#456: What Would a “Hillary America” Be Like?

Base on Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, it is possible to project the impact of her proposed policies on American Life.

I am repeating last week’s thought experiment, this time for Hillary Clinton.  Like last time, I’ll assume Clinton is a serious political leader. I will assume she wins November’s election.  I will assume she follows through on her acceptance speech agenda. I will even assume she is successful in implementing her proposed policies. These are all big “ifs,” but they allow us to imagine America under the leadership of Hillary Clinton, and to compare that image with Catholic Social Teaching (CST).

Based on Clinton’s own words, we can expect the following;

In Foreign Policy: We can expect continued war (especially air war and drone war) and occupation aimed at nation building and regime change.  We can also expect more war against ISIS and other terrorist organizations. We can expect support for allies, and special support for Israel, with no stated concern for the Palestinians or their supporters. We can expect continued tense relations with Russia. We can expect trade tensions with China.  But we can also expect strong efforts at diplomatic solutions, as with Iran. 

The first of these expectations is clearly out of step with Catholic Social Teaching, as almost all Catholic leaders opposed the invasion of Iraq and other similar attempts at regime change or nation building.  Most of the other elements are also more or less in conflict with CST too, except Clinton’s preference for diplomatic agreements over confrontation. 

Catholic Social Teaching has also long shown a major concern for the relation between the advanced industrial nations and the developing world. On this significant issue, Clinton (like Trump) was totally silent during her speech. Her concern about globalization’s impact focuses, not on developing nations, but on the US. We can expect her to fight for our middle class, but not against global poverty. In this respect, both Clinton and Trump talk about solving terror without solving poverty, as if terror has a military solution—a position Pope Francis has soundly rejected.

On Public Safety and Social Harmony: Here Clinton promised many things: no wall with Mexico, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, reform of the criminal justice system to build trust in communities and defend rights, common sense gun reforms, no ban on any religion or religious group, comprehensive immigration reform, and protection for the right to choose abortion. Except for this last, most of Clinton’s promises match Catholic Social Teaching. On other “culture war” issues where we could expect more conflicts with CST, she was mostly silent.

Clinton’s promises on immigration are especially supportive of CST. The Church regards migration “for a better life” as a human right, a concept unknown to Trump based on his words.

On Economics.  Based on her words, we can expect many initiatives to reduce income inequality. Clinton called on Wall Street, corporations, and the very rich to begin “paying their fair share”—which sounds like higher taxes for the 1%. She also promised to end tax breaks and loopholes and collect taxes from corporations that outsource jobs. We can expect a “living wage” minimum wage. We can expect large government investments to create jobs (she promised the largest investment since World War II, which seemed to imply New Deal-style public works jobs). We can expect easier credit for small businesses.

All this fits (somewhat roughly) with Catholic Social Teaching’s long-standing critique of “unbridled capitalism,” its calls for income equality and even the redistribution of wealth (Pope Francis labels income inequality “the worst of all social ills”). This contrasts with Trump, who relied entirely on unchecked market forces to improve the economy, and promised to reduce taxes for the wealthy.

On Climate Change. Saying “I believe in science,” Clinton promised to fight climate change and in the process create many new jobs in clean energy. This contrasts with Trump’s total silence about climate change.  Clinton thus supports the same perspective as Catholic Social Teaching in general. But she failed to address the specific concerns of Pope Francis in his major encyclical “Laudato Si,” in which he linked climate change to nearly all global and social unrest, including global poverty and terror. In short, Clinton is against climate change while Trump ignores it—but neither of them connects the dots to our global situation they way Francis has.

On Social Welfare and the Safety Net: Based on Clinton’s words, we can expect more good paying jobs, good schools for all, tuition free college for middle class Americans and debt-free college for all, more training for people to learn trades, and an expansion of Social Security. This contrasts with Trump, who said almost nothing about policies regarding jobs, student debt, poverty, social security, etc. Rather, his speech implied that he expects the unbridled forces of the market to resolve all social problems. Catholic Social Teaching, meanwhile, has long rejected this idea, which Pope Francis himself has referred to as a fraud. So in this contrast Clinton’s positions on social welfare are a closer match with CST.

On the Supreme Court: Trump offered a generic promise to name more conservative justices to the Supreme Court, but Clinton was much more specific. With Clinton, we can expect justices prepared to defend Roe v Wade, expand voting rights, and reverse Citizens United—in short, the most “progressive” SCOTUS in a generation. From the point of view of Catholic Social Teaching, this would be a mixed blessing, raising the prospect of the reinforcing Roe v Wade, but at the same time holding the prospect of many decisions promoting the advancement of a freer, more just society.

In short, the America we can imagine under Clinton mixes many ideas congenial to Catholic Social Teaching (especially on issues like inequality, immigration, and social welfare), some other issues where she simply remains silent (like climate change’s global impact, and third world development), and some issues (like war and abortion) where her position conflicts implicitly or explicitly with Catholic Social Teaching. 

