I Can't Even

Fox & Friends is covering the defining controversy of our time pic.twitter.com/OSUYGUrZQK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 12, 2019

Oh, this is what's going on (and the Scott Walker connection):

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers has gone back to calling the evergreen on display at the state Capitol a holiday tree, reversing his predecessor who declared it a Christmas tree. Former Governor Scott Walker made his displeasure known on Twitter with a comparison between Christmas trees and a Hanukkiah, the candle holder used in Hanukkah celebrations more commonly known as a menorah.

The state Department of Administration places a huge evergreen in the Capitol rotunda every year ahead of Christmas. The tree has been a tradition in the Capitol since 1916.

Politicians called it a Christmas tree until 1985, when they began referring to it as a holiday tree to avoid perceptions that they were endorsing religion. DOA allows other groups to place displays in the rotunda as end-of-the-year holidays approach, including a menorah and a Festivus pole, a nod to the fictional holiday in the "Seinfeld" television series. But the controversy over what to call the tree has never really died.

Walker also tweeted a picture of a holiday tree, writing "this is a Christmas tree used by people celebrating Christmas. This is not a holiday tree."

Evers, a Democrat, called the tree a holiday tree on Friday. He announced the tree's theme will be "Celebrate Science" and asked schoolchildren to submit science-related ornaments to adorn the tree.

Evers spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff didn't immediately respond to an email asking why the governor has gone back to calling the tree a holiday tree.

Republican Scott Fitzgerald, the state Senate majority leader and a 2020 congressional candidate, tweeted that Evers' move was "'PC' garbage. It's a Christmas Tree (sic)."

Tweeted Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos: "We all know it's a Christmas tree no matter what @GovEvers calls it ..."

Asked for his thoughts on calling the tree a holiday tree, The Reverend Andrew Kurz, the Knights of Columbus Wisconsin state chaplain, said in an email that "anyone who is intent on keeping Jesus Christ out of Christmas could be considered as working against our mission, but we would forgive them with an invitation to find the way, the truth and the life that is Jesus Christ."

Asked in a follow-up email if he was saying Evers is removing Christ from Christmas, Kurz said he wasn't sure what the governor's intentions are.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, applauded Evers' decision to rename the tree. She said the move shows the governor is trying to be inclusive and noted the Christmas tree originates from pagan traditions.

She also praised Evers for promoting science, saying the real reason for the end-of-the-year holidays is the winter solstice, the day in the northern hemisphere with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year.

"So many people don't even know that that means," Gaylor said.

Let me must pause to note:

a)  No tree was put in the Rotunda until 1916.  How did the state of Wisconsin survive until that year?  How did they even know it was Christmas?  Maybe the solution is to not put up a tree at all.  Or maybe to not worry about calling it a 'holiday' tree, since Christmas is a holiday (the religious significance of it is all but lost, especially in idiotic squabbles like this).

b) Christmas is a "holiday."  The origins of the Christmas Tree go back to 16th century German passion plays involving a Paradeisbaum, a representation of the tree from the second chapter of Genesis (because the feast of Adam and Eve falls in December.  Which also has nothing to do with the solstice, but we'll get to that.)

c) Apparently nobody minds if the tree has "science related" ornaments.  Then again, the bulk of Hallmark ornaments are Harry Potter, Star Trek, or MCU characters; when they aren't Peanuts characters or Disney Characters.  You could fill a big tree with just Hallmark superhero ornaments sold over the years.  Really brings Christmas close to a person, donchaknow.

d) I don't think the Reverend Andrew Kurz would ever think of putting a Christmas tree in the chancel, or even the nave, of his chapel.  The only ones I ever saw in Protestant churches were labeled "Chrismon trees," to make them acceptable; and then the ornaments had to be arcane religious symbols, usually Greek letters like chi, rho, or alpha and omega (because apparently Jesus didn't say "I am the A and the Z," although he spoke Aramaic, not Greek, so, well, you know:  different alphabet there, too.).  A Christmas tree is NOT a religious object of veneration or even worship space decoration; certainly not for the Catholic church (K of C is a Catholic group).

e) Please stop with the "Christmas is the winter solstice appropriated by mean Christians."  It's ignorant history, ignorant anthropology, and just plain wrong.  The idea stems from the Puritans of the 17th century, not from the "Free Thinkers" of the 19th century.

I was going to provide individual links to some of those items, including the Hallmark ornaments even; but you can read the group here, if you're so inclined.  I just get sick of all the ignorance.  And can't we at least get through Thanksgiving before we start all this nonsense?

The Origins of the Christmas Tree

There's a lot of controversy on this topic, which usually means everyone has some small idea that is rather poorly sourced, but which they have taken as the "secret" truth known only to the enlightened few (like them). The Christmas Tree, then, is Druidic; or was invented by Martin Luther; or has very deep pagan roots. Just like the claims that Christianity is just a version of Mithraism, there is far less truth in these claims than most people think.

Most of these stories have one thing in common: they are presented as a way of "tainting" the celebration that is supposed to "disprove" Christianity in some small measure, or at least be disapproved of by Christians. This attitude is actually quite peculiarly American, and ironically "Christian," as it is, by and large, the same critique levelled against Christmas traditions by the Puritans and other critics of the excesses of the season. The Roman Catholic church, the only Christian church in Europe until Martin Luther's attempt to reform it, openly acknowledged the pagan roots of many of its practices and doctrines, going so far as to accept Socrates and other Greek philosophers as "pre-Christian." It was the Protestants, in "protest" against all things "Catholic," who despised such reasoning and thought anything "pagan" "tainted" their religious practice. So let's set that aside right now, and move on.

1) The "Druid" connection: This actually comes from the Roman Catholic church. Per Penne Restad (Christmas in America, New York, Oxford University Press 1995, pp. 57-58): "One legend credited St. Winfred, reputed to have felled a giant oak that had been used for Druidic worship, with dedicating the evergreen tree to Christmas. 'This little tree,' he is said to have told a crowd of converts who looked on, 'shall be your holy tree to-night...Let this be called the tree of the Christ-child; gather about it...in your own homes; there is will shelter no deeds of blood, but loving gifts and rites of kindness.'"

Which is, frankly, so highly developed a statement about the Christmas tree we now know (as we'll see in a minute) that it's already suspect as a retrojection onto the dim and unknown past of a well settled custom that lacks only the patina of "tradition" to make it wholly acceptable.

2) It was "pagan" to begin with. Well, again, according to Restad: "In pre-Christian times, Romans used evergreens, symbols of fertility and regeneration, to trime their houses at the Kalends at the end of January. Eventually Christians appropriated the use of evergreens for their Christmas celebrations. To remove the taint of paganism, they associated it with new beginnings and man's second chance with God. The tree became for pious folk a representation of Jesus as the Light of the World, Tree of Life, and second Adam born to right the sins of the first." That connects with the "Paradise Tree" of Germany, of which more in a minute.

3) Martin Luther did it. A lovely legend, but, again, absolutely no evidence for it whatsoever.

