Tag: Advent Conspiracy
0 Wait…Instead of Elves, Santa Has 6-8 Black Men?
Christmas Movies be damned. How many times can you watch Die Hard? And Chevy Chase just isn’t funny.
No, the best thing about this time of year is David Sedaris. He’s my muse.
If you don’t know him, you should. Sedaris is a comic essayist, popular enough that he reads his essays to packed concert halls. He’s also a frequent guest on This American Life, my favorite part of Saturday mornings.
Sedaris has this Christmas essay, 6-8 Black Men. It originally appeared in Esquire. You can listen (I’d recommend it as his voice makes all the more enjoyable) to a YouTube recording below. If this doesn’t make you piss your pants laughing you have no soul.
Seriously, give it a listen. This could be the best 14+ minutes of your holiday season.
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Originally published in December 2002
I’ve never been much for guidebooks, so when trying to get my bearings in a strange American city, I normally start by asking the cabdriver or hotel clerk some silly question regarding the latest census figures. I say silly because I don’t really care how many people live in Olympia, Washington, or Columbus, Ohio. They’re nice enough places, but the numbers mean nothing to me. My second question might have to do with average annual rainfall, which, again, doesn’t tell me anything about the people who have chosen to call this place home.
What really interests me are the local gun laws. Can I carry a concealed weapon, and if so, under what circumstances? What’s the waiting period for a tommy gun? Could I buy a Glock 17 if I were recently divorced or fired from my job? I’ve learned from experience that it’s best to lead into this subject as delicately as possible, especially if you and the local citizen are alone and enclosed in a relatively small space. Bide your time, though, and you can walk away with some excellent stories. I’ve heard, for example, that the blind can legally hunt in both Texas and Michigan. They must be accompanied by a sighted companion, but still, it seems a bit risky. You wouldn’t want a blind person driving a car or piloting a plane, so why hand him a rifle? What sense does that make? I ask about guns not because I want one of my own but because the answers vary so widely from state to state. In a country that’s become so homogenous, I’m reassured by these last touches of regionalism.
Guns aren’t really an issue in Europe, so when I’m traveling abroad, my first question usually relates to barnyard animals. “What do your roosters say?” is a good icebreaker, as every country has its own unique interpretation. In Germany, where dogs bark “vow vow” and both the frog and the duck say “quack,” the rooster greets the dawn with a hearty “kik-a-ricki.” Greek roosters crow “kiri-a-kee,” and in France they scream “coco-rico,” which sounds like one of those horrible premixed cocktails with a pirate on the label. When told that an American rooster says “cock-a-doodle-doo,” my hosts look at me with disbelief and pity.
“When do you open your Christmas presents?” is another good conversation starter, as it explains a lot about national character. People who traditionally open gifts on Christmas Eve seem a bit more pious and family oriented than those who wait until Christmas morning. They go to mass, open presents, eat a late meal, return to church the following morning, and devote the rest of the day to eating another big meal. Gifts are generally reserved for children, and the parents tend not to go overboard. It’s nothing I’d want for myself, but I suppose it’s fine for those who prefer food and family to things of real value.
In France and Germany, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Eve, while in Holland the children receive presents on December 5, in celebration of Saint Nicholas Day. It sounded sort of quaint until I spoke to a man named Oscar, who filled me in on a few of the details as we walked from my hotel to the Amsterdam train station.
Unlike the jolly, obese American Santa, Saint Nicholas is painfully thin and dresses not unlike the pope, topping his robes with a tall hat resembling an embroidered tea cozy. The outfit, I was told, is a carryover from his former career, when he served as a bishop in Turkey.
One doesn’t want to be too much of a cultural chauvinist, but this seemed completely wrong to me. For starters, Santa didn’t use to do anything. He’s not retired, and, more important, he has nothing to do with Turkey. The climate’s all wrong, and people wouldn’t appreciate him. When asked how he got from Turkey to the North Pole, Oscar told me with complete conviction that Saint Nicholas currently resides in Spain, which again is simply not true. While he could probably live wherever he wanted, Santa chose the North Pole specifically because it is harsh and isolated. No one can spy on him, and he doesn’t have to worry about people coming to the door. Anyone can come to the door in Spain, and in that outfit, he’d most certainly be recognized. On top of that, aside from a few pleasantries, Santa doesn’t speak Spanish. He knows enough to get by, but he’s not fluent, and he certainly doesn’t eat tapas.
