#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

#374: What Foreign Policy?

Foreign policy will not have much impact on the outcome of the 2012 presidential elections. But from the point of view of our faith tradition, that only means the candidates are ignoring some very high stakes.

Pundits covering the last presidential debate seemed surprised by how often the two candidates agreed on US foreign policy--but often that only meant they were united in disagreeing with Catholic Social Teaching on international relations.

Fifty years ago this week, Americans--and the world--were terrified by the Cuban missile crisis.  I had just started high school, and I remember three things from  October 1962.

 First, I was painfully self-conscious of the cast on my arm that I still wore after putting my hand through a window in August.  Second, the Jesuits running the school kept us praying daily for the success of the just-opened Second Vatican Council.  Third was the eerie, surreal sensation of standing outside our building at lunchtime on Friday, October 26 (50 years ago TODAY!), surrounded by my new classmates, all of us scanning the skies for the first sign of a nuclear attack and collectively holding our breaths as we prayed the Soviet ships would turn back before they were fired upon by the US vessels blockading Cuba.

Like many of my 1962 peers, I had read my share of nuclear disaster novels: On The Beach, Red Alert, Seven Days In May, Alas Babylon, etc.  I had also read John Hersey’s Hiroshima.  All these gave me horrifyingly graphic ideas of what a nuclear attack would mean.  My one consolation was the knowledge that, because we all lived in a major metropolitan area, we would not suffer: an instant after the first blinding flash we would all be dead.

Small wonder, then, that the Council Fathers gathered in Rome went out of their way to stake out the Church’s official position on nuclear weapons:

Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation….The arms race in which an already considerable number of countries are engaged is not a safe way to preserve a steady peace, nor is the so-called balance resulting from this race a sure and authentic peace. Rather than being eliminated thereby, the causes of war are in danger of being gradually aggravated. While extravagant sums are being spent for the furnishing of ever new weapons, an adequate remedy cannot be provided for the multiple miseries afflicting the whole modern world. Disagreements between nations are not really and radically healed; on the contrary, they spread the infection to other parts of the earth. …Therefore, we say it again: the arms race is an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which ensnares the poor to an intolerable degree. –Gaudium et Spes #80

Fifty years since that October, how far have we progressed?  The US nuclear arsenal is bigger and more powerful than in 1962, there are more nuclear powers than ever, North Korea has recently joined the club, and the threat of rogue nuclear attacks is far greater now than ever before.

And where do our candidates stand?  They agree: Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons! Iran!  As if the world is safe from the nuclear threat as long as we prevent one particular nation from acquiring them.  As if we are perfectly comfortable living with the nuclear capabilities of North Korea, Pakistan, China, India, Israel, and even France--but could never survive a nuclear Iran!

The fact that the US opened the nuclear Pandora’s box, the fact that only the US has ever committed a nuclear attack, the fact that we maintain the largest arsenal, the fact that we still threaten to use it even as a first strike, the fact that our nuclear history has triggered a competition among nations to acquire the “prestige” and “security” we already enjoy by possessing nukes, the fact that today Iran lives under the threat of an Israeli nuclear attack--both candidates seem blind to all these facts. They can only see that a nuclear-armed Iran would suddenly make nuclear weapons dangerous!

And this blindness does not end with nukes.  On issue after issue that Catholic Social Teaching (CST) considers critical to better international relations and a peaceful world, the candidates were either off the mark or else simply silent.

On Nukes: The only other comment was the notion that we must maintain our alliance with Pakistan because they have 100 nuclear warheads.  Sounds to me like acquiring nukes is the surest way to buy America’s friendship.

On Iran’s Leadership: One candidate proclaimed we must indict their president for international crimes and genocide--without mentioning that, because the US refuses to join the International Criminal Court, we cannot indict anyone.

On Military Spending: the candidates have argued over budget deficits and national debt, and disagreed over spending money the military itself never requested. But neither candidate has proposed any serious reduction in our military spending--the kind of reduction, for example, that would shrink the military’s slice of our budget pie.  

 At a time when both sides target “entitlement” programs as fair game for reduced spending, military spending remains a “sacred cow”--even though it dwarfs the spending of all our allies combined. 

The Catholic Church calls arms manufacturing and sales a major obstacle to attacking world poverty, and Dwight Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex more than 50 years ago, but that complex remains above scrutiny by our political leaders.

Endless War: Both candidates backed drone warfare.  President Obama orders it, and Governor Romney approves of it.  This means the US attacks on foreign soil will continue no matter who becomes President. 

