A night that saved my Christmas
Christmas felt a little off this year, as it has for the last few years. At the start of the pandemic, our lit tree felt like a beacon, but with so much havoc wrought by a virus, the tinsel seemed a little less bright.
Oh, we’re fine, thanks for asking. The family is healthy and accounted for, but this year it feels strange to light candles and decorate a tree and fill the house with cinnamon smells when the news from elsewhere is so awful. Innocents are dying and some of our leaders cannot seem to find the moral compass to say “enough.” Wars that can’t possibly go past a month have lasted well over a year.
We know we are lucky to have one another. We don’t go in much for gifts, but we do decorate and have people over and try to remember the people who prop us up (Patty, who delivers my newspaper, is at the top of the list) through the year, but this holiday was feeling like one of those holiday inflatables once the power goes out.
So on a night too warm for snow, we walked over to a local Lutheran church. For the past few years, the church has presented a live nativity scene. I made it last year and left feeling … something.
Let me explain that … something.
Technically, fundamentalist Christians — my angry little corner of Christendom — do not celebrate Christmas, at least, not as Jesus’ birthday. Part of that was a slavish devotion to historical accuracy (Jesus was probably born sometime in the spring or fall, and I’m sorry if I’m the first person to tell you). And part of that was a learned distaste for all things high church. Christmas, we were taught, was shorthand from “Christ-mass,” which meant the Catholics and other high church types were trying to get one over on us by throwing an irresistible party not based in scripture. Sigh.
So we would put up a tree, but only late in December and then it came down by Christmas noon — lest we enjoyed ourselves too much, I guess, or be tempted to convert to Catholicism. We had no manger scenes and no religious carols. Our theology drained the magic and wonder from the holiday and larded it with all that was left for a modern holiday, consumerism. We bought gifts.
The preceding paragraph is, of course, my take on it. If you grew up fundamentalist and went to church-sponsored Christmas pageants that celebrated the mystery of baby Jesus, I salute you. We took our religion straight, and instead, came to be known for what we didn’t allow — dancing, instrumental music in our worship service, and religious holidays.
Did I mention that on Easter, we ate white chocolate bunnies and avoided the resurrection story? Because we did.
One year in high school, I sneaked into midnight Mass with my best friend, who was Roman Catholic, and I was stunned to see the pageantry that I’d been missing. The whole thing left me pressing my nose against a frosted window, watching Bob Cratchit and Scrooge’s nephew Fred have at it. Don’t mind me.
I’ll just be out here with Scrooge as he was prior to that last Christmas ghost visitation scaring him straight.
If you’re lucky, you live long enough to realize the folly of dragging a raggedy childhood around like a heavy tail, and you realize that it’s better to throw in with the bigger, happier bunch and celebrate, just for a moment, a birth that makes no scientific sense. You take an idea that’s been dragged and tagged through the ages and promoted by people who haven’t a clue what they’re worshipping and you claim it and make it your own.
And so this year, we, a fallen fundamentalist and a cultural Catholic, walked over to fellowship with the Lutherans. This is a church that has a food ministry. I’ve walked by when they’re handing out meals on Fridays and if I wasn’t so scarred/scared, I’d walk in.
Other people had the same idea of watching for baby Jesus. The hay bales that served as seats were mostly full, so we stood in the back where all good sinners congregate. We briefly discussed whether the live nativity scene would include a live baby, and then some young shepherds (one was giggling) walked by leading alpacas or llamas — we weren’t sure which — while tiny goats bleated in their cage.
The Sunday school kids sang “Away in a Manger,” and the kings (I recognized one of them) trooped through the crowd with gifts that looked like cookie tins. The angels wore lights in their hair, and when the baby Jesus (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a real baby) appeared in Mary’s arms, an electric star illuminated the stable.
This is not our church home — we don’t have one — but for the moment, we were caught in the glory and majesty of a story we both grew up with (in very different pews). We walked home not talking much — certainly not religion. That’s a topic we mostly leave alone because I tend to hog the conversation.
But it was the kind of night that can make all the difference in a holiday season, if you’re celebrating this particular holiday. You can argue theology until your teeth fall out, but in the end, every religion shares a heart: Be kind. Watch out for your neighbors, and expand your definition of “neighbors” until it embraces the whole world.
Susan Campbell is the author of “Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood,” “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker” and “Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl.” She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.