Compared to my Trump posting, I believe my assumptions this time are a bit less problematic.  While I do not find Trump a serious leader, I do find Clinton a potentially strong leader and I do expect her to win. But, given Washington’s gridlock, I doubt that she will succeed in achieving many of her goals, though she will undoubtedly pursue them vigorously. Yet it is still instructive to understand exactly what Clinton (and Trump) are proposing for our country, and how it fits--or does not fit--with the propositions of our faith. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#455: What Would a “Trump America” Be Like?

Base on Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, it is possible to project the impact of his proposed policies on American Life.

 I have decided to try a thought experiment.  I’ll assume Donald trump is a serious political leader.  I will assume he wins November’s election.  I will assume he follows through on his acceptance speech agenda. I will even assume he is successful in implementing his proposed policies. These are all big “ifs,” but they allow us to imagine America under the leadership of Donald Trump, and to compare that image with Catholic Social Teaching.

Based on Trump’s own words, we can expect the following;

In Foreign Policy: We can expect less war and occupation aimed at nation building and regime change.  We can also expect more war against ISIS and other terrorist organizations, and more conflict with Iran.  We can expect special support for Israel, with no stated concern for the Palestinians or their supporters. 

We can expect expanded defense spending to “rebuild our depleted military.” We can expect a trade war with China. 

The first of these expectations is clearly in line with Catholic Social Teaching, as almost all Catholic leaders opposed the invasion of Iraq and other similar attempts at regime change or nation building.  All the other elements are more or less in conflict with Catholic Social Teaching, which has expressed concern for the Palestinian people, and shown a preference for diplomatic agreements (like the one with Iran) over confrontation. 

Catholic Social Teaching has also long shown a major concern for the relation between the advanced industrial nations and the developing world. On this significant issue, Trump was totally silent during his speech. His “America First” agenda is concerned about globalization’s impact, not on developing nations, but only on the US.

On Public Safety and Social Harmony: Based on Trump’s “Law and Order” rhetoric, we can expect more emphasis on police power and its militarization, with no attention to the problem of excessive police force.  Trump also expressed no particular concern about (let alone a solution) for the continuing problem of mass incarceration. 

We can expect some kind of ban on immigrants (and even tourists from France?) from many countries, based either on their faith or on some other type of profiling.  We can expect to see a “Fortress America” with a wall along its southern border, and tightly guarded entry from all sources.  We can expect that many families would be torn apart by deportations due to visa problems and undocumented legal status. 

We can expect full support for the expansion of gun ownership and markets under Trump, who boasted of his support from the National Rifle Association.  We can expect churches to have a tax-exempt license to engage in partisan politics.  And we can expect the culture war issues to be largely ignored, with the possible exception of LGBTQ rights. 

On nearly all of these issues Catholic Social Teaching takes positions significantly different from Trump’s.  This is especially true with regard to Trump’s positions on immigration, as shown by the recent verbal clash between Trump and Pope Francis regarding the U.S.-Mexican border, in which Francis proclaimed that it was “not Christian” to build walls preventing migration. The Church regards migration “for a better life” as a human right, a concept unknown to Trump based on his words.

On Economics.  Trump proposed reducing taxes for everyone.  Thus we can expect that (1) rich Americans will pay less tax, and that (2) income inequality will become even worse than it is now.

We can expect that markets will be unchecked under a president committed to growth at all costs.  We can also expect unchecked industrial practices under a president who opposed regulations.  Finally, we can expect exploding carbon emissions once Trump “lifts restrictions” on energy businesses and coal, oil, fracking, and nuclear energy go unregulated (while renewable like sources like wind, solar, etc got no mention).  We can expect worsened environmental damages and pollution in the absence of regulations on environmental impacts.

All this flies against Catholic Social Teaching’s long-standing critique of “unbridled capitalism,” its calls for income equality and even the redistribution of wealth (Pope Francis labels income inequality “the worst of all social ills”), and conflicts as well with its more recent support  for environmentalism as “care of creation.”

On Climate Change.  In his acceptance speech, Trump was totally silent about climate change; on other occasions, he has been a climate change denier.  So we can expect, not only little US initiative to combat and adapt to climate change, but we can even expect the promotion of policies that will accelerate climate change, such as the removal of restrictions on energy practices.  This is clearly contrary to Catholic Social Teaching in general and to the specific concerns of Pope Francis in his major encyclical “Laudato Si,” in which he linked climate change to nearly all global and social unrest, including global poverty and terror.

On Social Welfare and the Safety Net: Trump said almost nothing about policies regarding jobs, student debt, poverty, crime, mass incarceration, social security, etc.  But his speech implied, and earlier speeches have made explicit, that he expects an unregulated market to generate “trillions of dollars” in a free market expansion that would automatically fix all these problems.  In short, Trump presents himself not as a neo-conservative, not as a neo-liberal, but as a classic laissez-faire liberal capitalist, who expects the unbridled forces of the market to resolve all social problems. Catholic Social Teaching, meanwhile, has long rejected this idea, which Pope Francis himself has referred to as a fraud.

