What are people ‘really’ doing at Christmas time?
Around this time of yr, there comes a recurrent argue nigh what people are 'really' doing when they celebrate Christmas. A while agone, in that location was a programme on Radio 4 exploring the origins of the tunes of carols. For example, the tune for Good King Wenceslas was originally a spring ballad celebrating the fertility of nature. Information technology is also normally said that at Christmas we are 'actually' celebrating Saturnalia, a Roman/infidel winter festival during which conventional social decorum was abandoned.
The renewal of lite and the coming of the new year was historic in the later on Roman Empire at theDies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Lord's day," on Dec 25.
I take heard information technology commented that when we put up a Christmas tree, we are 'actually' participating in a heathen fertility rite, bringing something living indoors to counteract the death-dealing common cold of winter. This idea of what we are 'really' doing has been given a positive spin at times, arguing that when people write 'Xmas' they are 'really' echoing the early Christian use of the Chi-Rho monogram, which stands for the proper name of Christ—they only don't realise it.
But of course it is all nonsense. People aren't 'really' doing things that they don't know nigh—they cannot be. This is what is known as the 'genetic fallacy'—thinking that the 'significant' of things resides in their origin. If I depict my wife as a 'lady', I am not suggesting that she kneads dough, even though that is where the discussion comes from. When someone comments that a friends of theirs is a 'law unto themselves', they are not in fact quoting St Paul (Romans 2.14) nor making use of his statement that our consciences themselves demonstrate that there is an objective sense to right and wrong. (They usually hateful precisely the contrary!) Neither is the church building composed of 'called-out ones'becausethe Greek word for 'church' isekklesia which comes fromekand kaleo. (If you lot have not heard this statement earlier, just be thankful.) The meaning of words is related to their apply, and non their origins.
Then what are people 'really' doing at Christmas, as they participate in the customary social rituals?
Well, firstly, they are doing just that:participating in customary social rituals. Conforming to repeated social rituals is a powerful matter, and information technology has the potential to give security and demark people together. We are non and then muchhomo sapiens asman liturgens; ritual patterns are more important to us than nosotros oft realise. If you don't believe me, get to a football game match. Or try to change a church tradition. Or ask Canon Simon Tatton-Brown who 'ruined' a whole school-full of children past telling them that Santa was 'actually' St Nicholas. Fifty-fifty the bad jokes in Christmas crackers role to 'bind people together'—and that is why they are so bad. If they were improve, someone would not get the joke, and then they would exist left out. And that gives some other important insight into these rituals—anything that binds one grouping together is sure to leave others out. And if you don't believe that, ask anyone for whom Christmas reminds them of a bereavement, or for whom their 'family' is not the one they wanted.
In our context in Western Europe, information technology is worth noting that shared rituals become more than important when we accept fewer other things in common. I think that is why some 'traditions' are defended with real animosity at times—these things are our last bastion for a sense of common humanity.
Secondly, these rituals expressdeep human needs. Every bit the nights close in, and the days shorten, we long to see calorie-free. As the winter gets colder, we long for warmth. As nature around us seems strangled by death, we need signs of hope and life. And as the inconvenience of going out gets greater, and we are more isolated from friends and neighbours, we long for company. These are all natural human longings, and many of the rituals of Christmas are designed to meet these needs. That is why Saturnalia came to be celebrated in mid-winter, and that is why the early Christian evangelists were wise to take this festival over, rather than getting rid of it. Who can bring us light simply the low-cal of the world (John viii.12)? Who can bring us warmth only the one who has poured God's love into our hearts (Rom 5.five)? Who gives us hope beyond decease, but the one who not but tasted death for us merely swallowed it upward in victory (1 Cor 15.54)? And who else can bring united states of america into friendship with God (two Cor 5.18–nineteen)?
That leads to the third truth about Christmas: these rituals accept, at certain key moments,been taken over, 'Christianised' if yous will, and in a polemical way. The reason why we are not jubilant Saturnalia is that the festival now points to (what Christians believe) is a truer reality. Within this at that place are two dynamics going on. 1 is the recognition that the questions beingness asked are existent questions which need existent answers. But the other is that there is also tension, nowadays in the conflict of beliefs about where we find trustworthy answers to these questions. It took courage, strength and a struggle to transform traditions in the past, and volition take similar qualities if we are to bend contemporary traditions in the same way today. We need to do this if we are to rescue people from the all-pervading narrative of salvation past shopping that our culture runs on. It is a narrative that fails to deliver, because information technology cannot give the light, warmth, hope and friendship nosotros demand.
So the 4th affair people are doing at Christmas is putting themselves ina place of opportunity—opportunity to ask of import questions and find dependable answers.The task of Christian ministry at this time of year, it seems to me, is to make the most of those opportunities in a way which builds bridges and opens doors.
Vox-over videos with graphic animation seem to be all the rage at the moment, and UCCF produced one which aims to try and repossess the true meaning of Christmas. That is cracking, though for me information technology feels just a bit too 'preachy' and perhaps simply a niggling too negative almost Christmas rituals. Hither is an culling, which does a adept job of building on a common narrative to ask pertinent questions, from Glen Scrivener:
And I never failed to be amused and impressed by Milton Jones' 4-thought on the meaning of Christmas.
'Jesus of course was a very humble man, who said 'I am God'. So, er, either he was God, or he wasn't.'
How can a man say so much in then few words?
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