That there is some sense in which Christmas can be said to have become \u201csecularized\u201d over the years is undoubtedly true.\u00a0 Nevertheless, this judgment may be overwrought. Perhaps Christ is more present in \u201csecularized\u201d expressions of Christmas than either Christian or non-Christian is willing to acknowledge.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristmas\u201d literally means \u201cthe Mass of Christ.\u201d Thus, though often unintended, each and every use (and misuse) of the word \u201cChristmas\u201d throughout the season references the Christ. \u00a0The decorations and lights; department store sales; songs; \u201choliday\u201d film and television programs; the practices of gift-giving and exchanging cards; \u201choliday\u201d work parties; school concerts; family dinners and gatherings\u2014there would be none of it if not for the carpenter from Nazareth.<\/p>\n
Even Santa Claus\u2014jolly ol\u2019 Saint Nicholas\u2014took flight from the life of a Godly fourth century Catholic bishop.<\/p>\n
There would be no Christmas if not for Christ.\u00a0 And because the former is as ubiquitous as it is, particularly in the Western world, every Christmas season renders it impossible for anyone to be entirely ignorant of \u201cthe Reason for the Season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or maybe it is accurate to say that just as God the Son became incarnate <\/em>in human flesh, so too does He become incarnate in every manifestation, every sign, of the Christmas season.<\/p>\n What I am here arguing is that there is a closer connection between the <\/em>Miracle, the Birth of Jesus, and the \u201cmiracles\u201d commonly associated with it in popular depictions of Christmas than has been acknowledged.<\/p>\n Dickens\u2019 A Christmas Carol, <\/em>for example, never explicitly mentions Christ.\u00a0 There is nothing overtly Christian in the idea of ghosts or spirits haunting a wretched man on Christmas Eve.\u00a0 At the same time, it is not coincidental that of the 365 days and multiple holidays from which Dickens could have chosen to make the backdrop of his tale, he chose this<\/em> day and this <\/em>holiday.<\/p>\n Ebenezer Scrooge is an old man who, in the early morning hours of the day that the Christian world reserves to celebrate the birth of God, discovers the reasons for the despair to which he long ago succumbed.\u00a0 Courtesy of his encounter with its \u201cspirits,\u201d Scrooge experiences the miracle of Christmas as he undergoes a radical conversion, a rebirth of the spirit reminiscent of that which Saul of Tarsus had to endure on the road to Damascus before he could become Paul, God\u2019s ambassador to the Gentiles.<\/p>\n Those who lose their lives will save them, Jesus insisted.\u00a0 To achieve the supreme good, genuine, eternal happiness, one must die to oneself and be reborn in Christ.\u00a0 This death occurs when the heart, like an empty shell that has been dropped on concrete, shatters.\u00a0 Christians call this contrition.\u00a0 It\u2019s what Scrooge suffered on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n Recognizing his vices for what they were\u2014selfishness, greed, pride, bitterness, mercilessness\u2014Scrooge, with the help of some supernatural beings, slayed his old self.\u00a0 By dawn of Christmas morning, he was born again, a new creation committed to living a life of charity in the most Christian sense of this term.\u00a0 \u201cCharity,\u201d some may forget, derives from the Latin \u201ccaritas.\u201d In Christian theology, caritas became synonymous with (the Greek) \u201cagape,\u201d the unconditional love for others.<\/p>\n By way of the miracle of Christmas, Scrooge transformed from near-spiritual death into a man consumed with a passion for loving others as he loves himself.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a Wonderful Life <\/em>is another popular Christmas film with a Christian subtext.\u00a0 Jimmy Stewart\u2019s character of George Bailey is a good, but frustrated, man.\u00a0 For all of his life, George has deferred pursuing his lofty dreams for the sake of fulfilling his duties, or what he took to be his duties, to his family, friends, and local community of Bedford Falls.\u00a0 On Christmas Eve, his frustration gives way to despondency as George\u2014in covering for his absent-minded uncle who misplaced the family business\u2019s proceeds long enough for the film\u2019s villain, the Scrooge-like Mr. Potter, to steal it\u2014finds himself facing prison time.\u00a0 But as he is about to hurl himself from a bridge into the cold running river below, an angel, Clarence, intercedes.<\/p>\n When George tells Clarence that the world would have been better had he never been born, Clarence decides to prove him wrong by revealing to George an alternate reality that is George Bailey-free.\u00a0 Through much pain, even horror, George discovers that the life that he just a short time earlier regretted was actually quite\u2026wonderful.<\/p>\n George Bailey is a character to which average folks, Christians especially, can readily relate.\u00a0 He not only harms no one; George is good to others. Still, he has not yet crucified his old self.