Advertisement Does it remind you of the silliest of our culture arguments, the one that pits those who believe religion is a greeting to be defended versus those who take the separation of church and state to mean the separation of church and people?
Or does it bring to mind images of the mall? Or if not the mall, then a fellow in the North Pole waiting to know what you want and who miraculously incarnates in malls?
I love this season. I love the peanut butter cookies with a chocolate Kiss my mom makes and The Pogues song my dad plays about Christmas in the drunk tank. But as we all know, it can be overwhelming.
It’s the time of year when our ills and our joys become magnified.
Our nation’s consumption becomes a ritual in which God wears a red suit and television commercials serve as prophets calling us to church.
We’re always busy, but even busier these days, so busy this newspaper is keeping us reporters busy by running a series about how busy people are these days.
But we also see through all of this. While consumption is the season’s tyrant, there are those who rebel and who seek to show Christmas’ first meaning in which humanity touches divinity.
Maybe he wouldn’t call himself a rebel, but the Rev. Breck McHan is someone who understands this first meaning of Christmas.
This week, McHan, pastor at First Lutheran Church, sent me an e-mail about a Blue Christmas service he will lead at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at his church at 410 Main St. in Onalaska, Wis.
The service is a response to the fact that this time of the year is filled with sorrow for many. While Christmas is a time when families come together, McHan said, it’s also a time when the loss of a family member can hurt most. Or it’s a time when those trying to have a baby or who have a family member away at war or who have gone through divorce or who suffer depression can feel the sting a little more.
“The gift of Christmas is the incarnation,” McHan said in a telephone interview this week. “God became one of us who truly can understand our grief as one of us.”
With candles, prayer and readings from scripture, the Blue Christmas service will respond to that grief. A light supper will follow. McHan said the service is for those who struggle this season and for those who want to walk with those who struggle.
“We’ll sing songs that will begin gently and move to joy as we’re able,” McHan said.
Of course, First Lutheran isn’t the only place that gets to this deeper part of Christmas. At many other churches and schools and offices, people are gathering gifts for those who can’t afford them. On the Web, AdventConspiracy.org describes itself as “an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by worshipping Jesus through compassion, not consumption.”
And even in the mall, you can see divinity on the faces of children sitting in the red lap.
Christmas is consumption to be sure, but in the midst of that, Christmas remains something else.
McHan said it well: “It’s OK to enter into this season and have these mixed emotions. God made us a complex people.”
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
bruce049 wrote on Jan 3, 2008 10:31 AM:
CHRISTmas is not about the guy in the red suit. There would be no Christmas without Christ. It would just be mas. "