Xmas is fake, so deal with it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As the Christmas pageant dress rehearsal rolled to its bold finale, reporter Hank Stuever found his mind drifting away to an unlikely artistic destination\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Xmas is fake, so deal with it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the Christmas pageant dress rehearsal rolled to its bold finale, reporter Hank Stuever found his mind drifting away to an unlikely artistic destination\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Terry Mattingly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-28T09:55:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/\",\"name\":\"Xmas is fake, so deal with it\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-12-28T09:55:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-12-28T09:55:57+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"As the Christmas pageant dress rehearsal rolled to its bold finale, reporter Hank Stuever found his mind drifting away to an unlikely artistic destination\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Xmas is fake, so deal with it\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\",\"name\":\"Terry Mattingly\",\"description\":\"On Religion\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. 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{"id":1775,"date":"2009-12-28T05:55:57","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T09:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=1775"},"modified":"2009-12-28T05:55:57","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T09:55:57","slug":"xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2009\/12\/xmas-is-fake-so-deal-with-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Xmas is fake, so deal with it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

As the Christmas pageant dress rehearsal rolled to its bold finale, reporter Hank Stuever<\/a> found his mind drifting away to an unlikely artistic destination \u2014 a masterpiece from the Cubist movement.<\/p>\n

The cast of \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life 2\u201d reassembled on stage at Celebration Covenant Church, a suburban megachurch north of Dallas. There were characters from a Victorian tableau, along with Frosty the Snowman, young ballerinas and children dressed as penguins. Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus were there, too.<\/p>\n

Then, entering from stage right, came \u201can adult Christ stripped down to his loincloth and smeared with Dracula blood, dragging a cross to center stage while being whipped by two centurion guards,\u201d writes Stuever, in \u201cTinsel,\u201d<\/a> his open-a-vein study of Christmas in the American marketplace. \u201cHere is where the Nativity, Dickens and Burl Ives collide head-on with Good Friday, as Jesus is crucified while everyone sings \u2018Hark the Herald Angels Sing,\u2019 ending on a long, noisy note: \u2018newborn kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThen they freeze. <\/p>\n

\u201cHold it for applause.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scene was achingly sincere and painfully bizarre, with holy images jammed into a pop framework next to crass materialism. For millions of Americans, this is the real Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wrote it in my notes, right there in that church,\u201d said Stuever. \u201cI wrote, \u2018It\u2019s Picasso.\u2019 \u2026 I just couldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is nothing new about a journalist \u201cembedding\u201d himself to experience life on the front lines. Rather than heading to Iraq, Stuever moved to the Bible Belt. He lived in Frisco, Texas, for six months in 2006, then made 12 short follow-up trips during the next two years.<\/p>\n

The veteran Washington Post reporter convinced three families to let him see Christmas through their eyes, from the Back Friday craziness to the somber trashing of mountains of ripped wrapping paper. The book\u2019s credo is voiced by Tammie Parnell, a 40-something business dynamo who decorates McMansions for women who are too busy to prepare for a Texas-sized Christmas.<\/p>\n

\u201cFake is okay here,\u201d she tells Stuever. \u201cDiamond earrings. Christmas trees. If you want me to prove that fake is okay here, let\u2019s you and I go to the Stonebriar Country Club pool one day and check everyone out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bottom line? Most Americans say they want Bethlehem and the North Pole, but the truth is that they invest more time, energy and money at the North Pole. That\u2019s fine with Stuever, who is openly gay and calls himself a \u201cChristmas loser\u201d \u2014 while wrestling with the lessons of his Jesuit education and the loss of his Catholic faith. <\/p>\n

\u201cA dip into even the most reverent inquiries by Bible scholars,\u201d he argues, \u201ceasily leads to the conclusion that there was no actual manger scene in Bethlehem, no shepherds dropping by to see the baby, no star in the east, no Magi, no frankincense, no myrrh. \u2026 Many scholars have concluded, some more gently than others, that the Christmas story is intentionally fictive, written by the earliest, first-century evangelists to beef up Jesus\u2019 street cred as a believable Jewish Messiah. Like any superhero, Christ needed an origin story rife with the drama, metaphors and the meaningful symbols of the era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, \u201cTinsel\u201d seeks the meaning of Christmas in the material world itself, in the blitz of shopping, in houses draped in high-voltage lights<\/a>, in the complex joys and tensions of family life. Stuever argues that the binges of shopping and feasting are as ancient \u2014 and more significant today \u2014 than the rites of praying and believing.<\/p>\n

For Stuever, Christmas is fake, but that\u2019s fine because fake is all there is. He argues that millions of Americans struggle to find the \u201ctotal moments\u201d of nostalgia and joy that they seek at Christmas because they are not being honest about why they do what they do during the all-consuming dash to Dec. 25.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so easy to see all of the craziness on TV and say, \u2018Oh, those poor, stupid people,\u2019 \u201d he said. \u201cBut when you get down there in the middle of it with them and listen to what people are saying and try to feel what they are feeling, you realize that all of that wildness is not just about buying the new Wii at Best Buy. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a religious experience for them, even though it couldn\u2019t be more secular. They\u2019re out there searching for transcendence, trying to find what they think is the magic of Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"