4) The Germans did it. Very likely, but not because they worshipped trees (that was the Druids, and they didn't kill what they worshipped in order to keep it indoors for the winter). In fact, the earliest records of any trees being used in Christian celebrations is from 16th century Germany, as Francis Weiser explains:

CHRISTMAS Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts). Under the influence of this Oriental practice, their venera-tion spread also to the West and became very popular toward the end of the first millennium of the Christian era. The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration. In many old churches of Europe their statues may still be seen among the images of the saints. Boys and girls who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing. In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents. This was a fir tree laden with apples, and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

The Paradeisbaum apparently came out of the stage settings for the morality plays which were very popular in Europe (the famous passion play in Oberammergau is a relic of those plays) . It is a short step indeed from the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" to associating a tree with a Christian celebration. And while Judaism certainly had a long history of avoiding such syncretism, except for certain Protestant groups, Christianity has never considered it as much of a problem.

And how did the Christmas tree spread over America? Stephen Nissenbaum (The Battle for Christmas, Vintage, New York, 1996, pp. 176-218) argues quite persuasively that it spread not by immigrants and those who saw one, but by literature. Indeed, the stories I know from Appalachian dwellers setting up their first Christmas trees in the early 20th century conform to this pattern: it was something the mountain people read about, not something they saw in their neighbor's house.

As Nissenbaum sees it, in fact, the Christmas tree first gained popularity in America because it was seen as a moral symbol of how good children are rewarded for unselfish behavior. It's Nissenbaum's careful cultural history that serves as a good antidote to legendary tales like those of St. Winfred and the evergreen. Traditions always develop from roots and causes almost wholly unconnected with what we consider important. Which makes the whole search for origin as a search for "truth," an interesting and cautionary enterprise, indeed.

O Evergreen, O Evergreen!

 

Christmas Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve.  They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts).  Under the influence of this Oriental practice, their veneration also spread to the West and because very popular towards the end of the first millennium of the Christian Era.  The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration.  In many old churches of Europe their statutes may still be seen among the images of the saints.  Boys and girls who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing.  In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents.  This was a fir tree laden with apples, and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

--Francis X. Weiser

If you start with that very first sentence, you realize we're not in Kansas anymore.  Christmas Eve is the feast day of Adam and Eve?  Who knew? And the Christmas tree began in homes in Germany because of the morality plays of a few centuries earlier (which linger in our culture as the "Christmas pageant," sometimes presented by children in bathrobes or costumes, sometimes presented by adults with live animals, for publicity.  Several churches around me advertise one every year.  They have the money to spend on billboards.  The wisdom of using church funds that way I won't get into.).  A Paradeisbaum was a common feature of a popular German morality play, turning the Tree in Genesis into a symbol of redemption, much as Christ redeemed us all on the Cross.  Which is ironic, because historian Stephen Nissenbaum thinks the Christmas tree gained popularity in America because it was seen as a symbol of reward for unselfish behavior (in the then contemporary German tradition, the tree itself was hung with Christmas presents, and only revealed to the children on Christmas Eve.). 

But it has bugger all to do with pagan celebrations.  Yes, the Romans trimmed their houses with evergreens at Kalends.  But Christmas celebrations didn't start up until the 4th century, and by the time they became widespread (the Middle Ages) most Roman customs like Kalends were long forgotten.  Greens started up as Xmas decorations centuries after that, so....

Once more, with feeling:  the idea that all of these Christmas traditions are of ancient "pagan" origin is from 17th century Puritans, not archaeologists and historians. The idea of Christmas Eve as a feast day is a tell:  the Puritans didn't have feast days, and even outlawed Christmas celebrations (or even the religious observance) in their colonies in the New World.  

Christmas trees took a while to take root in American celebration.  "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (1823), usually credited with starting all our American Christmas traditions: Santa Claus = St. Nick; the chimney, the reindeer (Moore named them all, names that persisted through the '50's "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer"); the stockings by the chimney. But no Christmas tree.  More contemporary illustrations of the poem might include one in the background, but Moore makes no mention of it.  Jean Ritchie, born in 1922 in Viper, Kentucky, tells a story of her family's first Christmas tree, something she had heard about but never seen.  In her story she literally starts the tradition in her family by getting her mother to go out with her to find a tree on Christmas Eve.  If bringing a live tree into the house in winter and hanging candles and glass and paper ornaments on it had any connection to pagan practices, those connections vanished a long, long time ago.

Unless you just wanna Scrooge about people enjoying themselves in the bleak midwinter with a little cheery house decorating.

Oh samX tree, Oh samX tree!*

Universal signal of Xmas distress?

To begin with, don't believe what you read on the internet, including this blog post you are reading now.  For example, when did the "upside down Christmas tree" start?

Legend has it that England's St. Boniface was furious when he saw pagans revering an oak tree in 7th-century Germany where he was teaching. He cut it down, but a fir tree sprang up on the same spot. Boniface used the triangular shape of this fir tree as a tool to describe the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

The pagans who had been converted to Christianity began to revere the fir tree as God's Trinity Tree. By the 12th century, it was being hung upside down from ceilings at Christmastime in Central and Eastern Europe as a symbol of Christianity and God the Son becoming a man because it resembled the shape of Christ being crucified.

No, probably not (how an upside down tree=Holy Trinity is not explained because, you know, symbolism is weird 'n' shit), because the Christmas Tree has nothing to do with pagan celebrations.  If St. Boniface was preaching in Germany in the 7th century, nobody was observing Christmas except as a church mass devoted to the birth of Christ.  They sure weren't wassailing or remembering Saturnalia (in Germany?  900 years after the observance died out in Rome?) or doing anything we associate with Christmas.  Christmas trees didn't enter Christmas observances until Germany in the 16th century, or about 400 years later than the fir trees supposedly being decorated in "Central and Eastern Europe."  And the tree came from the Garden of Eden, not pagan rituals (the Druids were the tree worshippers; they lived in England, not Germany).  It was the Paradeisbaum in German morality plays, and got connected to Christmas because the tradition of observing the feast days of Adam and Eve fell in the time around the observance of Christmas, an observance not settled on until about the 6th century.  And even then, as I say, it was a religious service or feast day on the church calendar; not a season of 12 days of Christmas and the like.

Oh, and "legend has it" is the "some people say" of stories about history with no basis in history at all.

I don't know how long people have been hanging Christmas trees from the ceiling, but I remember it from my childhood as a quirk some people did just to be different.  The trees you can get now are simply inverted artificial trees on a floor-mounted stand.  Kind of a weak cousin, if you ask me, to hanging a live tree upside down from the ceiling and proceeding to decorate it.  If my mother had only kept our aluminum tree from my youth, I'd hang it upside down this year (if I could glue the branches into the pole, that is).  But just as Irving Berlin started the War on Christmas with the help of Bing Crosby in the 1940's ("Holiday Inn," if you don't catch the reference by now), so too people in the '60's were attacking Donald Trump and America by hanging the trees the wrong way up.

Here's Fox News and Corey Lewandowski getting offended by upside-down Christmas trees.

"I am sure that [the first family] will not be turning the tree upside down. They like this country's traditions." pic.twitter.com/TYiFCRyZnQ

— Melanie Schmitz (@MelsLien) November 24, 2017

Don't we have Roy Moore to worry about?  Or how store clerks greet us this month?

*What?  It was the best I could do!

Culture War On Christmas

The Supreme Court's baffling precedent about Christmas trees reveals the reality of Christian hegemonyhttps://t.co/Fhfi8AclBn

— Raw Story (@RawStory) December 17, 2021

Cultural Christian hegemony is still an issue even without religious enforcement.

