Holiday Comtemplations
A Sermon By The Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
December 19, 2004
We don’t often get to sing Christmas hymns all the way through, every verse. I think people generally know the first verses of carols, and lip-sinc through the rest unless they’re into caroling. We sing only the familiar first verses during the Christmas Eve services because we’re surrounded by candlelight and couldn’t read the hymnal if we tried. So many of you, I bet, don’t know that our Christmas hymns have been rewritten over the decades to try to soften the patriarchal theology of hymns and to make them a little more universal - just a little so as not to make them too unfamiliar.
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is an example of one I think they did a good job with. The old version was more of a biblical piece: “O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.” (Hymns for the Celebration of Life, 280) Now we have: “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and with your captive children dwell. Give comfort to all exiles here, and to the aching heart bid cheer. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come within as Love to dwell.” (Singing the Living Tradition, 225)
The theological statement has changed; rather than Emmanuel coming to Israel, Emmanuel now comes as love and truth and light and hope to dwell within all of us. No longer do we sing only of Israel’s exile, but of all exiles, asking comfort for them as well as cheer to the aching heart. In Hebrew, “Emmanuel” means “God with us,” so this song is a call to the divine, to god to be within us, to be our expression of love and truth and light and hope. And there is meaning whether we believe in god or not, if we allow such metaphors to live within us as well.
At Christmastime, along with the more modern theological renderings and practices, we come face to face with more ancient theologies and traditions, to grapple with their relevancy in our lives today even as we resonate with the mystical effects of such traditions on our psyches. We do like to “hear the old familiar carols play,” as Unitarian Henry Wadsworth Longfellow pointed out. When he heard the bells on Christmas day, they rang of peace on earth, goodwill to men,” which today we sing “to all goodwill.” (SLT 240) He, too, was redefining the theology of Christmas one hundred and fifty years ago in focusing on peace on earth more than the Christ story.
My other favorite Christmas hymn, “It Came upon the Midnight Clear,” was also written by a Unitarian, the Rev. Edmund Hamilton Sears, about the same time as Longfellow. We’ll sing it at the end of the service today, all four verses, which speak of the stories of angels bending near the earth to bring us songs of peace even in the midst of war and strife. How hard we have to listen to hear that angel song today!
For many of us, it is a struggle to find the deeper meanings of Christmas beneath the commercial wrappings with which it is so often presented to us. Add in the war and the strife, and some of us just don’t feel like Christmas has much meaning, at least, not the buying and selling, the decorating and planning, the wrapping and baking. Our hearts feel a little empty, waiting for Emmanuel who, for some reason, has failed to come this year, failed to bring us love and truth and light and hope.
The recent elections have something to do with that, I think. I was talking with someone just the other day who said she was having trouble getting into the spirit of Christmas. She was having a hard time getting her own day-to-day spirits up after the election results and the political climate in our country, not to mention the war in Iraq. Maybe we won’t get a tree this year, she said.
I relate to not getting a tree. I’m the one who usually does Christmas, but with my surgery, I just can’t do it. I’m not sure I want to, but as I get well, my perspective may change. Or the kids might get a tree and find out just how much work it really is to decorate. If one can’t do the work, and Christmas is a lot of work, then it comes down to choosing those things that have the most meaning and are easiest to accomplish with the least amount of grievance. Sounds sad, but that’s Christmas for many folks. It’s a new one for me though, seeing as how I usually do my best to stress myself out over the holidays trying to do Christmas the way I want. And every year I never get those cookies baked!
Low spirits can be caused by the weather, too, since we had that big cold spell so early in November, and now it’s warm, as if winter came and went already and I’m ready for spring. Why would I want to put that old tree in my house anyway! Why would I want to clutter things up when I’m ready for spring cleaning?
My experience this year of struggling to find Christmas is not unusual, I know. It’s just unusual for me. But I swear I’ve heard more people say they’re having trouble finding Christmas this year, and for them it is due to the state of the nation and the world. How can we sing of peace on earth when we’re at war? How can we sing of good will to all when prejudice in our country is at a high. I read an article in yesterday’s paper which stated that “nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans.” The survey said that “Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious [highly religious!] were more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.” (AZ Daily Star, 12/18/04) Just like Longfellow wrote: “And in despair I bowed my head: ‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said, ‘for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, to all goodwill.’”
Fortunately, Longfellow didn’t stop there one hundred and fifty years ago, and neither will we, for the bells peal “more loud and deep,” proclaiming that eventually “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, to all goodwill.” That’s the really important message, isn’t it! We can’t submit to despair, ever, but must keep pealing those bells of peace, louder and louder, on down the centuries; singing those songs, those carols, of peace; singing joy to the world and really meaning it, working for it; making Christmas, no matter what it was in ages past, an eternal reminder that wrong shall fail and right prevail and peace on earth will come at last.
From that perspective the Christmas stories reveal their deeper meanings more easily: the babe in the manger – the birth each and every night of hope eternal, symbolized in every newborn, the promise of what a person can grow up to be; the shepherds in the fields representing the least powerful and simplest people; the kings bowing to babes – the powerful bending knee to the powerless; a star – the guiding light for which we all seek as we wander through our mysterious lives. Yes, even Santa Claus has meaning when you pay him some deeper mind: he is the supernatural grandparent figure caring for each and every child and sharing mysteries and love in the form of presents carefully chosen and beautifully wrapped.
These stories are told again and again because there are universal truths embedded within them. The traditions and the theology do speak to us, in old or new forms, tying us to the past and to all the hopes of humanity as well as turning us toward the future of what the world can really be.
On the surface today Christmas looks like madness. For two months, from Halloween, we find Christmas everywhere we look, the commercial Christmas, that is. In our minds, we plan for Christmas, whether with happiness or trepidation or downright sadness depending on our life circumstances and experiences. People flood the streets in cars as the holiday nears, so that we are shocked again at how many people there are living around us when we all come out of our homes at once. An apparent abundance of things and people is everywhere.
At the same time, we are asked to give more to the needy and to remember that abundance doesn’t extend to everyone. High expectations abound. Generosity is demanded on all fronts. Sometimes it feels like we’re drowning in too much, too many, too fast, too impossible. Under all the wrappings and ribbons scattered on the floor, somewhere, is not just the tape, but the whole meaning of Christmas – and how did it get lost down there on the floor anyway?!
To find it again, we need to stop a minute, or an hour, or longer, and listen – listen again to the words of the carols. Maybe have some silence to get away from the carols because they, too, get to be too much, like Curtiss at his Walgreens store playing muzac from opening to closing. He doesn’t want to hear another carol sung!
Blessed silence is a way to reconnect with the meaning of Christmas. Christmas touches us in a mystical way with memories stirred by the senses: the smells of cinnamon and pine; the sounds of horns and chimes; tastes of tamales and pecan pie and rum balls; soft candlelight and reds and greens; soft things and slippery things and hugs; stories and songs and gatherings. It is as if we enter into another time and space, crossing time and space, taking us back to the wonder of childhood (or painful memories, too). I use the word mystical to describe these feelings, these times, because we feel connected with something more than our everyday reality. Some call that god or power or spirit of life or mystery.
Holiday stories do the same; they connect us with what is deeper and more everlasting in the world. They connect us with Emmanuel, come within as love and truth and light and hope to dwell. The world suddenly is more meaningful and we are suddenly more powerful. Our children are more precious. Our hopes are more important. Goodwill is more essential. And peace on earth is more attainable. If we listen to the songs of Christmas and let them stir our hearts to joy.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson