Rest Merrily

Be merry, God says, though perhaps I should start by being a gentleman!

The least important life mission I have adopted is to remind singers that God Rest You Merry, Gentleman has a comma.  Gentleman are being commanded to be merry, not already jolly. This is important, to the extent that such things can be important, for two reasons. First, only gentlemen can be merry, but gentlemen seldom are by nature. Second, jollification is commanded at Christmas. The party is not optional.

Why can only a gentleman rest merrily?

A hobbledehoy, the youngling that might be a gentleman, has too much growing to do for rest. The cad cannot rest, because his sins keep him awake. A gentleman is a man who has reached maturity. He sees the world at is, including himself. He stares the world, the flesh, and the devil down, mostly. It is the “mostly” that is depressing to the gentleman. He sees how short he has fallen from the glory of God and how little excuse he has.

A gentleman gone bad becomes a cynic, unable to see tinsel as anything other than humbuggery, fake gold. The gentleman who avoids cynicism drifts into a worldly wisdom and tiredness. He sees through the glitter, but has not yet lost all hope. This is, if anything, worse: a self-indulgent sorrow that can lead to passivity.

Generally people who go about raising false cheer should be told, politely, to shut up. They are the sort that if you break your arm will ask you to be thankful that you did not break both arms or tell you that “God will work it for good.”

Job had friends like this and God was not happy. God can tell us to cheer up and we can take it, but everyone else should mourn with those who mourn. Why? We know God has been here and done pain, but everyone else has a bit of humbuggery lurking around their message of cheer. Have they really seen how bad things are? God did. Have they paid the price we have paid? God paid more. Only God should dare tell us to rest and to be merry.

So the gentleman who has not fallen for cynicism or is not passive aggressive to himself will rest in God. Only God can save us and God will save us. Only God can redeem the broken world and the shattered church, but God will redeem and heal.

Why merrily? 

The man who is merry is resting, but not just sitting. He might dance like Fezziwig  or write poems like Rossetti, but he creates beauty. He makes a party and nobody ever had a good party without labor. The work of jollification, of merry making, is real work, the fit work for a gentleman.

It is jolly to start a new community, church, or business. It is merry to refuse compromise by doing something better. It is restful to work at doing justice, to practice virtue, and take joy in what God is done. Nobody can tell us to do this, because we are liberated men, but God who liberated us can command us. We are the King’s men.

So we stand at a crisis for the Republic and look it squarely in the eye. We see the utter corruption of much of higher education, including Christian higher education. We are unblinking when we see the compromises we have made, but we are not dismayed. We recollect that Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day to save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.

Oh tidings of comfort and joy!

Let’s make a party.

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This post comes from joy at the end of the first semester of The Saint Constantine School. There a rogue band of aspiring ladies and gentlemen have created some beauty. The School is a happy place where love has driven out fear. You can to to college without debt and kindergarten without bullying.

These are merry things.