Already they’ve started hawking Christmas wares. This is the first day of October! You’ll pardon my Grinch persona, but this early trading on the Spirit of Christmas does anything but inspire a festive mood. A TV ad on Oct. 4 with Bing Crosby wearing a wreath around his head singing the much-beloved White Christmas and all for only $12.98 plus shipping and handling does not give me a warm glow.
This early and offensive Christmas-theme commerce is linked intrinsically to the money god, not the Son of God. Christmas is a sacred celebration. The observance is gentle and quiet – full of the silence and serenity of awe. “He was known to be of humble estate,” the Scripture says. But where is the regard for the holiness of Christmas in this loud exploitation?
Celebration, of its very nature, implies waiting, anticipation, implies confining a particular focus to a particular time. Celebration also implies accomplishment. Things have to come to fulfillment before we celebrate them. Otherwise our celebration is empty, devoid of its reason for being.
My kids look forward to their birthdays, and rightly so. We do not, however, begin celebrating their birthdays three months in advance; nor do we emphasize the celebration until much closer to the date itself. We don’t want our children to be deprived of the celebration they deserve by causing it to be a vapid afterthought to a running hype.
I will grant that there is such a thing as the Christmas season. However, this ain’t it. We celebrate the harvest season during harvest season. We do not, however, celebrate bringing in sheaves in July! or June!
Frankly there is something decadent about beginning the Christmas celebration on the first of October. It’s an unfair assault on people’s sensibilities, and all this razzle-dazzle – particularly so soon – is a clear example of modern idolatry: the worship of money.
Sometimes I think that money has become the only real value in our society. If it has to do with money, people will take notice, act, be concerned. It’s the first good. Spiritual matters, affairs of conscience, issues of the heart and soul have become irrelevant, expendable – nice, but who cares? What matters is money. Money has become literally a god.
Merchants declare that if they don’t make it at Christmas, they don’t make it – and heads bow in sympathetic assent. Let the unbridled consumerism begin! No matter that people become numbed into indifference. No matter that the standard of right conscience is whether the right gift has been procured, indeed that the right number of gifts have been purchased. No matter that people become callous and frayed and pressured – Buy early! Buy here! Buy now! Buy more!
Does the Babe in Bethlehem desire that people incur unconscionable debt, panged by some materialistic guilt to give the very best somebody else’s money can buy? And what of gift receivers? Do we droop in disappointment if we don’t get enough, just what we wanted, just the right thing? I read the truth in my own heart. I feel the struggle. I’m not immune or above it all.
It is, of course, pointless to protest these proceedings. We have no defense save in the quiet place God gave each of us within. We know that retreat, but we forget about it sometimes – forget the sweetness and truth and light we have found there.
Giving is good, but a gush of extravagance is a distortion of that goodness. Receiving is a blessing, but tempered with anything but gratitude is an insult to that blessing. Celebration is natural, but unnatural if unrelenting and lacking fulfillment.
Pope John Paul II, in a message to the laity while in San Francisco, said that we will be a witness to Christ by the way we live and by the way we refuse to live. I refuse to allow Christmas to become an empty, giddy, hyperactive succession of weeks for me and my family. I opt to wait.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on October 18th, 1987
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Scrooge and Thomas
The wearing of white vestments concludes this Sunday, marking the end of another Christmas season and the resumption of another year of bad rap for my friend Ebenezer Scrooge.
The fictional Ebenezer and my very real patron saint, Thomas the Apostle, both have fallen heir to an outrageous and unkind legacy, their reputations sullied beyond any consistency with the facts.
Call someone a Scrooge and you should be calling him a kind fellow, generous, “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town or borough, in the good old world.” Trouble is, we still hold Scrooge to be miserly and sour, insensitive to the great chain of suffering to be found amongst his neighbors.
It’s also popular to think immediately of Thomas when encountering someone struggling with belief. “Doubting Thomases” they are called; but, of course, St. Thomas was a man of great faith. How many of us find ourselves repeating his words when we behold the host at the elevation: “My Lord and my God!”
It is true that Scrooge was a miser and Thomas refused to believe until he had seen the Lord himself. But the fact is and the point is that these men changed. Had Scrooge refused to turn around or Thomas perdured in his unbelief, what edification would we have had, what Gospel truth attained?