On the Supreme Court: Trump has promised to name strict constructionists to the Supreme Court, so we can imagine the likely outcome: a SCOTUS more conservative than any we’ve had in our lifetime.  From the point of view of Catholic Social Teaching, this would be a mixed blessing, raising the prospect of the reversal of Roe V Wade, but at the same time holding the prospect of many decisions inhibiting the advancement of a freer, more just society.

In short, the American we can imagine under Trump mixes a few ideas congenial to Catholic Social Teaching (he is less combative about international relations), some other issues where he simply remains silent (like climate change, income inequality, and third world development), and many more issues where his position conflicts implicitly or explicitly with Catholic Social Teaching. 

Personally, I believe my assumptions at the outset are highly problematic.  I do not find Trump a serious leader, I do not expect him to win, I doubt that he would succeed in achieving his goals even if he actually pursued them.  Yet it is still instructive to understand exactly what the man is proposing for our country, and how it fits--or does not fit--with the propositions of our faith. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#119 Vatican II: Legacy and Hope

   With the resignation of Benedict XVI, and the prospect of a new Pope within a few weeks, it is more urgent than ever that we make the 50th anniversary of Vatican II a time of renewed clarity about and commitment to its legacy. The following is the second part of my postings from Vatican II's 40th anniversary:

   In my last post, I suggested we risk losing the legacy of Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) unless the “Vatican II Generation” convinces Catholics too young to remember the Council that Vatican II is too important to forget.  

Pope Paul VI Addresses the United Nations, October 1965

   But why do we risk forgetting Vatican II? And why is it so important to remember?

The most obvious reason for forgetting Vatican II is that 21^st century Catholicism presents a troublingly negative image for younger Catholics, especially in America. The clergy sex abuse crisis has scandalized and depressed many Catholics, and provided others with a convenient excuse to disengage from Church life. The hypocritical and dishonest leadership of Bishops caused even wider damage than the abusive behavior of priests. The result: a self-inflicted crisis of credibility that leaves church authorities powerless to command the respect and compliance of their flock—and obstructs our view of Vatican II’s great accomplishment.

But there is a larger shadow obscuring the memory of Vatican II: the papacy of John-Paul II. This is ironic, because in many respects John-Paul II’s papacy was a product of the Council, impossible to imagine except in the post-Conciliar era. But the cult of his personality has obscured the Council’s importance. For millions of younger Catholics, JP II is their Vatican II – which is to say their Catholic identity is not as “post-Vatican II Catholics” but as “John-Paul II” Catholics.

For example: it has become commonplace in the media, both Catholic and secular, to treat the history of late 20^th century Catholicism as though John-Paul II was its most important feature. As I argued last week, both John XXIII and Paul VI regarded Vatican II as nothing less than the rebirth of the Catholic Church 20 centuries after its founding—an event of much greater importance than any one man’s reign as Pope.

But assuming I am correct that (1) Vatican II is too important to forget and (2) recent events may make us forget –what exactly is the legacy that we risk losing?

Unfortunately, Catholics have floundered for the answer for 40 years. Too often Catholics have sought answers in the overwhelming volume of the sixteen documents of Vatican II. In my own view, those documents provide clear messages

about Vatican II’s reforms, but they do not send a clear, unambiguous, uncluttered message about the purpose of the Council as a whole! Beyond the reforms, everyone seems to know that Vatican II was about “Renewal” – but we have been arguing about what that means for 40 years.

For me, the most direct way to understand what “Renewal” means (and therefore understand Vatican II’s real purpose and legacy) is to listen carefully to the eloquence and unmistakable clarity of Vatican II’s chief architect, Pope Paul VI.

On October 8, 1965, Paul became the first “Pilgrim Pope” when he traveled to the New World to address the UN in New York. Vatican II would end just eight weeks later, but until now it had remained a distant blip on most Americans’ radar. Paul used this speech to announce the Council’s agenda in the most public way imaginable:

We here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples…The hour has struck for our "conversion," for personal transformation, for interior renewal. We must get used to thinking of humanity in a new way...With a new manner, too, of conceiving the paths of history and the destiny of the world...The edifice of modern civilization must be built upon spiritual principles which alone can, not only support it, but even illuminate and animate it.

Listen to this man. He is speaking to the whole world, not just to Catholics. He says the Church has been seeking “a conversation” with that world. He says our new moment in history demands a new understanding of humanity and the human future. He says that will only happen through an inner, “personal transformation” in which spiritual principles animate the whole of our civilized life together.

This agenda goes ‘way beyond turning altars around or shifting rituals from Latin to English. It is about a new relationship between the Church and the world.

Two months later, as Vatican II ended, Paul VI showed he was not naïvely assuming that modern culture was always friendly to Christian values. Rather, he was challenging the Church to reach out to and befriend even a hostile, secular modernity. 