Drones allow us to kill without risk to ourselves, so they have opened the door to attacks that violate Catholic Just War rules in several ways: their wars are undeclared, and not in self-defense, drones often kill civilians (including one 16-year-old American citizen), and their long-term damage to America’s reputation may well outweigh their benefits.  Yet our President continues to personally approve assassination attacks by drones, and so will the next President--no matter who he is.

Rights Violations: In 2008 Obama promised to close Guantanamo, and also campaigned against US policies of torture and rendition.  In 2012 both candidates are silent on these matters, and worse: the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) and the Obama administration’s expanded “kill lists” mean that more people, including US citizens, are having their civil and human rights violated--another breach of Catholic Social Teaching.

Peace?  Both candidates give lip service to peace: it became Romney’s mantra in the last debate, and Obama has received the Nobel Peace Prize.  But neither one offers a credible strategy to achieve it.  CST has repeatedly insisted that the “absence of conflict” falls short of true peace, but now both sides assume that even absence of conflict is not a realistic goal. They argue that terrorism is here to stay, and our vast military power must adapt to combat it.  No one wants to ask why this has happened, or how to end it.  They admit “we cannot kill all the bad guys,” but nonetheless they keeps swatting at the ever-growing swarm--never talking about how to drain the swamp that breeds them.

Immigration:  This often gets treated as a domestic issue, but by definition immigrants arrive from foreign lands.  As so much of the Third World falls further and further behind us, are we surprised that their people flock to advanced economies in the US and Europe?

As early as the 1970s, CST argued that North-South relations (that is, between rich and poor nations) were more critical to the global future then East-West relations (that is, the Cold War).  But American leaders turned a deaf ear, and today we suffer the results--both terrorism and unmanageable immigration--because we failed to use US influence to shape a fairer global culture over the last 40 years.

Now CST stresses that people migrating to escape poverty and oppression are exercising a human right, even if they break the law by doing it.  I keep waiting for a candidate to address our immigration problem in the framework of human rights.  But it’s not happening in 2012.

Resources.  Underlying much of this, of course, is the real US elephant in the international room: we Americans are 6% of the world’s population, yet we consume 40% of the world’s resources.  Even Europeans, who live extremely well by global standards, use only 25% of the energy (per capita) that Americans use.  In short, we are the resource pigs of the world, and we have been for decades, and we show no signs of reforming our gluttonous ways. 

Aside from the ecological damage this does, the consequences on world relations are profound: we proclaim ourselves as the “Number One” model for the world, and our pop culture encourages everyone to admire, envy, and imitate us.  Yet we ignore the truth: the earth’s finite resources can never support our wasteful “American way of life” for all of the world’s five billion people.  That is the real math that does not work. Yet this election has been silent on this.

In sum, a real foreign policy that reflects the values of CST would begin by acknowledging that, while our freedoms and our wealth make us admired and envied, our endless war-making and gluttonous way of life and disregard for human rights make us the rogue elephant that attracts the natural, inevitable attention of big-game hunters who feel compelled to attack the threat we represent to them.

 In the years since World War II we have achieved a kind of global hegemony that reminds us of the historic rise of many great empires.  Catholic Social Teaching embodies a wisdom that cautions us to beware the pitfalls of empire.  It offers a wiser path to avoid the fall of our own empire.  But our leaders are not listening.

 Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, our world is no more secure, peace is no nearer, and another generation must grow in the shadow of violence.

I am reminded of the 1963 words of Martin Luther King: “Our Scientific Power has outrun our spiritual power.  We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

Those words happen to echo perfectly the vision of Vatican II: “While man extends his power in every direction, he does not always succeed in subjecting it to his own welfare."

We need leadership that can match our power with new wisdom. Are we getting it?

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#373: Which Catholic Candidate?

It would be tempting—but wrong—to assume that one VP candidate represents our faith, while the other does not.

Last week’s Catholic media has been full of politics.  Everyone seems to be trying to prove that their Vice-presidential candidate is a better representative of Catholic teaching. We even have some bishops proclaiming that Joe Biden cannot receive communion in their dioceses.

We have known since summer that the presidential race featured two Catholic Vice-presidential candidates.  But only on October 10 did we get to compare and contrast Joe Biden and Paul Ryan face to face on the subject of their Catholic faith.

The Vice-presidential debate was nearly over when moderate Martha Radditz posed this question:

This debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion.

Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country...

