Peter Espeut | Going deeper into Christmas

I wish to take this opportunity to wish my readers a very happy and holy Christmas. Today – January 3 – is only the 10th day of Christmas, and there are two more days to go before the Christmas season is consummated.

On December 25 we celebrated the manifestation of Jesus to the Jews, represented by the shepherds. On January 6 we celebrate Epiphany – the manifestation of Jesus to the Gentiles, represented by the wise men from the East! (To the east of Israel is Arabia, and India, and China, and we can drift south to include Africa). Since most of us are of Gentile descent, we must look forward to celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus to our primordial ancestors! Christmas is not over yet, despite the sounds from the pagan gods of commerce and the media!

Those who seek to capture Christmas either for personal gain or to thumb their noses at formal religion, have long stopped singing Christmas Carols (some began as early as October and November), and have moved on. Those to whom Christmas really belongs have been singing since Christmas Eve, and will continue through Day 12 to Epiphany.

And so I reiterate – A Holy Christmas to you all! Even to the pagans out there!

Christmas celebrates not so much the birthday of Jesus, the Christ (we don’t know the date for that) but the incarnation – God taking flesh and becoming human. Think about it: God – pure spirit – the creator of all, becomes part of his creation. It seems a contradiction, a logical impossibility! And then God – the author of life – is put to death like a common criminal? How could sensible people believe that?

PROBLEMS WITH THE STORY

It is not just modern people that have problems with this story. St Paul tells us that “Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:22-23). And so whether you are a person of faith with a religious bent, or you are a thinker, a student of philosophy, it just does not compute.

John Calvin did not understand it. How could the all-good God become genuinely human if humans are totally depraved – conceived in sin and born in iniquity? The assertion that Jesus is true man and true God at the same time means that humanity must be fundamentally good, even if we have a flaw in our nature, our makeup. What an absolutely positive assessment of the quality of humanity! And of the world, which “God so loved!” And loves.

The redemption from sin to take place on Good Friday and Easter must already be implied in the mystery of Christmas – the Incarnation – the Word made flesh – in that babe lying in a manger (manger translates as food), who later would give us his body as food. Be careful of oversimplications. We need an adult faith!

There is something inside us that responds to contradictions – to dialectics – that finds truth in the resolution of seeming opposites: the idea of a king born in a stable, the last being first, in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned, and in dying that we are born to eternal life. Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies …

The anti-Christmas faction (we can find other names for them) are not beyond spreading false propaganda. They are fond of calling Christmas a pagan feast (and Easter too!), or suggesting that it has pagan origins. They have discovered that the Roman Emperor Aurelian revived the cult of “Sol Invinctus” (the Invincible Sun) in 274 AD centred around the time of the Winter solstice (December 21 – the day with the shortest hours of daylight); and they claim that Christianity celebrates Christmas around that time to perpetuate worship of the Sun-God. Do they hear themselves?

THEOLOGICALLY APPROPRIATE

Since we do not know the actual date of the birth of the Christ, we have to find a time that is theologically appropriate. As Jesus is the Light of the World, what more appropriate time of year for him to break into the cosmos than around the darkest day of the year, bringing light into a darkened world. The date of the Winter Solstice would have been known to the ancient sun-worshippers as well. The anti-Christian naysayers need to remember that old statistical maxim: “correlation is not causation”. Just because both occurred around the same time does not mean that one caused the other or led to the other.

The new religion called Christianity took on the pagan Roman Empire and conquered it, including conquering its gods too! Where is the Roman Empire with its sun-god today? We retain the names of some of the Roman Gods in the days of the week (Woden and Thor) and months of the year (Janus, Mars), but their cult is but a distant memory.

Say (if you wish) that you have no use for a God that makes demands upon you – ethical and personal; but be honest about it: don’t bring pagan gods into the argument, unless you wish by your lifestyle to pay homage to Eros, Venus, Bacchus, Cupid, Fortuna, Succubus, Voluptas, Hermaphroditus, and Priapus.

And then at Easter (always set in relation to the vernal equinox) at last the hours of daylight are longer than the hours of darkness, The light has finally conquered the darkness!

There is wisdom in the structure of the Church year, matching the order in creation – reflecting the natural cycle of the orbits of the earth and moon. Respect the ancients! They knew more than maybe some of us.

May the deep meaning of Christmas sink in and permeate your being. How will you respond?

And may 2025 be better for you than 2024.

Peter Espeut us a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com