and Kris Kringle? Christmas truly offers something for almost everyone and that’s part of its magical appeal. For me, disappointment generally follows unrealistic expectations. So, if I expect that Christmas is going to make someone like President Bush more intelligent, I will in all likelihood be profoundly disappointed. If, on the other hand, I expect that the glorious beauty of the occasion will far outweigh W’s stupidity, I will be rewarded by holding to a more realistic expectation. In other words, I think that Christmas is what we make of it. If it’s the joy in children’s eyes, crinkled smiles on aged faces, and a genuine hope that a world into which the Christ is born cannot help but be better than what we have, then that’s a Christmas I expect to enjoy to its fullest.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

A common reaction to learning that my birthday is on Christmas is, “Too bad!” I understand the assumption that someone with a December 25 birthday will receive only half as many presents each year because of “doubling up”. But nothing could be further from my actual experience of fifty-nine celebrations (another benefit of being born on the day: I get to count from 0). Christmas comes as close to a universal celebration as Planet Earth has, and I can count on everyone with the exception of the most critically needed service providers having the day off. For crying out loud, even McDonald’s is closed on Christmas! Christmas has its own special music, its own special legends, and its own special appeal that mysteriously and miraculously bridges sectarian and secular. I honestly can’t think of any better day on which to have a birthday. Lest some of my more devout readers jump to the conclusion that I forget that “Jesus is the reason for the season”, I contend that it is more than mere coincidence that the day designated by the Church as Christ’s Mass was long before celebrated as the passing of the winter solstice and the gradual return to longer hours of daylight. In other words, there are any number of good reasons to celebrate this time of year, not the least of which is the dawning of peace on Earth and goodwill toward all upon human consciousness.