We have ornaments from our childhoods and ornaments from the childhoods of each of our children. They have been out for the last two months and soon they will return to storage.
Next Christmas will not be like this Christmas, yet they will (God willing!) still be there. A different tree will hold the same ornaments. A different year will bring new friends to our Saint Stephen’s Day feast. We will play new games, but sing the old carols.
The Christmas pageant will be done at Saint Paul’s, but some of this years kids will be too old to perform, this years “baby Jesus” will graduate to playing an “animal” in the stable, and the shepherds will get a bit taller.
Next year’s Baby Jesus is not even on the way! Secular Christmas will always need religious Christmas. Without a basis for morality beyond those alive today and what strikes us as moral, holidays fade.
One bacchanal looks like another. Super Bowl Sunday just has a different menu from Christmas Day.
The problem with creating a culture for consumers is that it is always changing with our tastes, but is never new. Vice is vice and so novelty is impossible if the basis for civilization is desire. The way culture does change is to demonize the old “cool” or the old way of fulfilling desire while elevating the new. Last decades look is mocked, yesterday’s decadence is recognizes, but this year’s look is proclaimed actually “cool” (or whatever the new cool word for cool might be) while today’s decadence is merely a variation on vice. Remakes multiply, because even the creative tension of rebellion is hard when The Man is transgender and willing to accommodate any desire.
For secularists there is a real question why anyone should sacrifice pleasure for other people. Surely we all wish that someone would defend us from Daesh, but why me? Can’t we talk the rural Bible thumpers into doing it? What about drones? The problem, of course, is that even the research necessary to learn to make drones is hard. A few people just like the monastic life of serious research, but not as many as we need. Math is hard, lab research isn’t grinding, and there is more money to be made in sales or stock manipulation.
I want someone to invent the next iPhone, but why me?
So it is with holidays. We know we should fast, but fasting is hard and unpleasant. The Church year forces me to either fast or confront the reason why I am not. Before I started following the Church calendar I was all in favor of fasting and charity, but hardly ever did it. When I did fast, it was because I decided to do it. I was not part of a community or under discipline, I was choosing my religious thrills.
Yet if there is not rigorous fast, there is no feast. The Saint Stephen’s Day dinner tasted so good, because we were meatless (except for Thanksgiving) some of November and most of December. The more I hate the fast, and this year it was very hard for me, the sweeter the meat. Every year’s fast is unchanging, but I change. What was easy as a young man is hard here in the the youth of old age.
Christmas is never changing, always new. Christmas cannot change, because it is based in a real person: Jesus. Because it is based in a person and not just a story, Christmas is always new. We learn something new about the people we love the longer we love them. Love Jesus and you will find Him always surprising you while still being Himself.
Merry Christmas.
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