Someone I thought was a dear friend tagged me with this horrendous horrendous song sometime during the night. I woke up to the dulcet sounds of a child threatening to be sick and decided to push play. And when I did, it was as though all the sorrows of the world instantly and a hopelessly devolved upon my head. Furthermore, I don’t want to suffer alone, so listen to the song, and then come back here so I can share my heart with you.
Sings this person named Andy Williams who I have never heard of before,
You should remember from the start
Christmas is a feeling in your heart….
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
No.
He goes on to list stuff like tinsel and toys and then concludes, again,
These are not the most important part
Christmas is a feeling in your heart…
Ok, ok, so I know this is going to make you all mad because everybody loves the Christmas Carol, but Truly, I hate it with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. As far as I can tell Charles Dickens, for reasons probably only known to God, was cosmically permitted to take the settled pelagianism of his Unitarianism or whatever he had and shove it down the throat of the English speaking psyche, and we have literally never ever been able to recover from the blow.
See, as Dickens so brilliant observed in book after book, human people are awful. Terribly awful–cruel, passive aggressive, unjust, miserable, funny, but still awful. And really, rather than preaching and remonstrating, but instead using the sheer genius of his pen, he drew attention to pervasive societal evil and changed the cultural mind about injustice and poverty. So that’s great.
But then, instead of stopping there, he had to go and write the Christmas Carol. Because we have to make any meager spark of good that we ever do into something Spiritual. But it can’t be that God is the originator of all good, even the good that we manage to cobble together. It has to be something that we manufacture from within ourselves. It has to be From The Heart. But the heart isn’t really strong enough to go the distance. But seriously, we don’t want God’s help. Perish the thought. So what to do. What to do.
Well, maybe we could generate some kind of spiritual force field to help us along.
(By we I mean Dickens, obviously.)
What I’m trying to say is, Charles Dickens can be blamed entirely for the toxic idea that the Spiritual Forcefield of Christmas can and will transform not only human society, but the heart itself if only you are merry and generous enough. You have to keep it. You Have To Keep Christmas In Your Heart All Year Dammit.
Andy Williams carries on,
Faith and hope, good will to men
Love and peace and faith again
And then he sings this,
Let the prayers that Christmas brings
Brush your heart like angel’s wings…
Oh…oh no…….what does this even mean. Oh please no.
I mean, the very last thing I want is for angel wings to brush my heart. Not only does it sound creepy and bizarre, and idolatrous, and confused, but it also makes my soul shudder violently within myself.
Christmas Day will soon be gone
Yet the joy will linger on
If you’ll only learn to do your part
Let Christmas be a feeling in your heart
See, here’s the problem. The power of the feeling of Christmas is already pervasive. As far as I can tell, everyone already has the feeling of Christmas. It is abundant and merry and even wretchedly bright. And some people even keep it the whole desolate year. And guess what, Things Are Still Going Badly.
Christmas cannot bear the transformative weight of our societal ills. Your feelings of cozy love and peace and good will cannot possibly solve anything. I’m sorry that they can’t, truly, I wish it were that easy, but it isn’t.
Lots of terrible people who act and behave badly, wrongly, unjustly, and sinfully, have very nice feelings in their hearts. But those feelings don’t translate into the actions of goodness and beauty.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I will go clean my whole house, with no feelings of peace and hope and love undimmed anywhere Near My Heart.
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