O, I’m a staunch defender of Scrooge and Thomas, all right; but I’m afraid I have trouble letting people off the hook, too. Would that I did not find it so easy to judge people, put them in a category, form an opinion. I can build a whole personality around a tiny bit of gossip. Obviously, the solution to it all is to allow people to have their faults, to observe the sturdy pile of timber in my eye, and to remember that God doesn’t have favorites.
The rub comes most keenly, I have observed, when the rub comes home. That is, I resist change because that means I will have to be different. I suspect the fictional neighbors of the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge were not a little suspicious of this now gregarious, now benevolent fellow. Doubtless he had to change a lot and for a long time before the townsfolk would hazard a fresh look at the old pinchpenny. Thomas has been dead these nineteen hundred-odd years, been canonized, but we still haven’t given him the benefit of the doubt.
So there is then this social aspect which militates against conversion, I think. I resolve to stop swearing, but in the company of the old crowd, will I find acceptance? I lay off the booze. What will my comrades say? Dare I show displeasure at some racial epithet? Do I laugh at the dirty joke?
I can’t believe it wasn’t humanly hard for Jesus when they sneered and scoffed. “We know you,” they said. “You can’t possibly be anything special. You’re the carpenter’s son. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” You can almost hear the round of laughter.
In a way, Scrooge had an easy conversion. He had a bunch of money to be generous with, which doubtless brought a degree of instant acceptance of his newfound state. The most Christ-like figure in the whole tale had to be Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who accepted and loved his uncle in his former state as well as his latter.
Thomas, to be sure, found himself without a leg to stand on, faced with the irrefutable contradiction of his lack of faith, and so fell to his knees. Perhaps he was embarrassed. Without doubt, he was forever changed – despite himself.
Sometimes I have seen the clear path to follow and have shied away. Given gobs of grave and unmistakable direction, I have stood firm in the old way. Fear of being no longer the hail good fellow, the wag, the center of attention, I have remained the un-Christ-like version of the Christian. Rather than stand by the Carpenter’s Son, the Nazarene, I have chosen the path of weakness and habit and pride. Jesus gave us a stand-in for us all to put his finger in the nail prints, his hand in the side. He gave us Thomas. He knew us. He wanted us to have not the slightest reason to doubt that He was alive.
I cannot understand my diffidence, my refusal to surrender. Faced with the same disarming clarity Thomas faced, I know what to do, but do not. Still, hope reigns in ordinary time, too.
Scrooge became a good man. Thomas came to believe.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 11th, 1987
The fictional Ebenezer and my very real patron saint, Thomas the Apostle, both have fallen heir to an outrageous and unkind legacy, their reputations sullied beyond any consistency with the facts.
Call someone a Scrooge and you should be calling him a kind fellow, generous, “as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town or borough, in the good old world.” Trouble is, we still hold Scrooge to be miserly and sour, insensitive to the great chain of suffering to be found amongst his neighbors.
It’s also popular to think immediately of Thomas when encountering someone struggling with belief. “Doubting Thomases” they are called; but, of course, St. Thomas was a man of great faith. How many of us find ourselves repeating his words when we behold the host at the elevation: “My Lord and my God!”
It is true that Scrooge was a miser and Thomas refused to believe until he had seen the Lord himself. But the fact is and the point is that these men changed. Had Scrooge refused to turn around or Thomas perdured in his unbelief, what edification would we have had, what Gospel truth attained?
O, I’m a staunch defender of Scrooge and Thomas, all right; but I’m afraid I have trouble letting people off the hook, too. Would that I did not find it so easy to judge people, put them in a category, form an opinion. I can build a whole personality around a tiny bit of gossip. Obviously, the solution to it all is to allow people to have their faults, to observe the sturdy pile of timber in my eye, and to remember that God doesn’t have favorites.
The rub comes most keenly, I have observed, when the rub comes home. That is, I resist change because that means I will have to be different. I suspect the fictional neighbors of the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge were not a little suspicious of this now gregarious, now benevolent fellow. Doubtless he had to change a lot and for a long time before the townsfolk would hazard a fresh look at the old pinchpenny. Thomas has been dead these nineteen hundred-odd years, been canonized, but we still haven’t given him the benefit of the doubt.
So there is then this social aspect which militates against conversion, I think. I resolve to stop swearing, but in the company of the old crowd, will I find acceptance? I lay off the booze. What will my comrades say? Dare I show displeasure at some racial epithet? Do I laugh at the dirty joke?
