By Peter Straton
Appeared in print December 24, 2011
A fond memory of Christmas time is wandering through neighborhoods aglow with holiday lights, the warmth of the old incandescent bulbs and the gaudy clash of traditional colors merging at a distance into a cozy, orangey blush. Now, LEDs stab the night with needles of pitch-perfect color—beautiful too, but cold and alien. And lawns sprout advertisements for Jesus, variations on “The Reason for The Season.”
Usually, the signs annoy me: a kind of crowing, or exclusive claim to holiday spirit. Whatever happened to walking humbly with God? But my annoyance prods: what, then, is the reason for the season? The Christian slice of holiday pie is to celebrate Jesus, but what does that really mean? Is it more than a grand birthday party? More than the delight of tree and presents and eager children? Is there anything to actually change a life for the better? I think the answer is yes. But why, exactly, would I think so?
I abandoned religion long ago, disenchanted. As a teenager, I experienced Christianity primarily as questions of belief—belief in Jesus as the son of God, as “my Savior.” If I believed correctly, I’d be protected, especially after death. But I noticed that people with “right” beliefs also suffered terribly sometimes. And the idea that this beautiful world and this gift of a life is just the waiting room for heaven seemed blasphemous. Is it really about my reservation in heaven and to heck with you, if you won’t believe? Uninspired, I left the church for good, I thought.
Many years later, needing to fill a great emptiness, I slipped back in through a side door and sat in the back and listened, and was surprised. There was talk of God and Jesus but the talk of heaven was about bringing it here to Earth—how we might participate. The talk of saving was about homeless folk dying in the cold of that winter. In the sanctuary hung the words of Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body now but yours /p
No hands, no feet on earth but yours /p
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world
What I heard filled me with great hope, and Christmas became my rite of that hope, an annual reminder that the new year is the birth of a new opportunity to help change the world, an echo of the physical birth of a remarkable man who dedicated his life to changing the world in big ways, who used his religion and faith—his connection with God—to push for a world free of the degradations and horrors of his day, and ours—a man who would sacrifice himself to drive home the point.
The sharp lights and proud lawn signs may seem alien, but they also reflect a world that is indeed changing, not always for the better in every detail, but, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., along an arc of history that does bend, and has bent, toward good.
Peter Straton is a member of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). This column is coordinated by Lane