Christ-free Christmas in the Cards

Current! In Carmel - #7 – Christmas Cards
Spirituality column – Dec. 26, 2006

Christ-free Christmas in the Cards
By Bob Walters

“It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.” —Calvin Coolidge

If you think the reverse of this statement would rightly be, “when men don’t worship, they don’t grow,” you might agree that where the Christmas holiday season is concerned, our mates across the pond have Scrooged themselves.

From Albert Mohler’s Dec. 18 Christian blog, via Jeff Jacoby writing Dec. 13 in the Boston Globe, reporting on a Dec. 8 column in London’s Telegraph, describing a recent survey and report issued by British employment law councilors Peninsula, we learn that 99 percent of “Holiday” cards in the UK not only don’t mention Christmas, angels or Jesus, they don’t even refer to the holiday traditions – Christmas trees, Santa Claus, etc. No Peace on Earth. No Silent Night.

Further, the survey informs, nine of 10 British firms don’t have Christmas parties for fear of being sued by their offended employees. One in 15 Brits attends church.

They can’t be afraid of losing God. He’s already gone.

Christmas-less England. The soon-to-be land of “Winterval.” Prince Charles, a couple years ago, mused that the British royal moniker “Defender of The Faith” should instead be “Defender of Faith” to remove the offending “The Faith,” referring to Christianity. This in a country where the monarch is head of the Christian church.

I wonder what his mum thinks.

Let’s not play Pharisee and Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) and somehow congratulate our American piety. We all have great reason for humility, but we mustn’t miss this very teachable and scary moment.

The good news on this side of the Atlantic is that most people in the U.S. – 80-85 percent – whether they go to church or not, think they are Christians ... and that's a very positive thing. Any believing, practicing, church-going Christian should nurture all those de-facto Christians and all the rest of our neighbors. We too often condemn them rather than needlessly and indiscriminately love them, as we would have them love us.

That might sound familiar (Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12).

Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims in a country of 60.5 million, just 2.6 percent, aren’t the problem. It is the Seculars, the post-modern “right and wrong is a matter of opinion” crowd, that destroys Christianity. Don’t think it isn’t happening in America, and don’t blame believers of other faiths. Christmas is up to you: resolve to be a better Christian.

Now, those Christmas cards still hanging in your house? Those are all from people who, to one degree or another, love you.

Do them the honor of making a New Year’s resolution to grow in 2007.

Walters, a Carmel resident, has never been to England but he kinda likes the Beatles. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com.

Santa Baby, I Love Christmas Music

Current! In Carmel - #6 – Christmas Music
Spirituality column – December 19, 2006

Santa Baby, I Love Christmas Music
By Bob Walters

I love Christmas music – at least from the morning after Thanksgiving until about dinnertime Christmas day – and rely on it to hearken annual Christmas feelings of warmth, peace, love, family and most importantly … the love of Christ.

Gotcha! You thought I was going to say “most importantly … presents!”

So much Christmas music is about presents. Isn’t it odd that so many songs about “the season of giving” celebrate getting presents, not giving them?

Think about it. Other than “The Christmas Shoes,” which captures perfectly the soul-saving magic of selfless giving (it’s sappy, very sappy, but totally on-message), name a Christmas song that is about me giving to you.

It’s hard to come up with one.

Actual Christmas carols (like in the hymnal at church) praise God’s gift of Christ. The secular holiday songs that aren’t about sleigh bells, sleigh rides, reindeer, shopping, decked halls or mommy kissing Santa Claus, are mostly mood setters (The Christmas Song) and sentiment triggers (Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, White Christmas).

I’m not sure where to categorize Santa Baby.

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is what we listened to every Christmas Eve dinner as I was growing up and I love it dearly. But it’s in German so I have no idea what it says. Bach’s Ein Feste Berg (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) has nothing to do with Christmas except I love listening to the E. Power Biggs pipe organ rendition of it Christmas Eve.

My favorite hymnal carol is O Holy Night, although any large-choir rendition of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing or Joy to the World sends chills up my spine. You can’t beat the peace of Silent Night.

Not-so-classic renditions abound. “Twisted Sister’s” heavy metal Oh Come All Ye Faithful, new this year, ignites no sentiment but I have to admit makes me laugh.

“Barenaked Ladies” (yep, that’s a real music group) and Sara MacLachlan have on the airwaves a decent, up-tempo recording of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (period English translation of the title, “May God Keep You Gentlemen Strong”). No matter who sings it, the song’s second and third lines zero in on the heart of Christmas:

“for Christ the Lord our Sa-a-vior is born this Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan’s pow’r when we were gone astray.”