Hegemony?

control by one country, organization, etc. over other countries, etc. within a particular group

So allowing Xmas trees in public is exerting control over a particular group?

Individuals, especially Christians but not necessarily:

As I previously said, plenty of atheists put up Christmas trees and not all Christians around the world celebrate Christmas by putting up a tree. But in the United States a Christmas tree, a nativity scene, and honestly even Santa all have clear cultural, if not religious, connections to Christmas, which is a religious holiday.  

…may put up Christmas trees and even consider them "Christian."  In origin, yes, they were.  In the current context, well:  tell me what's essentially "Christian" about "'The Night Before Christmas."  I mean, "St. Nick" is a very familiar form of "St. Nicholas," but that's like saying Jill St. John is Christian because of her last name.  It's not culturally Jewish; or Buddhist or Muslim, but is it hegemony?  Or is there something Christian about a fake tree that stores easily and is sure to be a special memory for years to come? (Yeah, I watch too many TeeVee commercials.)

I'm really trying to sort this argument out.

Churches do not put up Christmas trees.  Liturgical churches (Catholic, Episcopalian) by and large don't allow them in the worship space.  Churches that do put them up front, near the pulpit, again by and large, call them "Chrismon trees," a word whose origin I don't know, but I heard it a lot growing up in a Presbyterian church at this time of year.  It didn't fool anybody, we all knew it was a Christmas tree decorated with overtly Christian symbols (rather than covert ones like paper flowers and fake apples), but it made the pastors happy so we went along.  Some churches even have Santa appear in worship for the kids, on Sunday morning.  

But Christmas is a religious holiday?

To non-Christians (Jews, atheists, Muslims, what have you), I'm sure it seems that way.  But why, then, do some Christians still put bumper stickers on their cars (more likely magnets, now) and signs in their yards saying "Keep Christ in Christmas"?  Why do some churches close on Christmas Day when it falls on Sunday?  Isn't Christmas a religious holiday?  Does that mean it's a holiday from religion?

It's a vexed question, is all I'm saying.  It's tangled.  Yes, St. Nicholas is a Christian saint, and Christmas trees with nativity scenes under them seem "religious."  (I always thought it funny the most Protestant of families would allow something so Catholic as a manger scene in their house once a year.  I suppose some don't, but they're pretty rare, I suspect.)  Yes, Christmas is supposed to be the "Christ mass," the mass for the Christchild.  "Christ" is even a specific word with a specific designation (and it's NOT Jesus' last name).  But is Christmas in America a religious holiday?

Is the sacrament of this holiday spending more than you can on gifts and food and travel?  Is it holy because you take the day off, whatever day of the week (even Sunday!) it falls on?  Is it religious because we've pretty much removed the "Christ mass" from the word? What's religious about spending money on gifts and expecting expensive presents and getting up early on December 25th to see what you got?  Is there even a mention of church, of Christ, or the Holy Family, in "A Christmas Story"?  "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"?  "Miracle on 34th Street"? "Elf"?

I like those movies, but if there's a hint of religion in those portrayals of Christmas, I've missed it.  What's especially Christian, or religious at all, about a holidy that encourages you to spend lots of money on your family, especially your kids, and to cocoon at home all day except for when the kids go outside to show their friends what they got for Christmas?

Religious holiday?  I mean, I wish it was.  The first year I was a student pastor, I was told to do a Christmas service on Christmas day, for the "old people."  This was in a town of 150 (no, seriously; 150.  It was on the city sign.).  People had nothing else to do on Xmas morning, most of them were too old to have young children, but the "tradition" was kept up for the "old people," the ones who were in nursing homes or couldn't drive and barely came to regular worship anymore.  So I announced we'd have "communion" (though even in the ultra-liberal UCC I wasn't allowed to call it that; it was quite a scandal around me, people I didn't think new my name were asking me if I was really going to do this) with hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls (yes, I've mentioned this several times before in the near 17 years I've been writing this fool blog).  It was a very casual service, I performed a "sort of" communion, read an Annie Dillard story in place of a sermon, and told everybody to stay around and help me finish this stuff off, it was too much for me and the Lovely Wife and the Golden Child (then about four years old) to eat on our own.  So we had a lovely time.  It was as close to one of Paul's house church eucharists as I've ever come.

That was a religious Christmas Day celebration.  Anybody doing that this year?  Gathering friends and near strangers under one roof for a cup of hot chocolate and a cinnamon roll?  It's a lot closer to a Christian religious act than sitting in your robe in your living room wondering if you bought any large trash bags or have enough of them for all that torn up wrapping paper.

A menorah is, much more than a Christmas tree, a specifically religious symbol.  It is used in a Jewish ritual, it recalls a story from Jewish history that's recorded in the scriptures. How many families read Luke 1 and 2 on Christmas Eve around a lighted tree?  Hell, how many families read "The Night Before Christmas" on Christmas Eve, a la Chevy Chase?  I get it that a Xmas tree is more related to Christianity than any other seasonal symbol, that indeed the entire holiday is seen as having Christian roots.  But it is any more distinctly Christian now than Thanksgiving?  That was supposed to be a day to give thanks.  To whom?  The turkey you're about to eat?  Your boss, for employing you for another year?  I know Lincoln was too cagey to go for 19th century piety (or not that religious himself), but how does one "give thanks" without directing it to:  something?  Most of us don't get in that mental tangle.  We thank God, if we're so inclined; or we thank Mom (maybe Dad) for cooking the meal, or the NFL for football, or we’re just vaguely “thankful,”  and we don't think about it beyond that.

Easter is more specifically a Christian holiday, to this good day.  Does that make the Easter Bunny on the White House lawn a religious symbol? Or just weird?

My vote is for "weird."

I dunno; I don't want to bash this argument (the favorite internet sport:  "YOU'RE WRONG!!!!!!!!!").  But I can't find much merit in it.  Yes, there's a cultural dominance of Christianity in American culture, but for that you have to blame Rome and Constantine.  The cultural dominance is real; but "hegemony"?  A Christmas tree is oppressive, is a system of control a la the Matrix?  Or it's just oppressive?

Christmas carols in the stores for six weeks; Christmas decorations going up around shopping malls in October; relentless e-mails reminding me I have little time left to buy BUY BUY!!!!!.  Donald Trump still telling people he 'saved' "Merry Christmas!" That's oppressive.

A Christmas tree in a public space?  I'll survive. I think most of us will. You want to put up a menorah, be my guest.  I recognize the problem for Jews and Muslims:  like very strict Protestants, their beliefs teach they should not have any symbols, especially any that represent people because that is to represent Allah/the God of Abraham.  Idol worship. I get it.  But nobody's worshipping a Christmas tree; not at home, not in a church, not really anywhere.  It made a great plot point in "A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas" (yes, I have absolutely no taste, and no defense for my selection of Xmas movies), but nobody worshipped it there, either.  Close, but finally:  no.

So, I just don't see it.  There are other fights to have, other hills to die on.  This one?  People will just step over your corpse; or worse, pile packages on it, maybe even cover it with some fake snow.

Let it go.  It's not worth it. Enjoy the good nature of the season as best you can.  That, after all, is what it's really about:  peace on earth, goodwill toward all:  men, women, children, foreigners, gays, transexuals, non-whites, non-Americans, non-Christians, non-religious ... you get the idea.

little tree

"little silent christmas tree"

The Christmas Tree isn't of "pagan origin." In fact, of all things related to Christmas, it's probably the only one that is almost entirely a product of a Christian culture.

