Christmas 1984 found me as the liturgical music director at St Hubert Catholic Church in Chanhassen, MN. St Hubert, at that time, was still a Franciscan parish with Fr Barry Schneider OFM as the pastor, and Fr Elstan Coghil OFM as the associate pastor. Fr Elstan was a very warm, genuine, and friendly priest. He was much beloved by the parishioners of St Hubert, and later, St Victoria. His greatest love was his little Dachshund, Frieda, an equally warm and friendly dog, albeit, not very well house or church trained. I remember one day during the octave of Christmas, Fr Elstan confiding to me that it was at Christmas he felt the greatest melancholy. It was the hardest time of the year both emotionally and spiritually for him. At the time, I was a bit dumbfounded at his admission. I was a young father, my 4th child, Beth, was almost a year old, and my home was filled with the excitement, the lights and decorations, that accompany any family with children 9 years of age and under. How could anyone fill despondent at Christmas?
Christmas 2014 finds me in a different place. Full well I know the melancholy of which Fr Elstan spoke. Fr Elstan has long passed into the complete joy, peace, and love of our loving God. However, 30 Christmases have passed since for me. Christmas is hard labor for me these days emotionally and spiritually. Christmas Eve can generally find me as curmudgeonly as old Scrooge himself, Ruthie, generally happy to rid me out of the house when it is time for the Christmas Eve Masses. Why is this? Good question. This Christmas, I decided to reflect upon why the discomfort, the melancholy at this time of the year. Part of my homily at the Christmas Word/Communion I did on Christmas at Mala Strana, a local nursing home, was loosely based on this reflection.
So why this melancholy at what many might think is at the “most, wonderful time of the year!?” In general, the melancholy I feel is attributed to a weariness with the season. It is the anticipatory “stuff” of Christmas that makes me weary or perhaps down with Christmas fatigue long before the day actually arrives.
It is not helpful that we deal with light deprivation at this time of year,
bringing on for some people seasonal light disorder. There seems to be a
tremendous amount of “obligatory” duties that come with Christmas, the writing
and the sending of greeting cards, the obligatory Christmas parties, pageants,
Secret Santas, gifts etc so much so that it is all too overwhelming. There is the incessant drone of commercial Christmas
musical programming, from poorly done recordings of everything from “Silent
Night” to “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” There are the endless stream of
insipid commercials on radio and television urging one and all to buy every
God-blessed item under the sun. There is a never ending stream of sappy and
crappy Christmas T.V. spectaculars and specials. There is the myriad amount of movies, both theatrical and television, generating more poorly made renditions of the Christmas Carol starring everyone from
Mickey Mouse to the new generation of trending celebrities. There seems to be an
never ending depiction of the biblical account of Christmas by various Fundamentalistic Bible
groups and producers with an all Northern European Caucasian cast that would be
the delight of any Arian Race devotee. There is so much “Christmas” coming at
us all the time, it is a wonder that we all don’t just gag and wretch on the
lot of it. One almost gets to the point of emulating the character of Gumby on
the SNL Christmas special spoof, Gumby’s
Christmas Special, whereupon, Gumby, played by Eddie Murphy, greets
everyone with “Merry Christmas, Damnit!” Is it any wonder that when the Feast
of the Baptism of the Lord rolls around, everyone breathes a sigh of relief?We celebrate Christmas at the very dark, cold, unpleasant time of year not because Jesus was born on December 25th. In actuality, Jesus was more likely born in the springtime of the year, when the lambs are born, and probably 2 years earlier than we believe, in the year 2 BCE (Before the Christian Era). The Church, in all its wisdom, settled on December 25th initially to counteract the Pagan feast of Saturnalia, with all its accompanying drinking, feasting, and other human excesses, in essence Christianizing a pagan feast. Theologically and metaphorically, the Church chose this time to emphasize that just as in the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year when daylight is at its most minimum, the light of God, in the form of Jesus, came into the darkness of our human world and hearts.