For Paul, charity was the Council’s “principal religious feature.” In stark contrast to the condemnations and siege mentality of past centuries, Vatican II always approached controverted issues with its mind on understanding and its heart on reconciliation. Paul chose to illustrate with the example of secular humanism:

Secular humanism…has, in a certain sense, defied the council. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it.

Over the last 25 years, the Church has implemented Vatican II’s call to reach out to the world – how else to explain John Paul II’s constant globetrotting? But even while reaching out, the Church in recent years has often seemed fearful and hostile, rather than charitable and sympathetic.

It’s understandable that many Catholics are disturbed by developments since Vatican II: the spread of legal abortion, the declining numbers of churchgoers, priests, brothers, and sisters; the growing secularization and consumerization of modern society; the rise of terrorism; the decline of “traditional moral values.”

Any of these might be reasons to abandon the positive, open, optimistic attitude, except for one thing: all the troubling developments since Vatican II pale before the horrific developments before Vatican II. Think of WWI (60,000 dead the first day at Verdun). Think of WW II, (over 30 million dead, a majority women and children). Think of the Holocaust, and its systematic attempt to wipe out a people. Think of the Cold War and the global terror it spawned while condemning most of the world to abject poverty.

Here’s the bottom line: if those horrors did not stop John XXIII and Paul VI from proclaiming their vision of a friendly, optimistic partnership between a “reborn” Church and a “transformed” world, why should we, 40 years later, fall prey to pessimism, fear, and hostility? Granted, these 40 years have not produced the kind of spiritually “illuminated” civilization that Paul envisioned at the U.N. But was anyone naïve enough to think that kind of renewal could be accomplished in a single generation?

Paul VI proposed a “conversation with the entire world” to make that vision real. Forty years later, we must ask: are we, as Church, still speaking to the world? And is the world still listening? If the answer is yes, then the conversation continues, the legacy is intact, and Renewal is still our hope for the future.

But if the answer is no, we should not be surprised if the future is bleak, and we have only ourselves to blame if we fail to retrieve the vision of Vatican II and convince the next generation to pick up that conversation anew.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2005

348: What’s Happening to OUR Holiday?

This is the last of my Christmas flashbacks. It comes from early this year, looking back on Christmas 2011.

As the Christmas Season finally concluded last week with the Feast of the Epiphany, my mind remained cluttered with varied and contrary thoughts about the way our culture is treating Christmas. Even after more than two weeks’ reflection, my view is not completely clear. Still, I would like to share my thinking so readers can do some thinking of their own. Bear with me as I move from point to point; it may or may not add up to a coherent argument.

First, there is little surprise that what Catholics call “Advent” is virtually invisible in American culture. Even within the Church, Advent meant little more than “Little Lent” to most Catholics until the last 40 years, and by then the rising power of consumerism had already absorbed the entire calendar between “Black Friday” and Christmas Eve. Indeed, our economy has become so dependent on that period’s retail sales (for some retail items, that single month yields the majority of annual revenue) that it would appear downright un-American to insist that people spend much of December in quiet reflection and preparation rather than frantic shopping and celebration.

Second, the traditional “12 days of Christmas” have largely disappeared as well. I wonder what people think now when they hear the song? In any case, after a month of nonstop shopping, parties, concerts and outings leading up to Christmas day, most people are too out of gas to rev up for an additional 12 days of celebrating. Besides, not much is happening once Christmas Day passes--except gift returns, post-Christmas sales, and end-of-year preparations for New Year’s celebrations.

Third, you probably noticed that in 2011, more than previous years, the very word “Christmas” has become endangered. Advertisers and media referred to “the holidays,” the “holiday season,” sometimes even simply “holiday.” Governors renamed their state Christmas trees the “Holiday Tree”; people wished each other “Happy Holidays,” and commercials even parodied Christian attempts to refocus on Christmas, telling us that it is the “season of the reason” for buying a new car.

It almost seems that Christmas is becoming the holiday that dare not speak its name (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde)!

My initial reflex is to adopt my traditional Christmas role as cultural curmudgeon. Growing up, my kids got used to their dad’s way of digging in his heels: traipsing through the woods on Thanksgiving weekend to find a suitable Jesse Tree, painting it and adding one decoration each day during Advent, lighting an Advent wreath each night at dinner, buying our Christmas tree only days before Christmas, then decorating it and installing our Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, scheduling family gatherings during Christmas week. To this day, they tend to turn a jaundiced eye when Christmas displays appear immediately after Thanksgiving, when “holiday music” fills the malls in November, or when Christmas trees appear tossed into the trash on the 3rd Day of Christmas.

But despite my usual hardline instincts for preserving a “traditional” approach to Christmas, I also feel a growing discomfort when I notice that my reactions are matched by many people whose assumptions I do not share.

Some of these people argue that we must preserve Christmas because we are a “Christian nation.” I respectfully disagree. Our nation has Christian roots, but is officially non-sectarian.