Not that it really matters; the insistence that "Christian" practices be pure and untainted by non-Christian (i.e., "pagan") practices is a silly one that dates back (again!) to the Puritans (see below).   Why we insist on keeping it up is another cultural practice very peculiar to Americans (equally peculiar is the idea that we are the world and our Christianity is world Christianity.  But that's another hobby horse....).


The tree is a seasonal decorative item.  Rather like the concept of communion, it springs not from some cultural icon co-opted by the new dominance of Christianity in the dark places of ancient history, but from Christian sources:  specifically, the Genesis story and the Paradeisbaum inspired by German morality plays and the veneration of Adam and Even in the Eastern church which spread, unofficially, westward.

CHRISTMAS Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts). Under the influence of this Oriental practice, their veneration spread also to the West and became very popular toward the end of the first millennium of the Christian era. The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration. In many old churches of Europe their statues may still be seen among the images of the saints. Boys and girls who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing. In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents. This was a fir tree laden with apples, and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

That first connection, to traditional stage decorations, is not to be overlooked.  The tree really is just a seasonal decorative item, just as Christmas in America is now just a time of year, with almost no connection to either Christ or the Roman Mass.

As Penne Restad documents it in Christmas in America, the small tree put up in German households on Christmas Eve (feast day of Adam and Eve) became the dominant feature of room-filling tableaus in 19th century America, tableaus complete with landscapes made of dirt hauled in for the purpose (think of Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters" hauling in dirt to build the Devil's Tower in his living room.  Now cover it with snow....).  It was never more than an excuse for decoration,  in other words.

There's also the fact that, at best, you are only likely to see "Chrismon" trees in Christian churches, and then only in the worship space of some Protestant churches.  You may find a decorated tree in a Christian place of worship, but odds are the decorations are specifically religious symbols, and even then the tree may (or may not) be up near the altar or pulpit.  It's a secular decorative item, not a religious "Xmas" item at all.

So the tree we get so manic about now is as American as Santa Claus and 24 shopping days 'til Christmas.

And while we're on the subject, no, Christmas is not Saturnalia sanctified.  It probably is taken from the Natali Invictii of Rome (at least when it started in Rome).  But it also started elsewhere on January 6, and where it was set on December 25th the reasoning had to do with the Day of Atonement and Zechariah's Temple duty.  You could look it up.  The idea that it was the Saturnalia is most likely from Increase Mather (or some other Puritan), who was no fan of Christmas to begin with, for reasons a lot of atheists and others sick of the holiday taking over the last 3 months of the American calendar might well sympathize with:

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ." (quoted in Penne Restad, Christmas in America, New York:  Oxford University Press, 1995,  p. 14)

You want a war on Christmas?  Take it up with the Puritans.  Although that last sentence could have been uttered today, rather than 300+ years ago; if you still want to protect Christmas from commerce.  If you do, let me recommend Bill McKibben as your guide.

As for the word itself, that didn't come into use until 1038; at least, New Advent says that's the earliest recorded appearance of the word.  The feast first appeared in 354 in Rome; as early as 200 C.E. in Alexandria.  And as for "Xmas," well....we've done that.

What's so funny about peace, love, and a little historical understanding?

"little silent christmas tree"

So I stumble into this argument again, about Christmas being Saturnalia for Christians, and that sends me to my archives where I finally dig this up (I really need to index this stuff), which I repeat again this year in hopes that repetition will make a dent in ignorance (I'm not holding my breath.  "Engines of our Ingenuity" this morning, often a fairly well researched program, repeated most of the baseless nonsense about Christmas trees and Christmas traditions.  One day I'll just give up).

First, let's note there's a disagreement over whether Christmas was set atop "Sol Invictii" (per a comment at Salon) or the Saturnalia.  The two become interchangeable in these arguments, which is tedious but typical.  So:

Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts; Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts (in Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, 495) that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday; Arnobius (VII, 32 in P.L., V, 1264) can still ridicule the "birthdays" of the gods.


The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt. About A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (Stromata I.21) says that certain Egyptian theologians "over curiously" assign, not the year alone, but the day of Christ's birth, placing it on 25 Pachon (20 May) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. [Ideler (Chron., II, 397, n.) thought they did this believing that the ninth month, in which Christ was born, was the ninth of their own calendar.] 

The first observance was in Egypt, not Rome.  I don't know that anyone thinks of Egypt as a hotbed of observance of Roman customs, especially since the Romans didn't do that much to export their religious customs to the hinterlands of the Empire.  Beyond declaring Caesar the "Son of God," they pretty much left local religious practices alone.  The discussion of the feast at New Advent goes on to conclude (the history is quite complex) that the feast (not the reference to the day of birth) reached Egypt between 427 and 433.  Christianity became the official religion of the Empire in 395.  About the time the Roman Empire was coming apart, in other words.  And this may or may not be wholly accurate, but it is useful in placing Alexandria in historical context:

In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity. Temples and statues were destroyed throughout the Roman empire: pagan rituals became forbidden under punishment of death, and libraries were closed. In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, and the Patriarch Theophilus complied with his request. One theory has it that the great Library of Alexandria and the Serapeum were destroyed about this time.

Not sure just how popular a Christian holiday placed atop a pagan one would have been, even some 40 years after such events.

I mention this not to seal a counter-argument to the prevailing ones, but to point out just how complex history is, and how much we over-simplify it.  We rush in where angels fear to tread when we decide we understand history as a simple narrative that only became complex when we arrived on the scene.

Back, then, to New Advent; the Natalis Invictii (not "Sol") was celebrated in Rome on December 25. It reached the peak of its popularity in 276, but the earliest mention of a Christmas observance on that date is in Rome in 354.  Given how much of the church was actually operating at a grassroots level (the churches around the Empire were tenuously connected to each other, not bound by the authority Rome now exerts), and, for example, the story of how the people pressed Augustine into service as their bishop (he was not imposed on them by Rome), and that was in the late 4th century, one might well accept that people used to celebrating on December 25 simply shifted their celebration to a new god.

The idea, in other words, that this date was "stolen" or appropriated by church officials, is actually one rooted in pernicious Puritanical anti-Papist thinking.   Even the idea that Rome took up pagan practices and therefore such practices aren't "really Christian" is a Puritanical one.  If you want to see clearly, take off the blinders.

If anything, Rome settled the date for Christmas on other churches as its authority spread.  In the 4th century, as Christmas celebrations were springing up around the Christian world (New Advent details the history for Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Cyprus, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Alexandria), many of the celebrations were observed in January, not December.  Somewhere in there you get the 12 Days of Christmas, a period of celebration we would do well to resurrect.

As for Christmas tree and "pagans," I will be so bold as to quote myself:

The tree is a seasonal decorative item.  Rather like the concept of communion, it springs not from some cultural icon co-opted by the new dominance of Christianity in the dark places of ancient history, but from Christian sources:  specifically, the Genesis story and the Paradeisbaum inspired by German morality plays and the veneration of Adam and Even in the Eastern church which spread, unofficially, westward.