The darkness of our human world and our human hearts has not been totally obliterated. In fact, this darkness seems to have grown exponentially. While we may not being celebrating the Saturnalia of ancient Rome anymore, we still have our own “brand” of pagan bacchanalias with many of the flourishes and human excesses upon which ancient Rome delighted. We still try to run from the darkness of our human hearts by the use of bright lights, and a consumerist spending frenzy that would rival any feeding frenzy in the Natural Kingdom. The American Christmas consumerist dream of human excessiveness in food, drink, and spending only ends up creating more darkness in which people find themselves lost and trapped.
The simple fact is that for the disciple of Jesus, Christmas will always be counter-cultural. When a person’s culture assimilates something sacred, it often twists and distorts the sacred, making it unrecognizable. The American culture has so maligned Christmas that it bears no real resemblance to the sacred event in salvation history. This might account for the reason that I have this propensity for melancholy at this time of year. This is not something that can be neatly tied up in a sappy, snappy cliché like “Jesus is the reason for the Season.” Nor, as a disciple of Jesus, do I want some “champion” like Bill O’Reilly from Fox Cable News leading the charge against the use of “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” If Dickens were alive, he would use Bill O’Reilly as the model of the Ghost of Christmas Blah! For the disciple of Jesus, Christmas must always be counter-cultural.
The question that I, as a spiritual director, generally ask a spiritual directee when faced with a conundrum like this is, “Where is God in all this?” So just where IS God in all that is listed above? The answer to this question is something I discovered at one of the very worst times in my life, the Christmas of 2011. Upon finding it I found that it produced one of the happiest and most fulfilling Christmases I have ever experienced.
At the time, a MRSA infection had reduced me to a life of being a cripple, a middle age Tiny Tim, so to speak.. I was in the middle of my 5th month without a left hip. I was for the most part a bed and chair ridden cripple unable to get around at all without assistance. Life becomes very focused at these times, when one’s day revolves around moving from bed to chair, from chair to bathroom, from chair to bed; when the hours of the day are counted by the doses of antibiotics and other medical treatments one has to take. When one’s world narrows, the distractions that cloud and makes one’s life fuzzy, disappear, and God becomes strikingly clear and foremost. The Incarnation of Jesus, that year, with all that it implies, had a tremendous impact upon my life.
I remember distinctly a few things about that Christmas. It was an extraordinary mild winter that year. More than ever, I valued the gift of the relationships I had in my life. I was so overwhelmed by the love of my wife, Ruth, that in response I began a history of our relationship together in a series of poems I called The Book Of Ruth, a collection to which I continue to add poems to this day. I created this collection, then emailed a PDF of the poems to my daughter in law, Olivia, who printed the poems so that I could present them to Ruthie as a Christmas present. The love of my children and extended family was also so overwhelming.
The celebration of that Christmas began with Ruthie pushing me in a wheelchair to the 6 pm Mass on Christmas Eve. That was the first Mass at which I had been in close to 10 months. The climax of Christmas came when all of the family gathered at our home for Christmas Day dinner. I remember Ruthie telling me later, that though that Christmas was very difficult because of the condition of my health, it was one of the most enjoyable she had had in a great number of years.
Though we sing it to the point of ad nauseum every Advent, we tend to forget the meaning of the title Emmanuel, in the Advent chant, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Emmanuel means God with us. I found Emmanuel very present at the 2011 6 pm Christmas Eve Mass. However, I found Emmanuel even more present to me in the relationship I had with my wife, Ruthie, my kids, my grandkids and all of my extended family. They made manifest Emmanuel more to me than in any other form. They were God with me that Christmas.
Jesus, Emmanuel, is still God with us, God present to us even through all the consumerist crap that American popular culture has created, labeled, and officially marketed as “Christmas.” As much as Madison Avenue would love to assimilate Jesus into their corporate portfolios, Jesus cannot be bought and sold as a commodity.
What helps me through the melancholy is knowing that Jesus still walks with me through the living nightmare of Christmas commercials, poor renditions of Christmas carols, the awful Christmas television and movie dramas, all the obligations, and the tragedies and the joys of human life. As Jesus revealed himself as Emmanuel to me during the darkest of times in my life, Jesus will continue to reveal himself to those who truly wait and truly long for God. Emmanuel is very much alive and well and incarnate.
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