Why I Still Love Christmas - a Reflection

Jewish convert and Carmelite martyr of WW II St. Edith Stein said of Christmas: "The very word diffuses a charm which few human hearts can resist." Granting this as true a question arises. Why? Why are even non-believers drawn into the "Christmas spirit"? Why do even the most unhappy and Scrooge-like people stuff a few bills into the buckets of the Salvation Army when they hear those tinkling bells? What is this charm St. Edith speaks of?

At root, Christmas is a feast of love; not the Lennonite "all you need is love" but authentic human love. Christmas triggers something in us that makes us helpless to deny a phenomenon that presses itself upon us with all the urgency of an important fact. Indeed, when we reflect upon this insistent "thing" occurring within us we become aware that it is, in fact, a fact; the most basic fact of human existence - our need to love and be loved. It's important particularly to note our increased sense of the need to love. Stampedes at Wal-Mart notwithstanding, people generally are kinder, even (dare I say it) more charitable. We see each other more as neighbor at the end of December than we do at any other time of the year, during which we are more likely to look upon each other as annoying hindrances to a speedy and well planned day free of the presence of others (with the exception of those with whom we share our home.) Not so at Christmas. Not only do we suffer the presence of others, we actively seek it out. Even the homeless, against whom we arm ourselves with lethal excuses, are welcomed into the warm glow of this mysterious Christmas beneficence that, despite ourselves, wins over our hearts. Most soup kitchens will say they have no shortage of volunteers from Thanksgiving to Christmas. The charm of Christmas indeed.

Sadly, we also see the tragic manifestation of the effects of a lack of love at this time of year. Those who, for myriad reasons, have felt uninvited to the feast suffer greatly at Christmas. Many people report feeling depressed. More suicides occur during the Christmas season. Like blood in a clogged artery, for these people the free flow of divine love somehow is stopped on its course through human channels leaving their hearts deprived of its life source. Their condition becomes acute at this time because in the face of the Christmas fact, the human need for love, many find that need unmet. Some despair of ever being healed. Love is the root of Christmas, the surprising bud that breaks into blossom in the midst of winter releasing a fragrance without which we know we cannot live. But this fragrance can only be found where man knows he is not alone. Thus, Christmas reminds us not only of our own humanity and its concomitant vulnerability but it makes us see the same humanity in others. Moreover, Christmas tells us something about the nature of that humanity: namely, that it is very good.

In this year's special edition for the Christmas octave, Magnificat prints a short essay by James Monti entitled "Christmas with the Saints." In it, Monti notes that in the December 23, 2005, Spanish edition of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano "there appeared a photograph of Pope Benedict XVI kneeling on the floor in a room of the Apostolic Palace, admiring with delight the miniature creche beneath a Christmas tree bedecked with lights, tinsel, and Christmas balls." Such a photo is worth noting. At first glance, it seems merely a photo opportunity showing the Holy Father doing his papal duty. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals a certain oddness. Here is an elderly man in white cassock, a shock of even whiter hair smoothed back over his head, a man who is the leader of over a billion people worldwide, a man once called John Paul's "pit-bull" and now called by some our "German Shepherd," here is this man in relation to whom none can remain ambivalent kneeling like a boy told to do his prayers before what for many American families amounts to little more than a sweet pastoral cultural icon. How many dads kneel before the creche in their home and lead their family in prayer? How many world leaders kneel at all? Pope Benedict, who is both spiritual father and world leader (in that order), is showing the way to find "delight" in Christmas.

Christmas, after all, is a feast. In Catholic nomenclature, we call it the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord. The word feast has the connotation of abundance. One of the definitions offered for the word feast by the Random House College Dictionary is "any rich or abundant meal." As a verb, a definition offered is "to gratify or delight." Thus, it is seldom that you will find anyone gloomy at a feast. At the masque in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, even Don Pedro is unable to indulge his aching ego after his proposal of marriage is politely refused by Beatrice. Feasting will have its way with us. It is an occasion charged with irresistible delight. This fact is rather unfortunately attested to by the number of ill-considered liaisons that occur in the wake of Christmas parties. What is essentially an agapic love rooted in a general attitude of thankfulness for the goodness of human life is sometimes confused because this love can flow all of sudden so freely through our hearts and with such ebullience that we experience it somewhat viscerally, which renders it to our emotions as a romantic love for a particular person. There is also often a keen sense of desire that presses us to find fulfillment though there is none since it is a desire for the infinite. Of course, large quantities of alcohol cause great confusion in these matters. It's generally a good idea for men and women not to go a'tippling together at Christmas time.

