Midlife Meditation

A first for this family. Somehow it came. To Scrooge, to the Grinch, and even to curmudgeonly me: Christmas came, and not a moment too soon. It's been a season, a year, a decade of growing ugliness, of good will becoming as endangered as summer ice in the Arctic. I could write of the ironic rightness of the way Americans have come to celebrate the birth of a poor child in a small Middle Eastern village, occupied by a global superpower, by spending billions of dollars on gewgaws and tchotchkes, screaming at each other over parking places at shopping malls, fighting tooth, nail, and bullet over perceived bargains and limited-availability toys, and how this so-very-American holiday has hegemonized so much of the rest of the world, drowning out far more appropriate traditions of generosity and piety--but I've done that. In fact, I've been doing that for most of my adult life. And I don't want to, because in some inexplicable, mysterious way, Christmas has gotten ...

And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say - that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. And then - the true meaning of Christmas came through, and the Grinch found the strength of *ten* Grinches, plus two! I've been such a Grinch. The original purpose of this blog was to provide me with a platform for venting. Since leaving the ministry in January 2000, I'd been without a pulpit. After more than a decade of being able to say my piece in front of a captive audience at least weekly, I was now reduced to guest preaching, no more than monthly at first, eventually tapering off to not at all. I wrote occasional essays, submitted some for publication, and even made it onto the Oregonian 's op ed page twice (though the second one was only in their online edition). Even when I was guest preaching, I was doing my best to behave, tempering everything I had to say to keep it from shocking my listeners. So when, after thirteen years of bottling it ...

You knew it was coming, that I couldn't stay in high dudgeon forever, that at some point my grinchy heart would grow three sizes and I'd be calling out "God bless us, everyone!" to anyone with ears. You knew it, and yet you said nothing. Jerks. But seriously, this happens every year: I start off like Ebeneezer Grinch, and just like said mashed up Christmas-hater, I wind up sledding down Mt. Crumpet to return all the merch, dancing in the streets of Victorian Whoville, carving the roast beast with the Cratchets, won over by the spirit that so often seems buried beneath packages, boxes, and bags. Things that won me over this year: My 500 Children:  One cannot teach and lead holiday singing in an elementary school without having some of their delight rub off on one. And one absolutely cannot do bus duty with kindergartners wearing a Santa hat and maintain a gruff attitude toward the jolly old elf. When they glommed onto me at the door, wrapping their little bodi...

The purpose of this series of essays has been venting a lifetime of pent-up frustrations about how Christmas is celebrated. I've complained about Santa in the manger, carols during Advent, capitalist exploitation of a religious holiday, and my favorite rant of them all, harmonizing the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke to put both wise men and shepherds in Bethlehem. It's been fun, and I'm probably not done yet; but this morning, home from school with a chest cold, I find myself wondering if maybe I haven't gone a little too far in my curmudgeonly grumbling. Because, quite honestly, Christmas has never been anything but a mash-up. One of the first "shocking" revelations one discovers when delving into the history of Christmas is that Jesus was, if one takes the gospel of Luke seriously, probably born in the spring or summer, because the shepherds were out in the fields with their flocks. (During the winter, they keep them in the barns at night, which...

Oh, how I hate Christmas. What's this, you say? You hate the most wonderful time of the year? You hate the time of Peace on Earth, Good Will to All, God bless us everyone, merriness and good cheer, lifting up the meek and the lowly, fa la la la la la la la la.... Well, no. Not exactly. All right, not at all. And yet, oh, how I hate it. Sensing some conflict here? Good. Because I'm loaded with  it--not unlike the season of Christmas, as observed in these United States of America. In fact, I've got a lifetime's worth of joys and concerns, complaints and plaudits, raptures and regrets, heart and spleen aching to be vented. Good thing I've got a blog. I have decided to make December the month of Christmas. And yes, I'm aware that, outside of this blog, it already is. But back to me. I'm dedicating my blog this month to taking apart Christmas: the pluses, the minuses, the excesses, the recesses, the blessings and abominations and exploitations and neg...