While our Santa flies on a sled, Saint Nicholas arrives by boat and then transfers to a white horse. The event is televised, and great crowds gather at the waterfront to greet him. I’m not sure if there’s a set date, but he generally docks in late November and spends a few weeks hanging out and asking people what they want.
“Is it just him alone?” I asked. “Or does he come with some backup?”
Oscar’s English was close to perfect, but he seemed thrown by a term normally reserved for police reinforcement.
“Helpers,” I said. “Does he have any elves?”
Maybe I’m just overly sensitive, but I couldn’t help but feel personally insulted when Oscar denounced the very idea as grotesque and unrealistic. “Elves,” he said. “They’re just so silly.”
The words silly and unrealistic were redefined when I learned that Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described as “six to eight black men.” I asked several Dutch people to narrow it down, but none of them could give me an exact number. It was always “six to eight,” which seems strange, seeing as they’ve had hundreds of years to get a decent count.
The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves until the mid-fifties, when the political climate changed and it was decided that instead of being slaves they were just good friends. I think history has proven that something usually comes between slavery and friendship, a period of time marked not by cookies and quiet times beside the fire but by bloodshed and mutual hostility. They have such violence in Holland, but rather than duking it out among themselves, Santa and his former slaves decided to take it out on the public. In the early years, if a child was naughty, Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black men would beat him with what Oscar described as “the small branch of a tree.”
“A switch?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. They’d kick him and beat him with a switch. Then, if the youngster was really bad, they’d put him in a sack and take him back to Spain.”
“Saint Nicholas would kick you?”
“Well, not anymore,” Oscar said. “Now he just pretends to kick you.”
“And the six to eight black men?”
“Them, too.”
He considered this to be progressive, but in a way I think it’s almost more perverse than the original punishment. “I’m going to hurt you, but not really.” How many times have we fallen for that line? The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain, old-fashioned fear. What kind of Santa spends his time pretending to kick people before stuffing them into a canvas sack? Then, of course, you’ve got the six to eight former slaves who could potentially go off at any moment. This, I think, is the greatest difference between us and the Dutch. While a certain segment of our population might be perfectly happy with the arrangement, if you told the average white American that six to eight nameless black men would be sneaking into his house in the middle of the night, he would barricade the doors and arm himself with whatever he could get his hands on.
“Six to eight, did you say?”
In the years before central heating, Dutch children would leave their shoes by the fireplace, the promise being that unless they planned to beat you, kick you, or stuff you into a sack, Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black men would fill your clogs with presents. Aside from the threats of violence and kidnapping, it’s not much different from hanging your stockings from the mantel. Now that so few people have a working fireplace, Dutch children are instructed to leave their shoes beside the radiator, furnace, or space heater. Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black men arrive on horses, which jump from the yard onto the roof. At this point, I guess, they either jump back down and use the door, or they stay put and vaporize through the pipes and electrical wires. Oscar wasn’t too clear about the particulars, but, really, who can blame him? We have the same problem with our Santa. He’s supposed to use the chimney, but if you don’t have one, he still manages to come through. It’s best not to think about it too hard.
While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas story remains relatively simple. Santa lives with his wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If you’re bad, he leaves you coal. If you’re good and live in America, he’ll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their great bounty. A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, “Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before you go to bed. The former bishop from Turkey will be coming along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don’t know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.”
This is the reward for living in Holland. As a child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat it. As an added bonus, the government has thrown in legalized drugs and prostitution — so what’s not to love about being Dutch?
Oscar finished his story just as we arrived at the station. He was a polite and interesting guy — very good company — but when he offered to wait until my train arrived, I begged off, saying I had some calls to make. Sitting alone in the vast terminal, surrounded by other polite, seemingly interesting Dutch people, I couldn’t help but feel second-rate. Yes, it was a small country, but it had six to eight black men and a really good bedtime story. Being a fairly competitive person, I felt jealous, then bitter, and was edging toward hostile when I remembered the blind hunter tramping off into the Michigan forest. He might bag a deer, or he might happily shoot his sighted companion in the stomach. He may find his way back to the car, or he may wander around for a week or two before stumbling through your front door. We don’t know for sure, but in pinning that license to his chest, he inspires the sort of narrative that ultimately makes me proud to be an American.