CHRISTMAS Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts). Under the influence of this Oriental practice,  their veneration spread also to the West and became very popular toward the end of the first millennium of the Christian era. The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration. In many old churches of Europe their statues may still be seen among the images of the saints. Boys and girls  who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing. In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents. This was a fir tree laden with apples,  and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

That first connection, to traditional stage decorations, is not to be overlooked.  The tree really is just a seasonal decorative item, just as Christmas in America is now just a time of year, with almost no connection to either Christ or the Roman Mass.

As Penne Restad documents it in Christmas in America, the small tree put up in German households on Christmas Eve (feast day of Adam and Eve) became the dominant feature of room-filling tableaus in 19th century America, tableaus complete with landscapes made of dirt hauled in for the purpose (think of Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters" hauling in dirt to build the Devil's Tower in his living room.  Now cover it with snow....).  It was never more than an excuse for decoration,  in other words.

There's also the fact that, at best, you are only likely to see "Chrismon" trees in Christian churches, and then only in the worship space of some Protestant churches.  You may find a decorated tree in a Christian place of worship, but odds are the decorations are specifically religious symbols, and even then the tree may (or may not) be up near the altar or pulpit.  It's a secular decorative item, not a religious "Xmas" item at all.

So the tree we get so manic about now is as American as Santa Claus and 24 shopping days 'til Christmas.

By the way, the earliest reference to a "Christmas tree" in English that I know of is Coleridge's, in the 19th century.  There are stories that Prince Albert brought it to England from his Germany, and so it became popular in that country (although Dickens never mentions one), and it became wildly popular, as Restad documents, in America.  It couldn't have dated back to pagan days in Germany and gone unnoticed by the rest of Europe until the 19th century.

Our Christmas celebrations are just a mess of traditions.  We might as well enjoy them, rather than play amateur scholars and try to dissect them.  Most of our attempts to do that betray our prejudices (against the Pope, or against an "impure" Christianity) and our sheer ignorance of history.

War On, Christmas!

"little silent christmas tree"

And what's a war on Xmas without a fight over what to call the tree?

"He opens up the paper each morning and sees our nation’s leaders giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, or he opens the paper and some new school district has just eliminated the ability for its students to say the pledge of allegiance, or some fire department in some town is ordered by the mayor to no longer fly the American flag on the back of a fire truck," Eric Trump told The Stream's James Robinson. "Or, he sees the tree on the White House lawn has been renamed 'Holiday tree' instead of 'Christmas tree.' I could go on and on for hours. Those are the very things that made my father run, and those are the very things he cares about."

Because one of the important Constitutional duties of President is the naming of the national Christmas Tree.  Thomas Jefferson had his slaves cut one down, if I remember correctly.  George Washington cut the first National Christmas Tree down with his little silver axe.

You could look it up.

Andrew Jackson stole the Indian's Christmas Tree.  Well, some people say, anyway.....

Besides, if a "Christmas tree" was good enough for the baby Jesus, it's good enough for America!

(And yes, only some of this actually happened.  Or, actually, none of it; but still, some people say....)

Christmas Eve 2021

We know from our studies of primitive cultures that trees remaining green in the winter have long suggested special godlike power....As Christianity supplanted older, pagan religions, the decorating of evergreens continued in various parts of northern Europe on many special occasions....The Roman Catholic church frequently banned or otherwise tried to discourage the use of the evergreen, but the age-old custom remained so deeply ingrained in the German culture that the tree eventually became transformed into a Christian symbol.

Although the veneration of the evergreen is firmly rooted in pre-Christian traditions, the Christmas tree has two interesting Christian traditions behind it.  During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries evergreens with apples hung from their boughs were know to have played an important role in the miracle plays presented in our outside churches on the twenty-fourth of December....In the early church calendar of saints December 24 was Adam and Eve's Day, the occasion for a play depicting the dramatic events concerning the fruit tree in the Garden of Eden.  In many cities, before the performance the actors paraded through the streets with the actor who would portray Adam carrying the "Paradise tree." In place of the winter-bare branches of a real apple tree, an evergreen decorated with apples was the usual substitute.  Since this tree was the only prop on the stage during the play, the image left a lasting impression associated with Christmas long after the medieval plays were no longer performed.  By the seventeenth century evergreens hung with apples were no longer considered strictly trees of temptation and were traditionally decorated each Christmas, though as late as the latter part of the nineteenth century people in northern Germany still bought little figures of Adam and Eve and the serpent to put on their "Tree of Life."

The Christmas tree also has Christian associations as old as the tenth century that link it to flowering or fruit-bearing trees rather than to the evergreen.  Throughout Europe there are records and folk tales concerning trees and bushes that mysteriously burst into bloom on Christmas Eve or Day.  Beginning in the sixteenth century references indicate that many Germans cut cherry and other flowering branches and took them into their homes on St. Andrew's Day (November 30). The branches were put in water in a warm room and "forced" in the hope of obtaining blooms in time for Christmas.

The oldest Christmas tree to be decorated standing in a parlor as we know the tradition today is described in a fragment of a 1602 travel diary left us by an unidentified visitor to Strasbourg.  The writer tells of fir trees set up and hung with paper roses of many different colors and with apples, flat wafers, gilded candies, and sugar. In early Christian art the rose was a symbol for the Virgin Mary, and the flat wafers are obviously related to the "host," the communion symbol for Christ. A tree decorated with such wafers or cookies with religious designs became known as a Christbaum.  By the seventeenth century, then, the age old, winter-defying evergreen was a common sight in Christian homes honoring the Christ Child each Christmas.

--Philip V. Snyder

O, Christmas Tree

NPR told the story of people in World War II moved, perhaps even saved, by books.  One story was of a Marine hospitalized with malaria, who asked for a book from a nurse because he was bored.  The book he got was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  He wrote a letter to the author, Betty Smith, telling her how the book had changed his life, had made him recover his humanity.  He may not have been thinking of his passage in particular when he wrote, but the following is appropriate to the season; and I dare say he could have had this in mind, and it would have been sufficient:


There was a cruel custom in the neighborhood.  It was about the trees still unsold when midnight of Christmas Eve approached.  There was a saying that if you waited until then, you wouldn't have to buy a tree, that "they'd chuck 'em at you."  This was literally true.

At midnight on the Eve of our dear Saviour's birth, the kids gathered where there were unsold trees.  The man threw each tree in turn, starting with the biggest.  Kids volunteered to stand up against the throwing.  If a boy didn't fall down under the impact, the tree was his.  If he fell, he forfeited his chance of winning a tree.  Only the roughest boys and some of the young men elected to be hit by the big trees. The others waited shrewdly until a tree came up that they could stand against.  The little kids waited for the tiny, foot-high trees and shrieked in delight when they won one.

On the Christmas Eve when Francie was ten and Neeley was nine, mama consented to let them go down and have their first try for a tree.  Francie had picked out her tree earlier in the day.  She had stood near it all afternoon and evening praying that no one would buy it.  To her joy, it was still there at midnight.  It was the biggest tree in the neighborhood and its price was so high that no one could afford to buy it.  It was ten feet hight.  Its branches were bound with new white rope and it came to a pure point at the top.

The man took this tree out first.  Before Francie could speak up, a neighborhood bully, a boy of eighteen known as Punky Perkins, stepped forward and ordered the man to chuck the tree at him.  The man hated the way Punky was so confident.  He looked around and asked:

"Anybody else wanna take a chance on it?"