I can’t believe it wasn’t humanly hard for Jesus when they sneered and scoffed. “We know you,” they said. “You can’t possibly be anything special. You’re the carpenter’s son. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” You can almost hear the round of laughter.
In a way, Scrooge had an easy conversion. He had a bunch of money to be generous with, which doubtless brought a degree of instant acceptance of his newfound state. The most Christ-like figure in the whole tale had to be Scrooge’s nephew Fred, who accepted and loved his uncle in his former state as well as his latter.
Thomas, to be sure, found himself without a leg to stand on, faced with the irrefutable contradiction of his lack of faith, and so fell to his knees. Perhaps he was embarrassed. Without doubt, he was forever changed – despite himself.
Sometimes I have seen the clear path to follow and have shied away. Given gobs of grave and unmistakable direction, I have stood firm in the old way. Fear of being no longer the hail good fellow, the wag, the center of attention, I have remained the un-Christ-like version of the Christian. Rather than stand by the Carpenter’s Son, the Nazarene, I have chosen the path of weakness and habit and pride. Jesus gave us a stand-in for us all to put his finger in the nail prints, his hand in the side. He gave us Thomas. He knew us. He wanted us to have not the slightest reason to doubt that He was alive.
I cannot understand my diffidence, my refusal to surrender. Faced with the same disarming clarity Thomas faced, I know what to do, but do not. Still, hope reigns in ordinary time, too.
Scrooge became a good man. Thomas came to believe.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 11th, 1987
Monday, December 24, 2007
A Christmas Story
Herbert was a Catholic gentleman; of that there was no doubt. He liked his drinks, but at 82, he was of age and no one questioned his moderation. He’d take a half turn on the barstool and all the whiskey in the shot glass; and then, like the whiskey didn’t faze him, he’d tell his stories.
“We lived down below the Sisters, went over to St. Mary’s to church. I was in the choir over there. I used to take the Sisters fresh cream so just so they’d have fresh cream to cream their coffee,” he said.
It was one Christmas morning, Herbert recalled. He got up before daylight that morning. Before he had gone to sleep, he’d prayed: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard and rule and guide.” Waking was bland and painful. But this was Christmas morning and something about it, we, he was just automatically peaceful it seemed, and full of joy inside himself. Outside there spun a flock of black and gray chickens. Snow had fallen and was falling.
He had to feed the chickens before Mass; but, boy, it was down below cold outside, that morning it was. Herbert stiffened to the cold as he strewed feed on the frozen ground. He talked to those chickens just like they were somebody that day. He wanted the chickens to share his joy.
Five-thirty Mass on Christmas morning was a large, quiet, reverent, freshly cooled bunch of people. The servers lit the candles for the low Mass. Herbert heard the shuffle of the altar boy’s cassock as he put the book. The big crib off to one side had a single bulb shining down on the Baby Jesus. In the background was a painted, dawning scene extending to Bethlehem.
Herbert walked the long way back home as the snow came harder. His mother fixed him one of those only-on-Christmas warm kind of breakfasts, creamed coffee, all. It was good. “Herbert, you’re not going back to the 10:30 this morning, are you? That snow is really coming down. You stay home now. It’s Christmas,” his mother said. No, he said. He was going back. Father Sullivan was depending on him.
Father Sullivan paced the chancel, half reading his Breviary and half losing his place, mumbling to the congregation about Mass starting late. He stopped, though, and espied a bowed, bustling, snow-stomping Herbert in the vestibule.
“Ah, we have a choir,” he said, and he turned for the sacristy to vest for the High Mass.
Herbert climbed to the choir-loft to find not a soul. He looked down at the altar with the high candles lit. There were poinsettias. St. Joseph and Mary watched over the Christ Child as Father Sullivan followed the server out, genuflected and turned to face the congregation with aspergillum.
“Asperges me,” Father Sullivan sang, as Herbert’s glance lowered to meet the rising gaze of the priest. There was an awkward pause. “Domine hyssopo et mundabor,” Herbert sang, embarrassed, alone. He sang the Kyrie, St. Jerome’s Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. His embarrassment eased and left him. At the end of Mass, the congregation joined Herbert in a triumphant “Adeste Fideles.”