Others see themselves defending “traditional” Christmas, when in fact many Christmas customs they defend are less than 100 years old. Even the celebration of Christmas itself is not a constant tradition in our national history. In Puritan New England, for example, its observance was largely outlawed, and in the new American republic even Congress was in session on Christmas Day. We invoke “traditional” for many Christmas customs that have little real tradition behind them (the Christmas crèche is one exception, dating from Francis of Assisi).

Of course, some people simply argue we must preserve “the reason for the season.” But they’re often unclear about what that reason is. Jesus’ birthday is undoubtedly a significant event--but what does celebrating it signify? Some equate it with the “Incarnation” (God taking on human flesh), but Catholicism observes the Incarnation on March 25, and Catholics surely do not wish to argue that the unborn Jesus was not already God in human form. Others see the event as manifesting God’s gift to the world, but we already have Epiphany for that.

My own view is that we celebrate Jesus’ birthday as the moment when his place in history is announced--specifically, his role as the Prince of Peace, offering peace and goodwill to the human family. This matters because it creates an unbreakable bond between Christian faith and the cause of peace.

Finally, some people want to insist on trumpeting “Christmas” to resist what they see as a dangerous inclusivity that embraces Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and, even “Festivus,” and fears offending Jews, Muslims, and even atheists. Personally, I prefer to embrace that inclusivity, and to avoid offense, although I never assume that Christmas greetings will offend (in one store I asked a veiled employee, who was in fact Muslim, how she felt, and we ended up both offering “Happy Christmas” greetings!).

I hesitate to embrace any of these reasons for opposing current trends. Instead, I’m beginning to see this cultural divide--avoiding all but the most generic references to the “holidays,” vs. the loud proclamation of “Christmas”--as a symptom of another, deeper trend in America.

More and more, I sense America drifting (perhaps without much sense of direction) toward a new cultural destination, and, I would argue, toward its true destiny. For I now believe we’re becoming, finally, the land of the religious option.

By that I mean, we’re becoming a land where anyone has the option to choose any religion they want, or no religion at all. This may sound obvious (we think immediately of the First Amendment), but stop and think how rare it actually is.

For most of history, large nations typically mandated (or favored) one official religion and prohibited (or disapproved) all others. So people often had no option, or at least suffered penalties for exercising an option. In the last century, we also saw new nations (like the Soviet Union) that mandated no religion at all. And in much of Europe today, the religious option is tolerated but not well protected.
Even in America, the principle of religious freedom has clashed with the practice of favoring Christianity over all other religions. Americans today remain the most religiously active population of any advanced nation, but now the dominance of Christianity is being challenged by others.

The result is the kind of inconsistency that we might naturally expect when a society is going through a major cultural transition. For example, we hear “Christmas” less and less in the public realm, and we see less and less “Christmas” observance in our towns and cities, street, parks and public places--yet “Christmas Day” remains a legal holiday!

Similarly we continue to see trees, and lights, Santa Claus, and the exchange of gifts (indeed, all these have become key to our economies holiday sales) yet they have all been largely uprooted from their Christian origins.

Something like this has already happened with Valentine’s Day, and Saint Patrick’s Day, Halloween, and even Easter--although we are not yet avoiding those names, only their public religious observance.

Underlying such inconsistency is a conviction that Christianity should enjoy no special privileges. Thus, saying “The Holidays” comes to represent people of all faiths and no faith. The trouble is: why is December 25 a holiday at all, if not to observe the birth of Jesus? Should we print calendars that just say “Holiday Day” in that day’s box?

America may be destined to become the one nation where religion truly is an option--where one may choose any religion without facing mandates, or prohibitions, or privileges, or penalties; a land where the religious option is alive and widely exercised and fair to all traditions. When this happens, America’s religious profile will be nearly unique in all the world.

But meanwhile we are living with the inconsistencies of a transition in which the dominance of Christianity is challenged but not completely erased. In short, we are clearly living in a time of cultural flux, when our principles and our practices do not always match.

In other words, we Americans (and even we American Christians) are still making history. It is not always easy, and it is sometimes troubling and messy, but maybe it simply proves that God is not finished with us yet.

 Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

WHO Stole Christmas?

Another Christmas-in-culture reflection, this one from 2003:

John Parise was asking for trouble. For five days, the Long Island DJ urged his listeners not to miss the “very big” announcement on his morning talk show. He told them to make sure the kids are listening. Then he dropped his bomb.

He told them there is no Santa Claus. Told them their parents buy all the toys. Told them the proof was hidden in the closets and the attic.

In seconds, the station was flooded with hundreds of angry calls and emails. “This guy’s the DJ who stole Christmas,” one Dad said. “It’s just cruel,” added Mom. Station managers called it “a big mistake,” and apologized, but the DJ defended his action.