3 Would There Still Be An Incarnation If There’d Been No Fall?
Every year during Advent we let our confirmation students loose through the building to take an informal poll.
Armed with paper and pencil, they’ve snuck up on people in the sanctuary as service begins. They’ve accosted hangers-on still lingering in the fellowship hall after the 8:30 coffee hour, and they’ve barged into Sunday School classrooms, emboldened by the permission to be as irritating as necessary in order to get answers to the questions we’ve given them.
In years’ past more than a few Sunday School teachers have told me they don’t particularly like anyone interrupting their class time.
A couple of folks, including he-who-must-not-be-named, have balled me out for putting them on the spot and making them looking foolish in front of sixth graders.
The question we give the confirmands is the same every year: Why did Jesus come to earth?
In other words, why Christmas?
About 15% always respond that Jesus comes to teach us how to love one another and help the needy. I suppose those are the liberals among us (I’ll get an email about that).
Without fail, a reliable 85% answer, in so many words, that Jesus comes to forgive us for our sins. That Jesus is born to die.
Every year the questions are the same and, remarkably, every year so are the answers. The needle doesn’t move at all. More than 3/4 of you answer, year in and year out, that Jesus comes in order to die for us.
And the problem with that answer is that it’s wrong.
It’s wrong.
We lament the commercialization of Christmas. We kvetch about the war on Christmas. We talk about how Jesus is the reason for the season.
But it’s not clear to me that we’re at all clear on what the reason for Jesus is.
Two Advents ago, as he-who-must-not-be-named was chewing me out in the hallway after having been grilled by confirmands and their poll, he-who-must- not-be-named grumbled at me: ‘Well, if I don’t know the answer to your questions is that my fault or my pastor’s fault?’
I told him that was a fair point and that if he wanted he could go right ahead and assign blame.
Seriously, the more time I spend at bedsides and gravesides, the more I hear confessions and listen to struggles, the more people share of their faith and their fears, the more kids ask me questions, the more I’m convinced that the question ‘Why does Jesus come?’ is the most important question we can ask.
So I want to make a theological argument, and I’m going to take the gamble that you all can handle that.
My wife, Ali, assured me you were up for it. I told her I doubted it; she told me that you might find that insulting. If that’s the case, then I leave it to you to prove her right.
The problem in answering that Jesus comes to forgive our sins, the problem in suggesting that he’s born to die, is that it makes Christmas determined by us. It makes the incarnation contingent on us: on our sin, on the Fall, on Adam and Eve’s disobedience.
Instead of something that flows from God’s abundance, the incarnation is something provoked by our weakness. Instead of a gift God gives out of joy for us, the incarnation is the outworking of God’s frustration and disappointment in us.
Christmas then isn’t something God freely does of his love and grace; it’s something God’s compelled to do because of our plight. It’s something God has to do to rescue us from Sin.
But by definition God doesn’t have to do anything.
And, secondly, to say that God sends Jesus; so that, we can be forgiven of our sins is to make Jesus a solution to a problem.
It’s like saying I married Ali; so that, I wouldn’t be lonely. I shouldn’t need to say that Ali is surpassingly more than just a hedge against loneliness. She’s not simply a solution to my problem.
But when we say God sends Jesus so that we can be forgiven of our sins, that’s exactly what we do. We reduce Jesus to a strategy. We circumscribe him according to his utility. We render Jesus down until he’s little more than a device God uses to bail us out of our situation.
Jesus isn’t a device. Jesus isn’t merely a solution to the problem of Sin and Death. Jesus isn’t a strategy made flesh; he’s the fullness of God made flesh.
Third, by saying that Jesus comes to forgive us our sins, we picture creation as a sinking ship and we imagine Jesus as God’s last ditch effort to save us.
But to picture it that way is to presume that Jesus would not have come if we hadn’t sinned. That if there’d been no exit from Eden there’d have been no journey to Bethlehem.