Did you know the Puritans banned Christmas carols in England, including this one, from the late 1600s until strait-laced Queen Victoria brought them back to popularity in the mid-1800s? Carols were folk songs the Puritans viewed sacrilegious.

Today Christmas songs express our deepest feelings and (sometimes) our deepest beliefs. Even if theology takes a holiday, the truth is that Christmas music is about whatever special thing it means in our heart and how it unites everyone, politically correct or not, with the community of Christ.

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit must work overtime on this one.

Walters, a Carmel resident, can’t sing. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com.

Bah Humbug - All the right reasons for the season

Current! in Carmel - #5 – Bah Humbug
Spirituality column – Dec. 12, 2006

A Season for the Reason: The Right Kind of Bah Humbug
By Bob Walters

My dear friend George – quite likely the most learned and tested Christian I will ever know – deeply, sincerely and thoughtfully loathes Christmas.

He is to the highest degree a celebrant of God’s gift of the incarnation of Christ – God become man for the ultimate hope and salvation of mankind (see John 1:14, the absolute reason for the season). But he has no enthusiasm whatsoever for the commercial festival that is Christmas.

I’m listening to Christmas music as I write this, so I am not a Holiday scold. I also know better than to say “Merry Christmas” to George, a phrase that only intensifies this miserable season for him. He celebrates the reason, Christ ... not the season.

Many Christians are at least a bit squeamish, properly, at how the religious joy of Christmas is overrun by its commercial manifestation. Truly, very little of our annual Christmas experience withstands much scrutiny of either theology or history.

But I would rate the tradition of our Christmas celebration right near the top – I think for better but some would say for worse – as an expression of our Western cultural perspective of our relationship with God and with each other.

Certainly, Christmas means different things to different people, but it does mean something to almost everybody, and it creates a wider common community than any other Western thing I can think of.

Perhaps the brilliance of Christmas is its universal appeal. There may be a billion Chinese who don’t care (although there are millions who do), and another couple billion Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and third-worlders who aren’t waiting for Santa, but this Christmas season of hope, where it reaches, certainly defines who we are spiritually and who we aspire to be.

As the rest of us enjoy the wonder of the Holy Spirit (you can call it the Christmas Spirit if you want) these next couple of weeks of the season, I’m comforted knowing that George is a first-rate keeper of the flame for the right Reason.

Carmel resident Bob Walters can be contacted at rlwcom@aol.com.

Christmas Conspiracy Theory

Spirituality Column #4
December 5, 2006
Current in Carmel (IN) Newspaper

Christmas Conspiracy Theory
By Bob Walters

My favorite argument against “Merry Christmas” is that since “Christmas” is a government holiday, we shouldn’t call it “Christmas.”

Follow along, please.

Christmas implies Christ, which, as everyone knows, implies big “G” God, which can no longer be tolerated as a government-endorsed concept. Small “g” god – the one/several flavor-of-the-month deity (small “d”) made in our image that can be anything – is permissible because it/they is/are the fruit of the selfish and small minded. This is a god government understands.

Weighty issues like eternal salvation, oneness with God the Father in Heaven, the incarnation of Christ, the Peace of all mankind, etc., mustn’t be intoned in the public arena.

All this is in the name of tolerance, of course.

We throw flawed human concepts atop perfect divine truths and, presto!, a fight breaks out over saying “Merry Christmas.”

Not that “Merry Christmas,” per se, is a divine truth. “Merry” and “Christmas” are tradition, not scripture. There is no indication of another celebration of Christ’s birth in the Bible after “Behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy …” (Luke 2:10). You might also note the absence of Christian religious festivals in the Bible … all the holidays originate in the Old Testament, not the new.

Then there is the crowd that denies Christmas altogether, often non-believers, who are the first ones to point out that the actual birth of Christ (assuming that part of the Bible is correct) couldn’t have been in December (not when taxes were collected, too cold for shepherds to be tending their flocks by night, etc.). So Christmas must be a big northern hemisphere winter solstice pagan holiday conspiracy.

At the very least, Christmas is the greatest PR stunt of all time for God. What could be better than co-opting the ages-old biggest party of the year for Jesus?

Specifically when or where Baby Jesus was born isn’t the key point; Christ came for all mankind for all eternity. December 25 seems to work just fine. Plastic reindeer in the front yard are harmless enough, but they do seem more to say we love ourselves and in fact miss the larger “Christmas” point that God loves us.

So if you really care about someone, say “Merry Christmas” because beyond “peace on Earth, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14), the reason for the season is the incarnation of God in human form to cement our divine-human relationship, to work out our salvation, secure eternal life in the company of God and prove the primacy of love among God and man.

If that scares you, say Happy Holidays.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, loves Christmas.