Returning to my erstwhile point about feasting it occurs to me that I have never seen a person crying at a Christmas mass. I have seen it on Good Friday. To that, of course, one must contend that to compare Christmas to Good Friday is to compare life to death. Yet, in the fact of Christ, the two are not mutually exclusive. They are opposite sides of the same coin - love. To be born is to die. Two other feast days intrude upon the Christmas octave bearing this very message. The feast day of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the church, and the feast day of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents. To be born is to die. But how invaluable were those deaths of the early church! Invaluable because of the fact of Christmas. That was a time when, in more precise terms, to be born in Christ, which was to be really born, was to be killed. It is not inconceivable such a time may return. Just as weeping is fitting on Good Friday, Christmas is a time to rejoice. As Ecclesiastes tells us, there is "a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (3:4). It could be said our Good Friday weeping is the indecipherable echo of our Christmas rejoicing.

Like everything Christ did, and like all the points along the slow turn of the liturgical cycle, there is something organic, something very human about Christmas. At this purely human level, we rejoice because "a child is born." One has to be inhuman not to experience the joyous wonder brought about by a new human life. Yet, also like everything Christ did, Christmas does not unfold only on a human plane. There is a suprahuman dimension to this birth. No doubt this could be said of every birth and good parents of faith would make the same claim with the birth of their own children. But I can forget the supernatural fact of human creation when it is in the crib of my neighbor. When my friend calls to tell me a child is born, I am joyful. He calls to include me in the feast of this good news and I delight in the abundance. The next day I go back to work and my busy schedule and forget that good news almost entirely. My friend's news is indeed good but it is usual. It is not life-changing for me except in a contingent way. That birth does not compel me to contemplate it, dwell within its meaning, ponder it in my heart weekly, daily, hourly. That baby is not the resolution of all my restlessness. Seeing him or her is not to find what my heart is perennially seeking except in a momentary, analogous way. This fact in no way diminishes or belittles the significance or importance of the birth of my friend's child. It is what I expect it should be. In fact, it highlights the fact, always good to recall, that we humans are creatures and we musn't look laterally to find fulfillment. We must look up to the One Who came down.

This good news, so ancient and ever new, is inescapable and unforgettable. Christ's birth is the central fact of history. Everything a man thinks, believes, does, and is is in relation to that birth because it is that birth, that word spoken from heaven into human history, that creates the epistemological context for all inquiry and knowing. The Incarnation is the centerpiece of all human endeavor. Neutrality is impossible in relation to this event that will not stop unfolding. All of man's effort to find and possess his destined course can be summed up as either an attempt to enter the manger scene like the Magi or an attempt to burn it to ashes like Herod. There are none left unaffected by the Christian claim of the Incarnation.

In Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Charles Ryder, an agnostic, has a conversation with his friend Sebastian Flyte, a nominal Catholic. Charles says, "But, my dear Sebastian, you can't seriously believe it all. I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass." Sebastian says, "Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea." Dissatisfied Charles continues, "But you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea." "But I do," Sebastian replies. "That's how I believe." This is why churches are packed at Christmas. The human heart is inexorably drawn on by its desire. Ultimately, that can lead us all to only one place. The Christmas story on the whole seems incredible. Yet it sounds no more incredible than the idea of giant planets flying around each other in space at incomprehensible speeds without ever crashing into each other. The Incarnation is an idea beautiful to contemplate. And it is beauty, finally, that compels. "Man will be saved by beauty, or nothing," Dostoevsky said. Pope Benedict XVI put it this way: "the beautiful is knowledge in a superior form since it arouses man to the real greatness of the truth. True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of beauty that wounds man. Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction." Beauty is the fulfillment of all human longing and something in us tells us that we shall find that beauty in Christ. That is how we believe. "Beauty and love form the true consolation in the world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection" (Pope Benedict XVI). The beauty of it all...the loveliness of the idea... This is why the Holy Father can kneel and admire "with delight" the creche beneath the tree just as he may have done as a boy at home. This is our reasonable cause for joy. This is why we all feel a little younger at Christmas. This is why, like Mary, we travel many miles to be with others. A phone call or greeting card simply won't do. Presence is needed. I need yours and you need mine. Christmas at once exposes our deepest vulnerability (in many ways) and satisfies it. It mysteriously reveals to us the deepest longings of our human hearts and then draws them into a divine heart, where we find the comfort of knowing we are not alone and that in time, and then beyond time, those longings will be fulfilled ceaselessly. It is a feast. It is a redemptive feast. And even if, for most people, this lovely idea is only grasped for a day, what a beautiful day it is.

This is why I still love Christmas.

Digby Figworth