What could he have been thinking? He said he was taking stand against the “commercialization” of Christmas: “Christmas has gotten as far way as possible from what Christmas is about. Christmas is doing for others, helping others.”

Well, yes and no. That is, yes, Christmas is about something more than “who has the best sales,” and “making sure your kid has the hottest toy on the block.” And yes, that something more does—indirectly, anyway—entail helping others. But no, that is not “what Christmas is all about.”

It’s really much simpler, much more concrete, and much more obvious than all that. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. So explaining the “true meaning of Christmas” to kids is not that complicated—at least, it shouldn’t be.

We do, of course, have holidays that are about some general social ideals, like gratitude and generosity (Thanksgiving), or patriotic sacrifice (Memorial Day), or the dignity of work (Labor Day)—but Christmas is not that kind of holiday. No, Christmas is more like Martin Luther King Day—a holiday marking a great man’s birth. Remember, Christmas means “Christ’s Mass”—the day when the mass of the day is in honor of the birth of “Christ.” That’s because Catholics, along with other Christians, believe Jesus to be the Christ—the Messiah. But even non-Christians can understand honoring the birth of the man whose influence has changed the world more than anyone else.

We always told our kids that Santa was the “fun, make believe” part of Christmas, and that Jesus is the real part. They knew that the tree, the ornaments, the carols, the presents, the annual reading of “The Night Before Christmas” and the stockings were all designed to make Jesus’ birthday party the biggest and best party of the year.

We always celebrated Advent during Advent, and Christmas during Christmas. Right after Thanksgiving we’d search the local woods for the perfect dead bough to make our Jesse Tree. At dinner we’d light the Advent Wreath, impatient for the night when we’d finally light enough candles to eat by candlelight. Meanwhile we added ornaments to the Jesse tree, already painted wintry white but gradually growing less bare and more colorful as Christmas approached.

It helped that our kids’ bi-lingual school was full of Hispanic kids whose families celebrated the Twelve Days of the Christmas season, all the way to the “Feast of the Three Kings” on January 6. It was a family joke that most people who sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” never actually celebrate them—or even know when they are! We’re empty-nesters now, but to this day my kids expect our tree to go up just before Christmas day and stay up through the whole season—and they still scoff at the sight of trees in the trash on December 27 or 28. I sometimes joke that our family Christmas customs are the one piece of Catholic identity our kids hang on to.

Back then, we were like John Parise—we were opposing the “commercialization” of Christmas too. Twenty-five years later, that outlook seems rather quaint to me. Now I don’t worry about commercialism spoiling Christmas. I worry about Christmas being replaced by something else—a generic time of year called the “Holiday Season.” Seems to me, this “Holiday Season” has taken on a life of its own, quite independent of any “holyday.” It runs all autumn long now, and peaks with a month-long buying spree that ends on December 25—the very day when the Christian Christmas season starts!

So the stores start selling “holiday” costumes and decorations at summer’s end, and more and more people set out orange holiday lights and ghoulish lawn decorations in anticipation of Halloween. By mid-October, Christmas stuff goes on display, competing with Halloween stuff. Once the Trick-or-Treating ends, the real selling starts, and from then till year’s end people buy nearly 50% of all the retail goods sold all year, including more than 80% of toys and personal entertainment products, and nearly 90% of all jewelry.

This is no longer about exploiting a Christian holiday to make a little extra money. This is about the survival of Capitalism itself. It took the New Deal and World War II to end the Great Depression. It now takes the Generic Holiday Season to keep it from coming back. If some strange spiritual plague caused Christianity to die out within the next year, our consumer culture would have no choice but to continue the “Holiday Season” as usual.

The issue now isn’t that one of Christianity’s most sacred seasons might be profaned. After all, saying that the season is about “doing for others” may make it sound less commercial, but it doesn’t make it any more Christian.

Bear in mind that something like this has happened before. The Romans had a big winter festival, “Sol Invictus,” long before Christianity. December 25 was deliberately made “Christmas,” not because there were records of Jesus’ actual date of birth, but precisely to replace the pagan feast. What if we’ve reached the point in history where something else—a new sacred season called “The Holidays”—is replacing Christmas? That would explain why John Parise caught such flak when he made his “big mistake.” In a culture that increasingly avoids even mentioning Jesus in connection with “The Holidays,” Santa is a sacred idol in many families; exposing him as a myth is “cruel” because it breaks a sacred taboo.

The Romans were smarter, perhaps; at least their feast to the “Invincible Sun” worshipped something God created. Our culture has created its own idols: Santa, the mall, Capitalism itself.

So don’t blame the DJ for stealing Christmas. Or the Grinch. We’ve stolen it ourselves. For, just as the Romans were quick to quit their own traditional feast for the new Christian holyday, millions of American Christians are happy to join the new generic “Holiday Spirit”—provided nobody tells the kids the truth about Santa.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2003

#248: Does Christmas Have a Future?

This reflection on Christmas in our culture comes from 2008:

The “Second Battle of Lexington” rages on in 2008.