Francie stepped forward.  "Me, Mister."

A spurt of derisive laughter came from the tree man.  The kids snickered.  A few adults who'd gathered to watch the fun, guffawed.

"Aw g'wan.  You're too little," the tree man objected.

"Me and my brother--we're not too little together."

She pulled Neeley forward.  The man looked at them--a thin girl of ten with starveling hollows in her cheeks but with the chin still baby-round.  He looked at the little boy with his fair hair and round blue eyes--Neeley Nolan, all innocence and trust.

"Two ain't fair," yelped Punky.

"Shut your lousy trap," advised the man who held all the power in that hour.  "These here kids is got nerve.  Stand back, the rest of yous.  These kids is goin' to have a show at this tree."

The others made a wavering lane.  Francie and Neeley stood at one end of it and the big man with the big tree at the other.  It was a human funnel with Francie and her brother making the small end of it.  The man flexed his great arms to throw the great tree.  He noticed how tiny the children looked at the end of the short lane.  For a split part of a moment, the tree thrower went through a kind of Gethsemane.

"Oh, Jesus Christ," his soul agonized, "why don't I just give 'em the tree, say Merry Christmas and let 'em go.  What's the tree to me?  I can't sell it no more this year and it won't keep till next year."  The kids watched him solemnly as he stood there in his moment of thought.  "But then," he rationalized, "if I did that, all the others would expect to get 'em handed to 'em.  And next year, nobody a-tall would buy a tree off of me.  They'd all wait to get 'em handed to 'em on a silver plate.  I ain't a big enough man to give this tree away for nothin'.  No, I ain't big enough.  I ain't big enough to do a thing like that.  I gotta think of myself and my own kids."  He finally came to his conclusion.  "Oh, what the hell!  Them two kids is gotta live in this world.  They got to get used to it.  They got to learn to give and to take punishment.  And by Jesus, it ain't give but take, take, take all the time in this God-damned world."  As he threw the tree with all his strength, his heart wailed out, "It's a God-damned rotten, lousy world!"

Francie saw the tree leave his hands.  There was a split bit of being when time and space had no meaning.  The whole world stood still as something dark and monstrous came through the air.  The tree came towards her blotting out al memory of her ever having lived.  There was nothing--nothing but pungent darkness and something that grew and grew as it rushed at her.  She staggered as the tree hit them.  Nelly went to his knees but she pulled him up fiercely before he could go down.  There was a mighty swishing sound as the tree settled.  Everything was dark, green and prickly.  Then she felt a sharp pain at the side of her head where the trunk of the tree had hit her.  She felt Neeley trembling.

When some of the older boys pulled the tree away, they found Francie and her brother standing upright, hand in hand.  Blood was coming from scratches on Neeley's face.  He looked more like a baby than ever with his bewildered blue eyes and the fairness of his skin made more noticeable because of the clear red blood.  But they were smiling.  Had they not won the biggest tree in the neighborhood?  Some of the boys hollered "Hooray!"  A few adults clapped.  The tree man eulogized them by screaming,

"And now get the hell out of there with your tree, you lousy bastards."

Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words.  Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people.  They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect.  The phrases could mean many things according to the expression and tone used in saying them.  So now, when Francie heard themselves called lousy bastards, she smiled tremulously at the kind man.  She knew that he was really saying, "Goodbye--God bless you."

Excerpted from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Book Three, Chapter XXVII.

Putting the Dog in the Manger

My scholarship on this is anything but perfect (or scholarly, for that matter).  If I confine myself to internet sources and my own blog entries, it's for convenience sake and a nod to the forum where these ideas are presented; it's not a very strong defense of said ideas.

Still, there is a lot of annual nonsense about Christmas "traditions" being stolen from "pagans."  And the silliest part about such claims is how ahistorical they are, all the while asserting a knowledge of history superior to those of us fooled by the "pagan" practices we perpetuate in the name of something holy.

So let's lay it out in careful fashion.  First:  Christmas was not observed by the Church (the "Roman" church, but at the time, the only church) until the 4th century C.E.  There was an observance of the birth day of the Christ in Egypt in the 3rd century, not surprising as the Egyptians observed the birthdays of their Pharoahs, whom they considered gods at birth (and so their birthdays were significant).* But Rome didn't pick up the practice until sometime in the mid 4th century.  To put that in historical context as far as "pagan" practices go:

In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity. Temples and statues were destroyed throughout the Roman empire: pagan rituals became forbidden under punishment of death, and libraries were closed. In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, and the Patriarch Theophilus complied with his request. One theory has it that the great Library of Alexandria and the Serapeum were destroyed about this time.

Not, in other words, a lot of interest in taking up "pagan" (I used the word advisedly) practices at the time.  Certainly there were no Christmas trees in 4th century Rome, no holly and ivy, no boar's heads or even Santa Claus.

Then comes the medieval period, and Christmas feasts, which if "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is any evidence, were the common feature of Christmas celebrations (again, no holly and ivy, no Christmas tree, no jolly old St. Nick; just the boar's head and lots of hunting).  But I jump to medieval Europe because that's when the passion plays began, and in Germany (influenced by the "East," which is to say the Orthodox church, which observes the festal day of Adam and Eve), a feature of some of these plays became the Paradeisbaum, the tree of Paradise, because of the feast of Adam and Eve.

CHRISTMAS Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts). Under the influence of this Oriental practice,  their veneration spread also to the West and became very popular toward the end of the first millennium of the Christian era. The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration. In many old churches of Europe their statues may still be seen among the images of the saints. Boys and girls  who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing. In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents. This was a fir tree laden with apples,  and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

So the "Christmas Tree" began, not with tree-worshiping Druids in England (why would you cut down and kill what you worship?  That's a very modern idea, not a very ancient one.), but with Christian Germans in the 16th century.  It finally became a feature of Christmas observances in the home in the 19th century.  You don't see them in most churches (especially the older mainline churches), at least not in the worship space, and they have nothing to do with Christianity (in fact some try to blunt their secular connections with a nativity scene; I know my family did when I was a child.).  And what about gift giving?  For that, you can blame Clement Clark Moore.

The popular assertion is that gift giving at Christmas is connected to the Roman Saturnalia.   The problem is, that practice died out in Rome before the 4th century; and gift giving didn't become a part of Christmas until the 19th century.  The closest you get to that in Europe is the sharing of food with the peasants by the landowners, but that practice is more related to the Feast of Fools that allowed the repressed a brief respite from their oppression (probably enough to keep them happy in their servitude) and the quite reasonable function of not letting the serfs starve in the winter (again, just enough to keep them in their place).  The exchange of gifts between Gawain and the Green Knight is more typical.  They aren't gifts in our modern sense at all, and they are exchanged between peers, are in fact part of a game.**  Even today our gift giving is between peers (our friends and co-workers) or within family (especially to children, where we recapitulate the relationship of lord and serf), and only occasionally to the "poor" (whom we never go to Black Friday sales for).