To suggest that Jesus might not have come is to say that the incarnation is something less than an eternal, unchanging decision of God’s. But if the incarnation is not an eternal decision of God’s, if the incarnation is not something God was always going to do irrespective of a Fall, then that means at some point in time God changed his mind about us, towards us.
And if God changed his mind at some point in the past, then what’s to stop God from changing his mind again in the future. What’s to stop God from looking at you and your life and deciding that the Cross is no longer sufficient to cover your sins?
It’s true that Jesus saves us. It’s true that his death and resurrection reconcile God’s creation. It’s true that through him our sins are forgiven once and for all, but that’s not why he comes.
That’s not why he comes because he would’ve come anyway, because he was always going to come.
The ancient Christians had a catchphrase they used to think through this. In Latin, it’s: opus ad extra, opus ad intra. That was their way of saying: Who and what God is towards us in Jesus Christ, God is eternally in himself.
If what Jesus teaches us is really the Word of God, if the Cross is in fact a perfect sacrifice for your sins, if your salvation is indeed assured, if the one born at Christmas is truly Emmanuel- God with us- and nothing less, then who and what God is in Christ on Earth, God is antecedently and eternally in himself.
If Jesus is the supreme expression of God, then he must’ve always been so. Before he’s Jesus of Nazareth, in the flesh, he’s the eternal Son, in the Trinity.
That’s what Christians mean when we say that Christ is pre-existent.
That’s what we profess in the creed when we recite that Christ is the one ‘by whom all things were made.’
That’s what the first Christians sang in the hymn Paul quotes in his letter to the Colossians that Christ is:
‘…is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; all things have been created through him and for him…‘
He was before was was.
He’s back behind yesterday.
There is not when he was not, and there can not be when he will not be.
What’s that mean?
It means the incarnation only unveils what was true from before the beginning.
It means that what we unwrap at Christmas isn’t simply a rescue package but an even deeper mystery: The mystery that the Nativity is an event that God has set on his calendar from before the first day of creation.
The mystery that the incarnation is God’s primal, primordial, eternal decision not to be God in any other way but God-with-us.
The mystery that there is literally no limit to God’s love. There can be no time at which you can exhaust God’s love for you because Jesus Christ is before time.
And so Jesus doesn’t just come to forgive us our sins. He isn’t born just to die. Because when we say that Christ is pre-existent, we say that he would’ve come anyway, that he always going to come, that even if there hadn’t needed to be a Cross there still would’ve been a cradle.
Because before he brought forth light and life on Earth, God’s shaped his whole life to be Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Jesus isn’t made simply to forgive or die for our sins. Because if Christ is preexistent, then everything goes in the other direction.
Jesus isn’t made for us; we were made for him. We are the ones with whom God wants to share his life.
It’s not that Jesus is the gift God gives us at Christmas; it’s that at Christmas we finally discover that we’re the gift God has given to himself.
Jesus is the reason for the season, but the reason for Jesus is that before the stars were hung in place, before Adam sinned or Israel’s love failed God’s deepest desire is, was and always will be friendship. With us.
So the next time a belligerent confirmand accosts you with the question ‘Why does Jesus come at Christmas?’ you’ve got no excuse. Now you know the answer.
Jesus comes because God wants to be in relationship with you.
And that answer’s not as simplistic as it sounds. ‘Being forgiven’ doesn’t ask much from you, but friendship could potentially ask everything of you.
0 When Did We Start Celebrating Christmas?
I’ve received a number of questions this week, asking exactly when we started celebrating Christmas.
Here’s my answer:
Time was important for early Christian worship beyond the weekly Sunday gathering.
The first Christians inherited from their forebears a calendar of Jewish feasts and seasons. Taking this way of arranging the calendar, the early Christians reconfigured it according to their witness to the Risen Christ.
The Christian year quickly became an annual rehearsal of anticipation, incarnation, resurrection and indwelling. Interestingly- and surprising to many North American Christians today who think of Christmas as the most important holy day- the original feasts of the church year were:
Epiphany, when, having been met by the magi, Jesus is glorified by the gentile world.
Easter: when God raises Jesus from the dead.
