The human, worldly, earthly story of Christmas
I knew that the Barry household would replicate God's peaceable kingdom to come, and we would sit down for dinner together every night and we would sing "Kum ba yah" and there would be peace.
Then my son came from womb, with a three foot water gun permanently attached to his right hand – six shooting speeds.
I had been to seminary. I knew how to identify with emotions and feelings.
I just knew that when I became a parent and my three year-old daughter got upset I could gently calm her by identifying with her feelings.
Now, I don't know exactly when I learned that getting a three year-old little girl to share more feelings doesn't always work.
Before I became a parent I also knew that my family would show up to church ON TIME!
We would not be one of those families that did not have their act together!
Then I spent just a few Sundays helping to get my family ready for church, and I don't know what it is about Sundays, but O MY LORD! I am thankful that any family can make it before the choral benediction.
Before I became a parent I also knew that I would shield my family from the excesses of Christmas.
My family would "know the reason for the season," and we would capture the Christmas spirit not the cultural spirit.
After all, what is it with Frosty and Rudolph and Santa Claus?
Who, by the way, brings gifts based on whether you are good or bad?
What does that have to do with the Presbyterian notion of grace, and moreover what does it have to do with the birth of our Lord and Savior Christ!
See, I knew that it's about being spiritual not material, sacred not secular. What I didn't know at the time was I even had a proud group from American history to back me up.
In a book that came out last year called Christmas: Festival of Incarnation, historian Donald Heinz says that the Puritans "argued that December 25th was not biblical, but heathen."
"That Jesus would have disapproved of his birthday celebration and that Christmas was just an excuse for gross behavior, social upheaval and drunkenness!"
So thank you for inviting me to your Sunday School class Christmas party, but no thank you. I AM NOT COMING!
In Puritan England, all shops were ordered to remain open, work forced to go on, and no one was to light one single holiday candle or even taste a slice of a holiday cake.
The Puritan parliament continued with business as usual on Christmas Day from 1644 to 1656.
In Scotland, John Knox put an end to Christmas in 1562, and it wasn't a nationally recognized legal holiday until the 1940's.
When the Puritans came to America, they began again to try to rid the culture of Christmas and what they thought were its distractions and pagan excesses.
In Massachusetts, Christmas was illegal from 1659 to 1681, and Congress was actually in session on December 25th from the years of 1789 to 1851.
To the Puritans the secular celebration of Christmas, with all its worldly delights and sensual, hedonistic pleasures, all that extravagant eating and drinking you do – not to mention clearly pagan customs like kissing under the mistletoe – are blasphemous and made all the worse by using Jesus as the excuse for the celebration.
The Puritan conclusion: BA HUM BUG! DO AWAY WITH CHRISTMAS ALL TOGETHER!