If you follow all the links in this post, several will send you to my archives where you will find collected posts in categories that overlap several of them; so there's a lot of repetition and some tedious data-mining if you want to get down to the bedrock; which is, in places, still rather spongy.  Suffice it to say that Christmas is pretty much a modern invention, especially as we observe it in America.  I rather like the conclusion one of my posts drew, based on the work of real scholars and historians, that Christmas was one of the first holidays America had (thanks to the Puritans and the lack of a single Church, as well as a mixture of European cultures, we had no holidays of our own that all could observe from the beginning); it was open both to the religious and the secular.  You could observe the birth of Christ, or just observe a modern version of the Feast of Fools.  But it was all about celebrating and enjoying your family and friends, and that's still what it should be.

*Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts (in Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, 495) that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday; Arnobius (VII, 32 in P.L., V, 1264) can still ridicule the "birthdays" of the gods.  New Advent.

** Games were associated with Christmas celebrations down through Dicken's A Christmas Carol where Scrooge's nephew and friends play them on Christmas Day.  Sadly that is no longer an expected feature of our Christmas revels.

Last Month of the Year

“Christ Climbed Down,” by Lawrence Fehrlengetti

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

I was just teaching this poem, one that has been around long enough almost to become a cliche, as familiar a feature of some Christmas observances as Scrooge and Charlie Brown, and reading it aloud I realized what a wonderful meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation and Advent it is.

I'm still puzzling out why we rush through Advent and make haste to get to Christmas, only to throw the whole thing in the garbage on December 26th and hurry our way through to a drunken stupor on January 1st morning, but I have some ideas about it. Fehrlengetti's poem is clearly about that, about all the preparation and the things that, in Linus Van Pelt's wonderfully ironic phrase, "really brings Christmas close to a person." But only when you read it aloud do you capture the chorus-like repetition of the first four lines, and realize how each repeat of those lines sets you up to expect another layer of the modern observance of the last month of the year. The first lines drop like a stone into our understanding of the Nativity and the Crucifixion, of Christmas and Easter, and the rest of the poem describes those ripples that stone makes in our consciousness.

It starts with the Christmas trees, then spreads outward from there to the people: first he "cornball relatives," then the Bible salesman (as if the word of God needs marketing!), then the advertising Magi, and from those religious circles out into the secular world of Santa and Bing Crosby and Radio City Music Hall (bringing their Xmas show to Houston this January! Some things never change, even after 50 years.)

But just when you expect the whole thing will end with a "J'accuse!," with another Christ-cleansing-the-temple moment, with Jesus climbing down to declare "You suck!" and running away to avoid the glitter and twinkly lights, it does something else entirely, and instead returns us to the mystery of the Incarnation. The poem isn't about criticizing modern society after all. There are really only a few ironic lines, and they aren't really so ironic as they are honestly descriptive. The poem is about the eternal mystery at the heart of the religious holiday which still beats at the center of all this busy-ness and concern. It is an observance of peace in the midst of clamor, of wonder in the midst of the quotidian.

It's good to remember it is still, at least on the liturgical calendar, Christmas.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Christmastide 2018

Christ Climbed Down

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

Lawrence Fehrlengetti

[The commentary is from a few years back, but I've decided to keep it intact.]

I was just teaching this poem, one that has been around long enough almost to become a cliche, as familiar a feature of some Christmas observances as Scrooge and Charlie Brown, and reading it aloud I realized what a wonderful meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation and Advent it is.

I'm still puzzling out why we rush through Advent and make haste to get to Christmas, only to throw the whole thing in the garbage on December 26th and hurry our way through to a drunken stupor on January 1st morning, but I have some ideas about it. Fehrlengetti's poem is clearly about that, about all the preparation and the things that, in Linus Van Pelt's wonderfully ironic phrase, "really brings Christmas close to a person." But only when you read it aloud do you capture the chorus-like repetition of the first four lines, and realize how each repeat of those lines sets you up to expect another layer of the modern observance of the last month of the year. The first lines drop like a stone into our understanding of the Nativity and the Crucifixion, of Christmas and Easter, and the rest of the poem describes those ripples that stone makes in our consciousness.

It starts with the Christmas trees, then spreads outward from there to the people: first the "cornball relatives," then the Bible salesman (as if the word of God needs marketing!), then the advertising Magi, and from those religious circles out into the secular world of Santa and Bing Crosby and Radio City Music Hall (bringing their Xmas show to Houston this January! Some things never change, even after 50 years.)

But just when you expect the whole thing will end with a "J'accuse!," with another Christ-cleansing-the-temple moment, with Jesus climbing down to declare "You suck!" and running away to avoid the glitter and twinkly lights, it does something else entirely, and instead returns us to the mystery of the Incarnation. The poem isn't about criticizing modern society after all. There are really only a few ironic lines, and they aren't really so ironic as they are honestly descriptive. The poem is about the eternal mystery at the heart of the religious holiday which still beats at the center of all this busy-ness and concern. It is an observance of peace in the midst of clamor, of wonder in the midst of the quotidian.

It's good to remember it is still, at least on the liturgical calendar, Christmas.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

War on, Christmas!

Mrs Breuer's mother, Rita, began collecting antique Christmas decorations in the 1970s. Her husband had said he wanted the sort of old-fashioned German tree that his grandmother used to have. But Rita Breuer and her daughter soon started to unearth bizarre tree decorations that had little to do with the traditional Christmas. First World War items included a miniature glass soldier carrying a hand grenade and military tree baubles in the shape of shells and tanks.*

"The trend continued into the Nazi era," Mrs Breuer said. The church was too intimidated to protest, and the majority of Germans continued with the traditions they had become used to. "The Nazi Christmas ideology appears to have been adhered to most by the families of party activists who lived in towns," she added. The Nazi version of some German carols that were stripped of their Christian content survive and are still unwittingly sung by today's Germans.

I want to say the Hallmark ornaments like the above are in-line with the miniature glass soldier carrying a hand grenade; but then again, Hallmark hasn't made a Punisher ornament yet, or a Rambo, for that matter; so I guess it's all good.

I will add that the idea that Christians "stole" Christmas traditions from pagans is a bit rich, as well as a sign of information deficit disorder.  It's a common problem, especially in an information besotted age like this one; or the 19th century, for that matter.  It's hard today to read Frazer's The Golden Bough without being aware of how prejudiced he was against most things Roman Catholic (he writes like a Puritan on anything to do with Catholic traditions in Europe) as well as most things not befitting an English gentleman to the manor born.  In other words, by modern standards he comes quite a bloomer about many details and conclusions.  I mention him because he could be the patron saint of many a comment on the internet about the origins of Christmas and its traditions.

None of which, frankly, are correct.  Nothing about Christmas was "stolen" by Christians; the very idea that it was is one founded in Puritanism (the infection that led to Deism in the late 18th century) rather than anthropology or any branch of scholarship.  And the irony is, it is neo-puritanism that insists Christmas must be cleansed of such traditions, but where the Puritans wanted to remove the Catholic influence from Christianity, neo-puritans want to remove Christianity from Christmas.

Which things like Hallmark ornaments should prove has already been done, despite the best efforts of Linus van Pelt.

The Puritans were not fans of Christmas celebrations, in no small part because they considered all the traditions associated with Christmas to be pagan in origin, much like the Catholic church itself (which the Anglican church was modeled on.  The name "Puritan" started as a pejorative because they wanted to "purify" the Church of England; later they wore it as a badge of honor.  History is full of such ironies.).  So anything they considered "pagan" was not to be admitted into the purity of their Christianity.  The Puritans are long gone, but they're argument about Christmas lingers on.

