You’re supposed to be happy now, because it’s the holidays. The rest of the year, a civil disposition generally suffices. But for the next eight weeks, if you aren’t madly in love with every gift, every canape, every delightful holiday fete . . . you aren’t just an ungrateful wretch, you’re a menace to society.
There are Good Reasons to Hate the Holidays
The thing about the modern holiday season is that it’s come unmoored. We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, we celebrate Thanks-Getting — heaven help you if you show insufficient gratitude when showered with Pumpkin Spice Jalapeno Wasabi chips. People worked hard to deliver that taste sensation into your undeserving hands, and you must reciprocate by demonstrating your heartfelt pleasure at their craft or else you just don’t love them nor America either.
Then there’s Giftmas. The reason for the season is Love and Sharing: You must love every outward sign of cheer being inflicted upon you, and you must share a sufficient amount of your wealth, time, and capacity for making inane conversation in order to prove that you, too, are a true citizen.
With joy like this, what’s not to hate?
Holy Days are No Vacation
The unmooring arises from forgetting that “holidays” are meant to be holy days. Sacred.
Back when I was not a Christian, I rightly perceived the mad frenzy of forced-cheerfulness to be meaningless. An awful lot of shopping, noise, and admonitions to cheer-up already! when there was no obvious grounds for cheerfulness, unless you just really love a crockpot full of mini-sausages. Even Swedish meatballs and miniature quiches just can’t stand up to the crushing darkness in the world.
If the reason for the season is to observe just how good we’ve got it, then it’s not unreasonable to notice that things could be better. A warm sunny tropical island, alone with a good book, might be nice just now.
Seriously, kids, if your idea of hedonism is the office drop-in, you need to get out more. There are better pleasures, I assure you.
Sacred Work is Good Work, but It’s Work
I’m fortunate to run in circles where the work of observing the holy days is generally quite pleasurable. I like the people in my extended family, and I like spending time with them. I love that I can do so without traveling for days on end, only to spend a long rainy weekend sharing a basement floor with twenty of my closest kinsmen. I’ve got it good.
But what about my friends who undertake immense labor, expense, and misery in order to keep the holidays in suitable fashion?
Well, no reason to pretend they’re having fun at it. And it would perhaps be better if the sacred work didn’t have quite such a penitential feel to it. But they are doing something very, very good.
Joy is not about Pleasure
I’ve given birth enough times to be able to say two things with confidence:
- There are few other things in life more worthwhile than bringing a new human being into this world.
- Childbirth is not particularly fun.
If you want to know what pain is, go up to a woman in labor and tell her, “Quit being such a grouch! You’re having a baby! Smile!” She looks busy, but she’s not too busy to punch you in the nose.
The holy days are joyful because they are a good work. We are rendering our thanks to God. We gather with the people whom we share this world with, not because they are perfect people, but because they are the people we’ve been given. We shower others with kindness not because we expect anything in return, but because God has shown such kindness to us in creating us, in sustaining us, and in holding out the promise of eternal salvation.
Pumpkin Pie as a Foretaste of Heaven
When we talk about the “Joy of the Cross” we don’t assert that torturous execution is a walk in the park. What we mean is that God loves us so much He’s willing to do whatever it takes to restore to us that walk in the park that is our supernatural destiny. So we have a Christ who comes bringing both miraculous cures, sign of our eternal hope, and a promised cross — our path through this fallen world into the next.
Keep in mind that even the easy part of being Jesus Christ — fixing broken bodies, kissing babies, calming storms — came at a cost. If the Cross was unspeakable suffering, wandering Galilee was probably a fair match for what it’s like to stand in the kitchen cooking all day.
So where are the holidays on this divine spectrum? Sometimes that pie is like water from the well, like empty vessels miraculously filled with the best wine. Other times it’s like slipping through a crowd trying to push you off a cliff. When life is darkest, maybe it’s the spear in your side.
How hateful to tell someone that the best thing about the holidays is turkey and stuffing, cheer up already! No. The best thing about the holidays is that we get to participate in the divine work of goodness, even when the turkey is absolutely horrid.
Image: Joos de Momper (II) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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