\u00a0 In fact, despite his modest circumstances\u2014or is it because <\/em>of these circumstances?\u2014George isn\u2019t just in <\/em>the world. He obviously is very much of <\/em>it.<\/p>\n He resents that he never left his hometown.<\/p>\n He resents the Bailey Savings and Loan Bank that his father built and that, from George\u2019s perspective, has prevented him from achieving his dreams.<\/p>\n He resents that he doesn\u2019t have as much in the way of material goods as some others.<\/p>\n In a particularly unguarded moment, George even expresses resentment that he has children, <\/em>the family that he evidently views as but another hindrance to the life that he wanted for himself.<\/p>\n But through the miracle of Christmas, George, like Scrooge, has his sight restored. Scrooge was a bad man that became good. George was a good man who became a better man.\u00a0 Both, though, were surprised by joy, <\/em>as C.S. Lewis memorably titled one of his books.\u00a0 Via the miracle of Christmas, both underwent a miraculous transformation when they discovered the secret to joyful living: gratitude. <\/em><\/p>\n Both George and Scrooge recognized existence generally and their personal lives specifically as given, <\/em>i.e. as gifts <\/em>for which to be thankful.\u00a0 Yet if thanks are due, then they must be owed to someone. <\/em>In the instances of George Bailey and Ebenezer Scrooge, it\u2019s clear that it is someone greater than themselves to whom their gratitude belongs.<\/p>\n And, to repeat, both came to this realization by way of supernatural assistance at Christmas.<\/p>\n Miracle on 34th<\/sup> Street, <\/em>though regularly characterized as a \u201csecular\u201d holiday film, bears upon it the unmistakable impress of Christianity.\u00a0 For starters, as is abundantly clear by the title, this movie centers around what it portrays as a miracle of sorts.\u00a0 Secondly, the latter occurs at\u2014when else?\u2014Christmas.<\/p>\n An elderly man by the name of \u201cKris Kringle\u201d arrives at the Macy\u2019s Thanksgiving Day parade claiming to be the real <\/em>Santa Claus (\u201cKris Kringle\u201d, recall, derives from the German \u201cChristkindl,\u201d meaning \u201cChrist Child.\u201d).\u00a0 He is the embodiment of kindness and cheeriness. Kris is in the world, but not of it, for the world that he wishes to change is marked by a crass \u201ccommercialism,\u201d as he describes it.\u00a0 This is a world (eerily similar to that in which we find ourselves) that exploits Christmas for the purposes of profit, status, greed.\u00a0 It is a world that has forgotten not just the true meaning of Christmas. It has abandoned all sense of vision, moral imagination.\u00a0 The world of Miracle <\/em>assigns negative value to anything that can\u2019t be readily reduced to an instrument for some immediately practical use or other.<\/p>\n The world that Kris enters is signified by Doris Walker (Maureen O\u2019 Hara), her seven year-old daughter, Susan (Natalie Wood), and Macy\u2019s psychiatrist, Dr. Granville Sawyer (Porter Hall). Doris, a single mother, is a decent but jaded woman who thinks that being \u201ctruthful\u201d with her daughter means forbidding her from believing in \u201cfairy tales, like Santa Claus.\u201d\u00a0 Sawyer, in contrast, is the penultimate symbol of all against which Kris rails: mean, contemptible dishonest.\u00a0 The goodness exemplified by Kris and his young friend Alfred, a teenage employee of Macy\u2019s who enjoys dressing up as Santa and distributing presents to children at the YMCA, Sawyer writes off as a function of mental illness.<\/p>\n As His contemporaries sought to remove the Prince of Peace from their world by nailing Him to a cross, so too does the world, represented by Sawyer, seek to remove Kris by way of a sort of social death: Sawyer attempts to have him institutionalized in a mental hospital.<\/p>\n Goodness, though, ultimately prevails. An idealistic lawyer, Fred Gailey (John Payne), quits the prestigious legal firm for which he works in order to prove to the world that Kris Kringle is <\/em>Santa Claus.\u00a0 Just as Christ was considered \u201cfoolishness to the Gentiles,\u201d as St. Paul puts it, Kris was considered the same by the self-appointed guardians of the world around him.\u00a0 But just as Christ radically subverted the epistemic hierarchy of the world, so too does Kris, via Fred, do the same.<\/p>\n Sawyer is disgraced and terminated. \u00a0Doris begins to soften her heart and, along with Susan, begins to believe in Kris.\u00a0 She allows herself to love and be loved by Fred.\u00a0 The world is redeemed. Hope dawns anew.<\/p>\n And this miraculous chain of events occurs, not incidentally, during the season of Christmas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That there is some sense in which Christmas can be said to have become \u201csecularized\u201d over the years is undoubtedly true.\u00a0 Nevertheless, this judgment may be overwrought. Perhaps Christ is more present in \u201csecularized\u201d expressions of Christmas than either Christian or non-Christian is willing to acknowledge. \u201cChristmas\u201d literally means \u201cthe Mass of Christ.\u201d Thus, though…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n