Christmas Eve. I’m headed to Christmas City, USA today with Michael to celebrate the holiday with my family. There will be carol singing tonight, and egg nog drinking. My father will watch the Pope’s Christmas sermon like he does every year after we get back from the Christmas Eve church service. Growing up, the Christmas spirit didn’t hit my father until the church services were over and the last notes of “Joy to the World” were echoing in the narthex. Perhaps that comes with the territory of being responsible for the worship service, getting the church decorated, training acolytes to know when to light candles and assist with communion, preparing a sermon that would try to temper our materialistic dreams of toys and gadgets in the morning with the message and gift of the birth of the savior. And what pressure, to be host for an event that was one of the highest attended services of the year when all the C&E (Christmas and Easter) members of the congregation came out to worship.
I always loved the drive home after that service, it officially Christmas as church ended at just about midnight, all the houses of Bethlehem’s west end lit up with candles in the windows, a Moravian tradition dating to the founding of the city in colonial times, the candles to light the way for the holy family. As we warmed up in the car, we’d make bets as to how many of the luminara lining the sidewalk and walkway outside our house (the whole neighborhood did this) had caught their white bags on fire and burnt to hard mounds of wax and sand.
I am no longer religious. Blame it on being a preacher’s kid, but I saw firsthand all the politics that go on in religious organizations and it left a sour taste in my mouth. I also have great discomfort with the daddy god of the monotheistic religions. When I learned of the pre-Christian mother goddess and her son/sun god destroyer/lover it complicated things a bit, especially since so many of Jesus’s miracles (walking on water, healing the sick, transforming water and loaves and fish) were common attributes of the son/sun god around the Mediterranean. But I go to church one night a year for my dad, because it means something to him that his family worships together. I don’t believe a word of anything said in the liturgy, but I enjoy the Christmas carols and the time spent with my family. It was after one of these Christmas Eve services a few years ago that I made this video of me reading “Twas the Night Before Christmas”:
Since I’ve swung to the secular Christmas, an ornament for Santa. I rescued this Santa from the trash. His presents had broken off from his hand, but I glued them back on and adopted him for my tree. Many years ago I started signing all my Christmas gifts “From Santa Matthew.” I guess we all play Santa Claus to our loved ones this time of year. Here’s to the Santas in your life being good to you tonight!
