CHRISTMAS 2019: ITS MEANING FOR US

We wish our readers Happy Holidays. Thanks for being with us this year. Today, we offer thoughts on the season.

                  

Woodson:  Let’s Take the Pain Out of Christmas

Christmas is too commercial and, in many ways, painful. Commercializing Christmas has too often drowned out the story of Jesus.

                  

As a farm kid with few possessions, a belief in Santa Claus allowed me to engage in an

expectation fantasy. Hours were spent leading up to Christmas imagining what I would find under the Christmas tree. Invariably, I received a cap gun with holster, socks, and an assortment of fruits, nuts, and candies. Christmas after Christmas, I imagined myself receiving something really big, perhaps a pedal-driven car or a pony. 

On the Christmas after I turned eight, I received my assortment of fruits, nuts, and candy, but no toy. Someone told me Santa Claus was a fantasy, and my

parents had decided to no longer indulge this costly fantasy. I approached an older brother, hoping to be consoled but he responded, “Dang, man, you still believing that Santa Claus business?” I was crushed. That painful memory stays with me. Hope and I vowed never to lie to our children about a Santa Claus. But we would give gifts. Even that decision left us with the complication of having to decide who to give gifts to, which remains stressful for me. I don’t enjoy buying Christmas gifts. I think I’m contributing to the commercialization of Christmas and perverting the Christian faith. 

There have been times when Hope and I had to charge these expenses to our credit cards when short on cash. So, we spent money we didn’t have on things we didn’t need. 

            

Christmas should be a time to reflect solely on

Jesus’s birth and life and how his life informs our own. I feel like I am fighting a losing battle between Christianity, deceit, and commercialism. A great meal and great conversation on Christmas, without the gifts, would make Christmas what I’d like it to be.

Rob:  Let’s Stay Together

Debating the meaning of Christmas became a political flashpoint a few years ago. Conservatives, who see only a religious meaning

for Christmas, argued secularists were scrubbing Christmas from the public sphere or making it just about commerce. Some saw a “War on Christmas.” The

issue hasn’t flared up much this year as impeachment and the 2020 campaign consumed space in public discourse. So, in an atmosphere not brimming with angst over what the holiday means, I took a step back when contemplating its meaning for me.

I could focus on religion. I practice progressive

Signs of Religions

Christianity, so celebrating the birth of Jesus matters. However, I regard that practice as a year-round activity rooted in understanding and following the teachings of Jesus, not the miracles supposedly attendant to his birth and death. I respect the religious aspect of Christmas, but that’s not my focus.

In our family, and for me, Christmas means togetherness. I live in the same town with only one

of my children; the other four reside near or far, but in each case “away.” Since my wife’s death nine years ago, we’ve rotated where we gather. I now find the process of convening, of making whatever trip I must make so we are together, a valuable part of the exercise.

Christmas, therefore, means celebrating the fact we remain a family despite losing Ida, despite the trials and tribulations of children growing up, and despite my own struggles as I age and experience transitions. As the song says, Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year” because, for us, it’s when we’re together. At this stage, that’s what Christmas means for me.

                                 

                         Andy Williams' The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

                    

Henry: Christmas Everlasting
My memory pulls forth concentric spheres. The

inside, closed, perhaps restricted and protected sphere streams images of two brothers and their parents experiencing incredible joy and happiness waiting for the morning.  There were friends, church, family, gifts, food, speeches, and prayer for all, especially the “less fortunate.”  Acceptance and faith without doubt prevailed - for doubt springs from examination.

As those memories expand, the next sphere reveals a recognition of sadness and an awareness that all is not as well as it once seemed at an earlier time.  The protective shielding of the first sphere is no longer present. Poverty, fear, doubt, hopelessness, despair, hunger, and anger are present, invading the space between the first and second spheres.

As the first and second spheres merge, a third

sphere forms, enveloping all and expanding at light speed, speaking to my mind, soul, and spirit. Hope inspired by love required by my spiritual belief in redemption, forgiveness, and universal acceptance extinguishes all doubt for the moment and takes me to the innocence of the first sphere. Here, however, a more informed faith supporting hope pervades my world becoming our world. This last all-encompassing sphere contains all but has no limits. 

