Peter Espeut | Cashing in on Christianity

I can hear the ambivalence and the internal conflict in the minds of several radio personalities: When do we start playing Christmas music? There is pressure from those who serve Mammon to start the shopping frenzy in October – or even in July! When is “too early”?

Christmas is a great religious season of profound theological significance originating with the over two-thousand-year-old Christian religion. It began as a feast (literally plenty food) to celebrate the incarnation, the foundational faith event where divinity takes on flesh to become “God-man” inside a human family. The other two Abrahamic world religions consider this idea infra dig and even blasphemous! How can God who is transcendent and wholly other – the creator of all that is – take on flesh, be born of a woman, and become part of creation? Nonsensical!

The idea is revolutionary!

The Christmas event elevates the status of humanity – and particularly the status of women. That God would become human indicates strongly that humanity is not fundamentally evil and depraved – “born in iniquity and conceived in sin” as Calvin argued. The world and humanity are not evil; after all, “for God so loved the world …”. This realisation is worth celebrating!

And then there is the Holy Family – Joseph and Mary with the baby Jesus – the foundation of a stable society. Celebrating Christmas emphasises the importance of the family, an important Christian social institution to be treasured, encouraged and supported.

“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” the prophet Isaiah tells us (9:2), suggesting (in theological language) that the coming of the Messiah (the anointed one = the king, the great high priest, the prophet of prophets) will take the world out of the realm of darkness and sin into some new transformation, some new kingdom. No one knows when Jesus, the Christ, was actually born, but the celebration of Christmas at the darkest time of the year (the darkest day is actually December 21) is of great theological significance. And the hanging of many bright and colourful lights at Christmas makes a powerful theological statement!

Many special songs and hymns have been written about the incarnation and its profound implications for humanity, which we love to sing in celebration of the season.

GOD’S GIFT

The wise men brought gifts to the newborn king, who is actually God’s gift to us. And so we give gifts to others, especially members of our families. Primarily we give ourselves as the most valuable gift, but in addition we offer some material token symbolising our love and affection. Gift giving has long been part of the celebration of Christmas, which is what has led to the shopping frenzy in the run-up to the season.

I suppose you can’t blame the merchants and shopkeepers, who usually do more business at Christmas than during the whole rest of the year combined! For them, Christmas can’t come soon enough! This also applies to the media houses who sell more ads at Christmas than at any other time of the year (except maybe at election time, but then that comes every four or five years, so Christmas is much more important). So, play the Christmas Carols early, and run the ads in October! Let’s cash in on Christianity, even if we ourselves are not of the Christian persuasion.

Traditional Christianity considers abortion and homosexuality to be antithetical to itself and its norms and values, and is openly critical of the efforts of secular society to normalise those behaviours which – in the Church’s mind – are anti-life and anti-family. What is ironic (hypocritical?) is that media houses which spend the rest of the year pushing a profoundly anti-Christian agenda, at Christmastime fall over themselves promoting a Christian celebration!

SALES AND PROFITS

Of course, promoting Christianity is the farthest thing from their minds. They are about sales and profits. While the loudspeakers blare “Joy to the world the Lord has come”, the shopkeepers and media managers wring their hands and celebrate “Joy to the world the shoppers have come”.

If you can’t discredit religion, you can at least try to marginalise it into meaninglessness. If you can’t disprove the validity of religious truth, at least you can try to capture religion’s symbols and celebrations and trivialise them into shopping events and profit-centres.

So: when is too early to start playing Christmas music?

Right now, the custodians of Christianity are not in Christmas mode. This coming Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King which brings the Church Year to an end; and thereafter begins the season of Advent when we begin to make theological and liturgical preparations for the celebration of the coming of the Messiah. (Yes, all Christians are Adventists).

During the Season of Advent we look forward to both comings of the Christ: we remind ourselves of what the first coming at Christmas was all about, imaging what the world was like before Jesus. But we also look towards the second coming: we prepare ourselves by holding penance services, purifying ourselves (making his paths through our hearts straight) by repentance and confession of our sins.

And then yes, we pre-purchase the gifts, and the ingredients for the dinners, especially where we treat those who have less than we do.

It is certainly inappropriate for merchants to loudly begin to cash in on Christmas before the Advent season even begins. Maybe it suits the secularists who shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas at all!

But in churches of the older traditions, the first Christmas Carols won’t be sung until Christmas Eve; and we continue to sing them during the twelve days of the Christmas Season into the New Year. Meanwhile, the radio stations will have stopped playing Christmas music on Boxing Day. At the time when Christians have just begun to celebrate the season, they have begun to look forward to cashing in next year.

Peter Espeut is Dean of Studies at St Michael’s Theological College. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com