Pentecost: when God sends the Spirit to indwell the Church and send it into the world.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising considering what the Gospels themselves seem to stress and value. After all, only Matthew and Luke narrate what could be considered conventional ‘nativity’ stories. For all four Gospels, Jesus’ baptism is the catalytic scene, Easter is the lens through which the entire story is read back and Pentecost is, as St Augustine called it, the ‘season of joy.’
As the Church grew and spread further from Jewish soil the Church took care to routinize the Christian year and ground time more firmly in the context of Christ’s story.
By the end of the third century the Christian calendar looked like this:
Epiphany——————Easter———————Pentecost
In just another century though the Christian calendar looked like this:
Epiphany | Easter | Pentecost |
Christmas 12.25 | Palm Sunday | Ascension |
Jesus’ Circumcision 1.1 | Maundy Thursday | Pentecost |
Epiphany 1.6 | Good Friday | |
Presentation in Temple 2.2 | Holy Saturday | |
Easter Day |
It wasn’t until the 4th century, after Constantine converted to Christianity and effectively made it the established religion of Rome, that the Church started celebrating Christmas. We did so by co-opting the Roman holiday of Saturnalia.
The winners get the holidays, in other words. Christmas was originally not an essential holy day to the Church just as 2/4 of the Gospels do not mention Jesus’ birth.
Recognizing this, it’s important for Christians not to abstract the incarnation out of the larger story the Gospels seek to tell and the early Church first celebrated: the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as Lord and King.
1 What If Materialism at Christmastime is Actually a Good Thing?
Disclaimer: If your name is Juanita and you’re presently in charge of my church’s Alternative Giving Program, you can dismiss this as ‘speculative theology.’
Yesterday I made an off-hand observation that in hindsight I think has some theological legs.
Namely, I argued that since Trinity is its own ‘economy’ (economy is a Greek NT term for ‘community’ or ‘household’) of constant gift and exchange, then perhaps the best way for believers in the Trinity to celebrate Christmas is the old fashioned materialist route of giving actual things to those we love.
With a day’s remove, I find myself resonating more with this point.
Which is to say, I’ve grown weary of the Christmas ‘tradition’ of bemoaning the commercialization of the season and criticizing others (usually referring to non-Christians) for being so materialistic about Christmas. I mean, I’ve got my own gripes with Black Friday and Xmas music in late September but is there anything more cliche than complaining about Black Friday and Xmas music in late September?
Specifically, what I think is problematic about decrying the materialism of Xmas is that it implies there’s a deeper ‘spiritual’ truth to Christmas that we’re missing.
But Christians don’t believe in abstract spiritual truths. We believe in Jesus.
And here’s the thing: the Incarnation- what we celebrate at Christmas- is the most materialistic thing of all.
Christmas is when Christians celebrate that God took human (material) flesh and lived a life just like ours amid all the material stuff of everyday life. He made things (carpenter) and presumably gave some of those things to people. He drank wine, ate bread and fish, and partied with sinners. To say nothing of the magi who brought the baby Jesus their resolutions to lead lives of justice and compassion…sike….they brought him stuff. Expensive stuff too.
The incarnation shows us that God is the most materialistic One of all of us because it’s by incarnation that God takes the material stuff of life to get up close and uncomfortably personal to all of us.
Materialism is how God spent the first Christmas so what’s wrong with us passing Christmas the very same way?
Sure enough, at this point, many of the unimaginative and painfully literal among you will point out the gross overabundance with which many of us mark the season and how little that has to do with a Savior born into poverty.
I don’t argue with that. I’m only suggesting that the Heifer Project (gifts you’ll never see given for people you’ll never know) isn’t necessarily the only or even the best way to celebrate the incarnation.
If Jesus is Emmanuel- God with us- then giving sincere material gifts of love and friendship that highlight or accentuate our withness our connection to someone else just might be the most theologically cogent way of marking his birth.
In other words, instead of cows and chickens maybe the most Christian thing to do this Christmas is to give your wife those earrings you know she’s wanted for a long, long time but hasn’t bought herself.
Maybe materialism is exactly what we need to ‘reclaim’ about our understanding of Christmas.