More than two decades ago the ACLU launched a campaign to remove nativity scenes from public property, and in 1998 that movement reached the very town green in Lexington, Massachusetts where the "shot heard round the world" opened the American Revolution.

For nearly 30 years, the local Knights of Columbus had placed in nativity scene on Lexington Green, but now some town officials were threatening to revoke the K of C’s permit. The K of C countered with a threat to sue, and a diverse group of religious leaders invited me to help them build a consensus proposal to resolve the dispute.

Early on, this group--including a Mason, a Catholic priest, three Protestant ministers, and a K of C member--agreed to stand firm on the K of C’s First Amendment right to display Christmas symbols on public land. Their logic: to restrict religious observances and activities to private land would exclude even religious processions--including funeral corteges traveling public roads from church to cemetery!

Their final plan offered the compromise of restricting the nativity display to a shorter period, while acknowledging that other displays (Menorahs, Kwanzaa symbols, even Santa and snowmen) might claim equal rights.

The Lexington Selectman ignored the offer and dodged the First Amendment issue by claiming a security problem with the permit, and requiring the K of C to post guards 24/7 throughout the display period. The K of C, unable to manage this, settled for a "Nativity Pageant" held on a single day.

At stake in this “Second Battle of Lexington,” of course, was the erosion of Christmas as a public event--erosion that has continued since 1998 as similar battles have erupted around the country, reaching a new intensity and range in 2008. As USA today reported just last week:

Christians and traditionalists across the nation, fed up with what they view as the de-emphasizing of Christmas as a religious holiday, are filing lawsuits, promoting boycotts and launching campaigns aimed at restoring references to Christ in seasonal celebrations.

From New Jersey to California, Christians are moving to counter years of lawsuits that have made governments wary about putting Nativity scenes on public property, and that occasionally have led schools to drop Christmas carols from holiday programs.

Examples abound. A Federal judge ordered Bay Harbor Islands (Florida) to allow a nativity scene next to a menorah following a discrimination lawsuit. In Denver, church members picketed the holiday parade after their Christmas-themed float was rejected. A California group boycotted Macy's stores, claiming their parent organization had forbidden clerks from saying "Merry Christmas." The Maplewood (New Jersey) school board face protests for dropping even instrumental Christmas music from school programs. Parents in Mustang (Oklahoma) defeated a school bond referendum after nativity scenes were dropped from school holiday programs. Members of a church in Kansas City (Kansas) protested the secularization of Christmas by dressing like Jesus at their jobs, malls and restaurants.

What's going on here?

This battle is hardly new. In fact, disputes over Christmas predate the First Battle of Lexington. In puritan Massachusetts, the General Court banned Christmas observances in 1659 lest they compete with the Sunday Sabbath. Even taking the day off work was punishable:

Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting or any other way . . . shall pay for every such offense five shillings, as a fine to the county.

Of course, while this ban was anti-Christmas, it was not anti-Christian; ironically, Lexington's first parish church was, in fact, originally built on the very Town Green where a crèche is now banned.

But over the centuries much has changed, and in recent years Christmas has become a lightning rod for the Americans who differ about the place of Christianity in American life.

Moreover this history of US conflicts over Christmas fits into a larger, longer history: the long-term evolution of Christmas in Christian tradition itself.

Early Christians did not have a feast day for Jesus’ birthday, until the need to compete with the Roman winter solstice festival "Sol Invictus" ("Unconquered Sun") required a distinctively Christian symbol for winter’s shifting from darkness to light. Designating December 25 as Jesus’ birthday fit the bill perfectly.

Subsequent centuries saw a modest feastday gradually expanded by the medieval period’s devotion to Mary, by Saint Francis of Assisi’s introduction of crèche and animals to the Christian imagination, by the focus on Saint Nicholas (later Santa Claus) and the custom of gift-giving that opened the door to today’s “Christmas Capitalism.” German, English, and French customs all melted into the Christmas we know now, replete with trees, wreaths, stockings, and carols. And the dominance of Europe in this evolution led to Christmas as a winter festival, though most Christians today live--as the first Christians did—in lands where Christmas falls amid mild weather or even during summer .

So unlike Easter, which has anchored Christian faith from the beginning, Christmas has not been a constant or essential fixture in Christian history. Generations of Christians managed quite well without any Christmas at all.

Yet for many American Christians, Christmas has come to overshadow Easter.

Children clearly anticipate Christmas stockings and presents more than Easter clothes and candies. Grownups spend weeks or even months in shopping and decorating. "Baby Jesus meek and mild" has more popular sentimental appeal then Jesus the itinerant preacher, Jesus the suffering victim, or even Jesus the Risen Lord. Many Christians confuse the birth of Jesus with the Incarnation of God into human form (more properly linked with Jesus’ conception, and officially observed on March 25). Santa has become such an object of faith that speaking the truth--that Jesus is the real part of Christmas, and Santa is the fun make-believe part--is a public taboo, to the point that many people link the loss of Santa with a loss of innocence or even a loss of faith.

