the solstice and christmas eve
Solstice notes on Christmas Eve
One of my favorite lobstermen I ran into on the ferry the other day. I was going to church, and he was coming back to the island after Christmas shopping on the mainland. "I kind of hate Christmas," he said. "If I could just hang it all up, all the shopping, and the crowds...I would." I just nodded and kept my mouth shut. I wanted to be nice and I both pitied and kind of agreed with him, at least about some of what he said.
As a vicar of a small island church, I confess that this time of year can be a confusing. The world around has been calling this "the Christmas season" for weeks while I keep reminding my salty congregation that we are not there yet. This is still Advent. And Advent is a season of anticipation that begins with a call to repentance. No one likes waiting, including waiting to sing our favorite Christmas hymns that the stores have been streaming since November. Most of us don't much like repentance either.
An anthropologist or alien observer coming here for the first time could legitimately think that "Christmas" is a time of ritualized consumerism, during the darkest and shortest days of the year, at the end of the year. In that sense, it's just a kind of solstice celebration by another name. In Maine, the fact that we got to, and through, the winter solstice is truly an achievement. From now until summer, we will have more light in every single one of our days.
And yet, what's the big deal? The same thing happens year after year after year, as the world goes round and round and round again, following orders from the same, unchanging, eternal forces of physics. That might be a cause for a celebration, but I could never be convinced to call the solstice a Holy Day or to worship "the universe."
If Christmas was only what the commercial forces of the world would have us believe - and what I fear it has become to many - I might feel about it in much the same way as my frustrated friend. Who wants to spend precious time and money to buy more stuff that even the people we most love don't need?
And don't get me started on Christmas cards - or "Happy Holidays" cards. I confess to having both kinds. For even I, a true believer, try not to offend those for whom Christmas has not just become a meaningless word, but a charged one. I never thought until I learned from experience that a "Merry Christmas" greeting could be offensive, or un-inclusive, but there are a lot of things I never believed until recent days. I tend to err on the side of avoiding conflict, even about stories, ideas, and people I most love and believe are eternally important. There's my Advent confession, worthy of reflection and repentance, for I have come to know that the line between politeness and cowardice is thin, and often invisible.
Where I live, most people these don't go to church at all these days, unless someone dies and there is a funeral. Some only go once or twice a year. Some of latter group will be in church tonight, and I'll be glad to see them. We'll sing the old hymns our grandparents knew by heart, and read scripture passages our ancestors knew from the old story that these days fewer and fewer children have even heard. In some ways, being a pastor has become counter-cultural, like a relic vocation from another age.
In our country, Christmas till retains its earthly status as the last national holiday of the year, just as New Year's Day will be the first one of the next. But real Christmas, regardless of its political or cultural acknowledgement, or its link to binge shopping, is not a celebration of something that just goes round and round and round again. Christmas is about remembering what happened, in a particular time and place, that changed the reality of being a human being at any place, at any time. What happened changed history itself; even our way of counting the years hearkens to the story.
Some two thousand twenty-four years ago a child came into the world, whose life gathered into one all things earthly and heavenly. His message of good news, and his sacrificial gift of grace seemed too good to be true, for it transcended human understanding. It still transcends human understanding, and yet it is the story I trust my life to, in ways more profound than I trust the compass of my boat.
The snow will still be falling when I get on the ferry to go to church on the island. On the holiest days, it is best to keep the sermon short and stay out of the way of the greater story of a holy night. We will offer our prayers and praises humbly to the throne of heaven and listen again to the message of angels. With our hearts and minds go will go see this thing that has come to pass, and the babe lying in a manger.
Merry Christmas.
