Christmas has traditions that you should change and make your own, but some things get worse with tinkering. I should know.
My children had two bath toys, a pony and an elephant, that endured through many adventures in cleanliness. They lasted long enough to need their own song and I “wrote” one called The Pony and the Elephant. This literary wonder was set to the tune of The Holly and the Ivy. By great good luck, this Christmas song is almost never sung, but merely played.
My children thought The Pony and the Elephant was everywhere come Christmas time. They could even sing along in the store:
The Pony and the Elephant
They play with all the children.
I love the Pony and the Elephant.
They are my best friends.
Shakespeare? This is not even Michael Bay, though it is singable. The last line does not, quite work, but if one lingers fondly on “are” the words can be made to fit. This adaptation was fun for the kids, but did cheat them out of a much more interesting poem.
I can live with that . . . it is not quite the train wreck of those who decide to improve on Cranmer and company and create their own weddings. Of all prose, liturgical prose is the hardest to get right: theology, clarity, God centered. Nobody goes wrong with “Dearly beloved . . . ” but quite a few people went very wrong when they created vows nobody should keep (“I will stay with you as long as our love lasts. . . .”) or could keep (“I will love you while stars flame out and sand is fused to glass . . . “).
Making a Pony and an Elephant out of a wedding or a funeral is pretty serious. The same thing is true of the heart of Christmas. Fun stories like Santa exist so we can mess with them. Fictional characters have a kind of reality, but a kind that can receive our little changes without harm. They do not do great cosmic work like other vows, stories, or hard realities.
The story of Jesus is the hard reality of Christmas. You cannot adapt the truth of it by putting Santa at the manger without spoiling something that should not be spoiled. Moses was told to speak to the rock the second time, but decided to strike the rock again. God was not amused, because this was a deep image. God became man so that humans could become like God. We’d better leave His symbols of nativity alone.
The story does too much work to mix it with our “little” additions.
Personalize a shirt, a theme park experience, you can even personalize your cable package. Holidays, being holy days, and all, are a bit trickier. Every family should have eccentric traditions, like the ornaments we have collected over the years. We may be the only Christmas tree with Star Trek, Disney, Titanic, President Garfield, and Mickey Mouse. If not, we need to meet that other family! Our tree is personalized, because that is what trees can do.
Our creche is not different: Mary, Joseph, shepherds, the baby, and some animals. We can make our little stories, but the Big Story is unchanging and we allow that story to change us. We are personalized by God in the story of Christmas. One bit of good news is that same story impacts the clay of our souls, each unique, differently. We are shaped by Bethlehem in our own ways, but the creche shape is still recognizable.
Find something in your house you can Pony and Elephant, but for the sake of the children, tell the truth about the Truth.
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