And the marketplace's frenzy over Christmas has made Christmas more about “giving” than about embracing the Peace Jesus promised. Thus Christmas season has become so exhausting that, since many Americans are so tired of celebrating by Christmas Day, we often see trashed Christmas trees on the curb as early as December 26th.

In other words, we have largely lost the wise psychic rhythm of the Christmas liturgical tradition, which used Advent for quiet preparation and then celebrated Christmas beginning December 24th. For most, Christmas Day now ends the Christmas season rather than beginning it, and most Americans hear “The Twelve Days of Christmas” without knowing when they are.

Is this kind of Christmas really worth saving for the future? And is that even possible? For me, a few things seem evident.

One: “Christmas” in America will become increasingly detached from the cultural customs the protestors are trying to protect. Millions of Americans will celebrate Christmas with little or no reference to the birth of Jesus, and even the number of “Christmas Catholics” will dwindle.

Two: Ironically enough, Christmas Day will remain a legal holiday, simply because our economy cannot survive without it. Even during boom times, this season brings 40% of retail sales and nearly 80% of toys and entertainment sales. Without Christmas, American capitalism collapses.

Three: The “holiday season” will continue to evolve toward a generic celebration of winter’s shift from darkness to light, embracing symbols from Christmas to Chanukah to Kwanzaa to other symbolic traditions.

Four: Christians who maintain “the reason for the season” will find themselves increasingly a minority whose observance of Jesus’ birthday is the exception to the cultural rule—but Christians will also find that asserting their right to celebrate Christmas publicly will gain respect as a key proof that America is evolving a new identity as a nation simultaneously religious and pluralized.
In that sense, we will have won the battle for the future of Christmas.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2008

#283: George Weigel: Noisy Catholicism?

EXCERPT: George Weigel has done it again--just in time for Lent! He has turned a perfectly sensible appeal for silent reflection and prayer during Lent into a rant aimed at a variety of Catholics whose behavior he deplores.

Liturgists and organists whose prayers, songs, or organ solos produce “all noise, all the time”; children, described as “squawking" twice),” “crying,” “fussing,” “fractious (twice),” and “caterwauling”; worshipers, whom he scolds for “chattering” before mass, “chattering” after the recessional “chattering” during the exchange of peace, “chattering with friends” while entering church, “chattering with neighbors” while leaving church—all these people become targets of George’s ire.

He argues that American culture now surrounds us with noise, citing airports filled with “TSA announcements, airline announcements, airport announcements, muzak, and the ubiquitous CNN-airport channel”—plus “squawking” children, loud conversations, and passengers yelling at cell phones. He concludes:

There is virtually no public space, outside art museums and courtrooms, where our aural senses are not under assault….Churches should be different.

Weigel gets no quarrel from me about the American “noise culture.” I agree with Weigel that environments free from “noise” are increasingly rare. I also half-agree that “churches should be different.” As sacred spaces reserved for sacred activities, it makes sense for churches to offer opportunities to escape the “noise culture” of the outside world.

Does this mean that Mass-time has been invaded by “the contemporary American noise culture”? Hardly!

In fact, the “noises” Weigel describes at church are either ancient (babies crying, people singing and praying) or else date from the liturgical reforms of Vatican II (congregants praying parts of the Mass aloud, speaking at the sign of peace, conversing before and after Mass, singing, even applauding). Everything Weigel complains about was quite commonplace in the churches I knew in the late 1960s and 1970s – well before TSA, CNN, and cell phones.

Then why complain about a lack of silence in church at Mass times? I suspect the clue is in Weigel’s comment that silence is “a way to ensure that you actually get a chance to pray yourself”—as if one only prays when left alone in peace and quiet. In this view, Weigel speaks for many Catholics who simply want to be left alone at Mass.

In fact, I am convinced Weigel uses “silence” as a code word for “private time and space.” And certainly, our spiritual life as Catholics can always benefit from more of that—especially as an antidote to our “noise culture.”

The trouble is, if one wants peace and quiet be alone with the Lord, Mass is neither the time nor the place to seek such privacy. As Vatican II made unmistakably clear:

Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the “sacrament of unity,” namely, a holy people united and organized under their bishops…Therefore liturgical services pertain to the whole body of the Church…Communal celebration is to be preferred…to the celebration that is individual and quasi-private.
Vatican II, CONSTITUTION ON THE SACRED LITURGY, #26.

The key here is “communal celebration.” We gather together at Mass, not as random individuals seeking to pray by ourselves, but as a faithful community assembled to offer a communal celebration of the Eucharist which signifies and expresses our communion with Christ, his Father, his Spirit, and each other.

Those who prefer private prayer time with God would do better to come back some other time. Catholic tradition is rich with personal devotions and prayers, and an empty church is not hard to find these days. To insist on privacy during Mass implies one does not want a communal celebration at all.