We are forgiven. “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” Luke 1:37

Joy-PLEASE

THANKSGIVING PERSPECTIVES: DIFFERENT LOOKS AT AN AMERICAN HOLIDAY

As Thanksgiving approaches, then passes, we pause and focus our lenses on this uniquely American holiday. As we’ve said, the three of us, great friends though we are, are not all alike. We see things differently sometimes, as our individual perspectives on Thanksgiving so starkly demonstrate:

Woodson

I feel conflicted at Thanksgiving. I find joy and sadness uncomfortably co-existing within my spirit.

The First Thanksgiving

I remember celebrating Thanksgiving in grade school at Holly Springs Elementary.  My teacher, my mom, invariably led us in a traditional Thanksgiving carol that went something like: “The year 1620 the Pilgrims came over. They landed at Plymouth Rock, then built up their homes. At harvest time, they started our Thanksgiving Day.” My mother didn’t teach us the Pilgrims were European immigrants who had, through war, confiscated from the natives the land on which they celebrated. She didn’t tell us native resistance to European conquest persisted until 1898.

So, each season when I sit down to a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with family and friends, I can’t help but ask myself: How do my Native American brothers and sisters feel today?  The disenfranchisement of Native American voters in North Dakota this year reminded me of their unique struggle.

I am truly grateful to be an American, but what about them? While I have much for which to be thankful – a superb education, a wonderful wife, five great children, a hopeful future, and a guardian of my liberty in a free press – I can’t help but wonder how Native Americans feel. Do they feel as native South Africans felt under apartheid?  I wonder.

Rob

The Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving week, I sat in a church with my significant other and almost 600 others for the 20^th annual Faiths Together Thanksgiving  program near my home in The Woodlands, Texas. This celebration promotes religious acceptance and convenes the area’s faith traditions for an evening of music, inspirational messages, fellowship, and food. Some congregations refuse participation apparently out of a reluctance to join in services with certain other religious groups. Nevertheless, the program brings together  Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus. and many other faith groups in a learning experience about one another and a celebration of commonality, not an accentuation of difference.

As I sat there listening, for example, as a Muslim professor described the numerous references to Jesus in the Quran and watching the joyous faces in a choir made up of

members from seven or eight different congregations, I felt especially thankful for living in a country where such a thing can happen. Despite America’s imperfections, we get many things right, religious freedom being one of them. Increasing hatred based on religious bias notwithstanding, our First Amendment and its twin guarantees of freedom from the tyranny of a state sanctioned church and from government interference in worship, including the right not to worship at all, stands almost alone in the world in its protection of religious choice. Citizens of many countries could never attend a program like Tuesday’s. I give thanks such a thing can happen in my country.

Henry

In my childhood, Thanksgiving was an exceptionally joyful time for interacting with family and friends.  The fall colors,

wonderful aromas, the school and church plays, and visits with family members made my world a beautiful, safe place full of love and enjoyment. There was a continuing expression of thankfulness at home, school, and church.  Our church, in fact, distributed dinners to the needy, though I didn’t then understand the depth of poverty and want in our world.

As the years passed, Thanksgiving became more complex. Yes, we still enjoyed family and friends and I helped our church distribute meals to the needy. I got my kids involved by promising a great breakfast at a restaurant if they woke up early enough to help. The bribe worked.

                          

In the midst of this joy, a pervasive sadness attached itself to me, a sadness I haven’t shaken. As we give thanks for our bounty, I think of all the pain, hunger, loneliness, and hopelessness far too many people across the globe feel. So, I increase my giving and I volunteer more, searching for ways of helping, and I guess, quelling that sadness.

I’ve concluded sorrow may be the price we pay for refusing to express the kind of love that would help those in need. We have the resources and technical skill that would end hunger, but we don’t. Practical solutions are complex and we erect walls of indifference and apathy. Suppose, however, each of us found a way to make some difference each day. We might stumble upon a movement. 

How can I ask for Blessings

On the Universe

And not universal Blessing?

Though I cannot comprehend All

I can entertain the notion of All

And

Wish you well

While enhancing that solitary Blessing

With the constant universal march of Grace

Does absolution follow?