Father Sullivan genuflected, turned and looked up at Herbert in the choir-loft. A beaming smile crowded Father’s face. “Herbert,” he said, “may I see you a moment in the sacristy, please.” Herbert knelt and Father gave him his blessing. He then produced an array of sacramental objects, asking Herbert to choose something that he liked. “Herbert,” he said, “the way you sang the morning has made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert, staying on his knees, said; “Father Sullivan, instead of these, well, Father, I don’t want to sing in the choir. I want to be an altar boy. I’ve always heard, Father, that if you were ever an altar boy that you’d never die without the assistance of a priest.”
Father smiled gently. “You sing in the choir, Herbert. And when you die, for sure a priest will be there.”
“O thank you, Father,” Herbert said. “You have made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert Howard was a lean fellow with a weathered face. His means were humble, though he had a big house. His wife was gone and he lived alone, using only a few rooms in the place. He enjoyed the company of the neighborhood tavern. People knew him as a religious man. Herbert died Oct 25, 1978, just after a priest had given him the last rites of the Church. He was 85. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 21st, 1986
“We lived down below the Sisters, went over to St. Mary’s to church. I was in the choir over there. I used to take the Sisters fresh cream so just so they’d have fresh cream to cream their coffee,” he said.
It was one Christmas morning, Herbert recalled. He got up before daylight that morning. Before he had gone to sleep, he’d prayed: “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this night be at my side, to light and guard and rule and guide.” Waking was bland and painful. But this was Christmas morning and something about it, we, he was just automatically peaceful it seemed, and full of joy inside himself. Outside there spun a flock of black and gray chickens. Snow had fallen and was falling.
He had to feed the chickens before Mass; but, boy, it was down below cold outside, that morning it was. Herbert stiffened to the cold as he strewed feed on the frozen ground. He talked to those chickens just like they were somebody that day. He wanted the chickens to share his joy.
Five-thirty Mass on Christmas morning was a large, quiet, reverent, freshly cooled bunch of people. The servers lit the candles for the low Mass. Herbert heard the shuffle of the altar boy’s cassock as he put the book. The big crib off to one side had a single bulb shining down on the Baby Jesus. In the background was a painted, dawning scene extending to Bethlehem.
Herbert walked the long way back home as the snow came harder. His mother fixed him one of those only-on-Christmas warm kind of breakfasts, creamed coffee, all. It was good. “Herbert, you’re not going back to the 10:30 this morning, are you? That snow is really coming down. You stay home now. It’s Christmas,” his mother said. No, he said. He was going back. Father Sullivan was depending on him.
Father Sullivan paced the chancel, half reading his Breviary and half losing his place, mumbling to the congregation about Mass starting late. He stopped, though, and espied a bowed, bustling, snow-stomping Herbert in the vestibule.
“Ah, we have a choir,” he said, and he turned for the sacristy to vest for the High Mass.
Herbert climbed to the choir-loft to find not a soul. He looked down at the altar with the high candles lit. There were poinsettias. St. Joseph and Mary watched over the Christ Child as Father Sullivan followed the server out, genuflected and turned to face the congregation with aspergillum.
“Asperges me,” Father Sullivan sang, as Herbert’s glance lowered to meet the rising gaze of the priest. There was an awkward pause. “Domine hyssopo et mundabor,” Herbert sang, embarrassed, alone. He sang the Kyrie, St. Jerome’s Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei. His embarrassment eased and left him. At the end of Mass, the congregation joined Herbert in a triumphant “Adeste Fideles.”
Father Sullivan genuflected, turned and looked up at Herbert in the choir-loft. A beaming smile crowded Father’s face. “Herbert,” he said, “may I see you a moment in the sacristy, please.” Herbert knelt and Father gave him his blessing. He then produced an array of sacramental objects, asking Herbert to choose something that he liked. “Herbert,” he said, “the way you sang the morning has made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert, staying on his knees, said; “Father Sullivan, instead of these, well, Father, I don’t want to sing in the choir. I want to be an altar boy. I’ve always heard, Father, that if you were ever an altar boy that you’d never die without the assistance of a priest.”
Father smiled gently. “You sing in the choir, Herbert. And when you die, for sure a priest will be there.”
“O thank you, Father,” Herbert said. “You have made my Christmas for me.”
Herbert Howard was a lean fellow with a weathered face. His means were humble, though he had a big house. His wife was gone and he lived alone, using only a few rooms in the place. He enjoyed the company of the neighborhood tavern. People knew him as a religious man. Herbert died Oct 25, 1978, just after a priest had given him the last rites of the Church. He was 85. –T.R.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on December 21st, 1986
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