Although the question focused somewhat narrowly on abortion--almost as though abortion is the only “Catholic” issue--it also offered a useful opening for two broader questions: 1. What difference does Catholic Social Teaching make in their respective political positions?  2.  Which candidate is more consistent and reflecting Catholic social teaching?

It is instructive, but also surprising, to start with the answers the candidates gave Radditz. In fact, both candidates answered “Yes, but…”

Paul Ryan said:

I don't see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life.

Now, you want to ask basically why I'm pro-life? It's not simply because of my Catholic faith. That's a factor, of course. But it's also because of reason and science…Now I believe that life begins at conception.

That's why -- those are the reasons why I'm pro-life.

Joe Biden said:

My religion defines who I am, and I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And has particularly informed my social doctrine. The Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who -- who can't take care of themselves, people who need help. With regard to -- with regard to abortion, I accept my church's position on abortion as a--what we call a de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception in the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life. 

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others…I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that -- women they can't control their body. It's a decision between them and their doctor…I'm not going to interfere with that.

In other words, both candidates were saying, in effect, that Catholic Social Teaching makes no difference in their position on abortion.  Ryan would be pro-life on scientific and medical grounds, even if he were not Catholic.  And Biden chooses not to apply Catholic teaching on abortion to public policy.  So in both cases, their political positions are not different because of their Catholic faith.

Biden did mention Catholic Social Doctrine more broadly, implying that his overall politics better reflect Catholic Social Teaching than Ryan’s politics do.  But the debate ended there. This, of course, begs the question: what if we dig deeper?

CrossCurrents readers know my general take on the relation between Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and our major political parties: CST does not fit into conventional political categories of “liberal” or “conservative.” We cannot expect CST to favor either the Democratic or the Republican platforms.

Consider some major 2012 issues.

“Big Government” or “Small Government”?  The general dividing line between these parties, for example, concerns the size of government: Democrats favor a larger, more “progressive” government, while Republicans favor a smaller, less “intrusive” government.  But CST has no preference in principle.  That’s because CST has no doctrine on the best size for government. 

Rather, the chief principle here is “the common good.” All government must serve the common good as much as possible--and how it does that is a matter of prudential judgment.  Because government is just a means to achieve the end of the common good, it must leave room for other institutions (from families and local communities on up)--but it must also be powerful enough to address social needs that other institutions cannot meet.  In CST, there is no magic formula for this.

Taxes: Up or Down?  Another debated issue in 2012 is taxes. On this, as on government itself, CST does not lay down any grand principle.  It regards taxes as the main source for the funding that government needs to do its job.  If that job is promoting the common good (in collaboration with other institutions), then taxes are good insofar as they enable the common good, and paying taxes is one way that we, as citizens, support the common good. 

Whether any citizen should pay more or less depends on whether such change would enhance or hinder progress toward the common good of all.  This means that raising and lowering taxes is never good or better in principle, but depends on the specific case.

We may debate, then, whether a specific tax hike or tax cut better serves the common good.  But politicians who pledged never to raise taxes (as Ryan has)  are demonizing taxes, contrary to CST, rather than seeing them as a potential instrument for good.

Wealth and Poverty.  We hear a lot in 2012 about the “middle class” and “job creators.” But neither side says much less about the “working class” or the poor.  Yet CST favors attention to the poor as a top priority.  Moreover, CST decries extreme income inequality between classes.  US inequality has grown steadily since 1970, and ranks worst among advanced industrial nations. Yet any attempt to close that gap by redistributing wealth, something CST favors, generally gets labeled “socialism.” In this respect, CST falls to the left even of the Democratic Party.  As Benedict XVI wrote: “we cannot remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.”

Human Rights. The same is true for human rights: As a general rule, the Church’s list of human rights is considerably longer than either US political party, for while Americans tend to think only of civil rights (voting, public access, freedom from discrimination, due process, First Amendment rights), Catholicism also embraces many economic and social rights: education, health care, just wages, labor rights, immigration.  On many such rights, our popes since 1960 have staked out positions well to the left of the Democratic Party. And these positions are not merely nice goals; they are matters of principle.

With all this in mind, I’m not terribly surprised that the debate revealed that, despite their rhetoric, the personal faith of our two Catholic candidates does not make much difference in their politics.  Like most American Catholics, they appear to get their politics from their parties and other secular sources, not from their Church (for example, see http://www.onourshoulders.org/ for Ayn Rand’s influence on Paul Ryan,). And like most Catholics, they reinterpret Catholic Social Teaching to fit their personal politics--or, on inconvenient issues, they ignore it all together.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012