Christmas: My Soul Proclaims — Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

Greetings Patheos.com readers. I’m a brand-new blogger for Patheos. I’m excited to be writing for you and I hope to be hearing from you often in the coming months. Right now it’s the Christmas season, so I’ll share my response to some of the scripture being read in many Christian churches. — Barbara Falconer Newhall

“And Mary said, ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord . . . ’” Luke 1:46

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him . . . ” John 1:6

Every December as I haul the Christmas tree lights, the plastic angel and the fake plastic pine boughs up from the basement, part of me clings to the idea that in decorating my house for Christmas I am, along with Mary, proclaiming the greatness of the Lord.

When my Christmas tree twinkles its lights at my children, my husband, our next-door neighbors and the occasional delivery person bringing packages – I like to think that, like John the Baptist, I’m testifying to the Light that is on its way.

But it is a feeble witness. Lots of people put up Christmas trees each year – my daughter’s Jewish godmother, for one, the atheist I interviewed for my book, Wrestling with God, for another. You don’t have to be a Christian to do Christmas these days.

I string the tree lights; the pine needles prickle the backs of my hands. I wrap the fake pine boughs around the stairway railing. I pull out the oversized Christmas stockings my mother painstakingly needlepointed for her grandchildren when they were small.

And I listen to a CD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir belting out Christmas carols. Not “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Not “White Christmas.” Not “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Not the watered-down stuff you hear at the mall these days. But carols with some backbone: “Silent Night” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

Just as John the Baptist wasn’t afraid to speak truth to the cultural authorities of his time – the priests and the Levites – these carols speak their truth to me, to my household and to our surrounding culture:

“Son of God, love’s pure light radiant beams from Thy holy face.”

“Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see. Hail the incarnate Deity.”

Kids don’t sing these carols in school any more, and it’s the rare merchant who will play something so explicitly, viscerally Christian in their store. But I’m free to play them in the privacy of my own home.

My family likes the old carols; they sang them as kids. But mostly they ignore the lyrics. The lyrics are too intense, my husband (who was reared by a couple of Berkeley, California, agnostics) might complain. Too heavy, my upbeat, self-sufficient son would say. “Too much God stuff,” my daughter, a beginner Buddhist, might declare.

Too intense? Too heavy? Too much God?

Or too much to hope for?

© 2014 Barbara Falconer Newhall

A version of this essay first appeared on www.BarbaraFalconerNewhall.com, where Barbara Falconer Newhall riffs on life, family, books, writing, and her rocky spiritual journey. Her interfaith book, Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith will be released early 2015 by Patheos Press.