So we get statements about how many traditions of Christmas were "stolen" by the Church, which actually didn't adopt any of them.  Some churches do decorate their worship space with evergreen branches (but never mistletoe; or rare enough the exception proves the rule) or maybe even holly and its berries (or plastic simulacra), but that's as far as it goes.  No Santa Claus; no wassail bowls; you can even raise eyebrows if you serve hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Christmas Day.

Yule logs, roast meats, grand feasts, evergreens, etc., etc.:  all kept in cultures that converted to Christianity because the church didn't expunge them.  Protestants did, to some degree; it's one reason the Carmina Gadelica preserved the prayers and charms of the Highland people; the Presbyterians were busy eliminating such practices.  Most of what was kept was either deemed harmless or, like St. Brigid in Ireland, converted to Christianity.

But that doesn't make St. Brigid an invalid saint; well, unless you're a Puritan, and then all saints are invalid.

It's not, in other words, an "objective" position on Christmas traditions to say they were "stolen."  It's not even a valid position; no anthropologist would agree with you (no credible one, anyway).  Most of the anthropology that did argue for such "theft" (Sir James Frazer comes prominently to mind) has been discarded in favor of more objective (!) assessments, assessments that don't assume Frazer's prejudices are also the truth.

My favorite example of this is Wikipedia entry which argues that it is transparently clear many Christmas traditions were overlaid on pagan ones, meaning the Church "stole" them in order to keep the people.  Well, first, that appropriation of culture by Christians goes back to Paul (his fight with Peter was over how much of Jewish law to impose on Christian converts), so:  duh.  But  I don't put much stock in Wikipedia, and this entry is as good an example why as any.  The article notes that the word "Jule" doesn't appear in any source until 900 C.E.   I'll just point out that's medieval Europe, not pre-Christian, or even pre-Roman, Europe.  So if "Jule" was popular in 10th century Germanic regions, it was a Christian Europe it was popular in.

You can make the same argument about the Christmas tree, which descends from the paradeisbaum of German passion plays (the tree in the Garden.  The Feast Day of Adam and Eve is in December).

The entry also makes the usual lazy assertion that Christians appropriated "pagan" traditions and rituals, and therefore those things we like most about Christmas aren't really "Christian."Most people converted to Christianity and kept living the lives they'd been living.  Some Protestants objected to that, as I said; sometimes the Roman Church objected.  But for the most part, the Church converted people and left their familiar traditions intact because those traditions didn't offend Christianity.  Christians from Catholics to the UCC have done enough stomping on native cultures around the world; there's no need to make up responsibility for things they didn't do.

And it's not really an offense against God (especially if you don't believe in God) or common humanity to sing for "Peace on Earth" under a bough of mistletoe or while swigging eggnog laced with bourbon standing near as big a burning log as your host could find, or while waiting for the Buche de Noel to be served.

So get over it.  It's not like Christianity was imposed on Europeans as if the Christians were colonizers and the natives mere slaves.  Hell, even the Indians on the subcontinent enjoy cricket.

Did they steal that from the British?

Anyway, I hate to bring the Nazis into this, since our cultural appropriation of Christmas is hardly as evil in intent as they were.  But it is nearly as hegemonic as the Nazis wanted to be.  Ironically, though, the "spirit of Christmas" prevails.  It is the one time of the year we are called to listen to the angels of our better nature, to at least pretend (as Bill Murray says at the end of "Scrooged") that we are as nice as we say we are, that "peace on earth" and "goodwill toward all" is supposed to be a universal sentiment.  We don't get there, but we try to.

And despite comic book characters fighting each other one somebody's tree this year, that's a Christmas gift worth cherishing every December.  It's the last Christian remnant of our popular Christmas, but it endures.  It is the part we haven't managed to remove, despite our best efforts to render the rest of the holiday as religion-free as possible.

Long may it survive.  It does us good to at least remember to express the sentiment annually.

The War on the War on Christmas

The "War on Christmas" has started with another "controversy" in Rhode Island over whether to call  it a "Holiday tree" or a "Christmas tree."  A controversy I might understand if the word "Christmas" in this context had anything to do with Christianity; but it doesn't.  I'm just going to link to Media Matters, by the way, because it's easier on me, and I don't mind linking there anyway.  MM also tells me this "War on Christmas" is, as well, a war on Christianity.  Which is where the whole thing starts to get weird.

First, the "Christmas tree" is no more Christian than the Easter bunny and easter eggs.  Yes, I do know a lot of churches that sponsor Easter Egg hunts on Easter Sunday, and that's a good thing.  Kids love it, anyway.  And yes, I do know a lot of churches that put up Christmas trees; some even put them in the sanctuary (the same ones that put up national flags somewhere in the choir, usually).  But even those churches usually only put them up because they are covered with "Chrismons" rather than glass pickles, Star Wars and Star Trek figurines, and other items from popular corporate culture that reflect the true meaning of the season.

Even then, they are not "Christian," any more than the national flag is Christian because it is given pride of place behind the pulpit.

I'm guessing Fox's "War on Christmas" has failed to get any traction over the years, so they'd had to escalate this year and make it an explicit war on Christianity.  Gretchen Carlson all but goes there in the videotape, which ends with her seeking reassurance they aren't nuts, that there really is a war on a holiday.  I think, however, Dick Hughes is right:

No, government isn’t waging a war on Christmas. The American people already have. And, unfortunately, they’ve won.

Were we to rewind the time machine, we would be reminded that Christmas is about neither Christmas trees nor holiday trees. Nor is it about how many baubles can be purchased at bargain prices or how many festive decorations can adorn a home or how many times the cash register will ring. Stripped to its essence, Christmas is the gift of God’s Son to the world.

It is dangerous to imply what Jesus might think if he were walking the streets of Salem today. But may I humbly suggest that he wouldn’t care one whit whether decorated Douglas firs were called Christmas trees or holiday trees. He might, however, have a few words about those who sought to profit by keeping that false controversy alive.

He likely would question how one of the richest nations in the world could allow so many people to remain hungry and homeless. He probably would grieve that humankind has achieved centuries of technological advances yet remains unable to conquer the traits — ambition, envy, greed, mistrust and the like — that rend families and breed conflict.

May I suggest that instead of debating a phony and irrelevant War on Christmas, it would be more beneficial for us to wage peace within our communities.

Which is the real irony of this "war;" it's being conducted the name of the Prince of Peace, but has nothing to do with him or what he taught, at all.  But then, by and large, neither does our celebration of Christmas. 

Personally, I think Lawrence O'Donnell pretty much had the last word on the subject.  Well, and Ricky Gervais, who wished:  "Peace to all mankind, Christian, Jew, Muslim, and Atheist."  I'd include all non-Christians and all non-believers in that, but it's a good sentiment either way.

Christmas is about gifts, and about giving; but its not about squabbling over vocabulary, or about getting the best bargain on the best items in the stores.  It isn't really about those gifts at all, but if it is, that's fine; it just really can be about much more than that.  What it can't be much less about are the adjectives used to modify certain nouns in the last month of the year.  If there is a "war on Christmas," it's because we fight it, and ignore the poor and the desperate even more heartlessly than Ebenezer Scrooge ever imagined he could.  "War on Christmas"?  No; Christmas should be a time of war on our complacency, and our lack of compassion.  Or at least the moral equivalent of war; in the name of the rebel Jesus.