The Christmas In Me

I have thought about what a happy Christmas for me would be. I look at the darkness around the world and in the United States. There is a disconnect, a betrayal to the soul, about what Christmas should really mean, and what we should mean to Christmas.

I remember, as a little girl, wanting a horse for Christmas. I begged for one year after year. Without question, I had many sad Christmas mornings. Nonetheless, our Christmases were warm, and they were simple. There was less expectation, less noise, and less fanfare. We put up a wreath on the front door, lights in the windows, and a patiently decorated tree. We went to a midnight church service, and had a big Christmas lunch. And then it was over. Life continued. But in an odd way, a feeling followed us, even after Christmas was over. Yes, I was sad about the horse for quite a few years, but I was content in the certainty of my life, and I did eventually have my horse. There was a. peace of knowing Monday would come, and then Tuesday, and that most people strived to be good and reasonable on a miracle planet spinning in the middle of stars. I remember sitting in church late on Christmas Eve, watching candles flicker and listening to the choir sing something excruciatingly beautiful. As their voices broke the midnight silence, I looked around at the people I knew, in the town I was raised. I felt a sense of belonging. I did not fear hate or terror, nor did I contemplate that I might live in a place that I should fear. There was not a moment of wondering, that maybe I should not be here.

Today, there is hate and unrest. There is dishonesty and corruption. There is a doom, a gloom that feels surreally foreign. Obviously, it is not odd to feel disheartened to injustice, or angry about taxes, or even to disagree about policy, but to feel ill at ease in your home country is something remarkably different.

We did not say prayers in my public school classrooms when I was young, we had a moment of silence. It worked. There was a separation of church and state in flow with our Constitution. My religious views were nurtured inside the confines of my family, and at the church we chose to attend most Sundays. I remember my mom one evening watching Larry King on CNN. Billy Graham was the guest. Larry King was Jewish, and Billy Graham proceeded to inform Mr. King, during their televised discussion, that only those who believe in Jesus Christ will go to heaven upon death. Larry King was gracious and respectful, but my mom was appalled at the blatant disregard Billy Graham displayed toward’s Larry King’s Jewishness. The difference today goes beyond indifference, it has become one brand of Christianity forcing all Americans to sit quietly as a nation’s moral fabric is shredded and reformed not by choice, but by force, and yet it is all disingenuous, and steeped in hypocrisy. We are becoming a nation of spoon fed canaries, that have relinquished the ownership of our own minds, we have become too lazy to look for ourselves, and live for ourselves, but rather concede to conspiracies and bluster. I miss the days of searching the wilderness of words, thought and being for my kindred soulmates, in a garden of unique multitudes, honoring the freedoms bestowed upon us by our founding fathers and mothers. Thinkers were sincerely honored, followers not so much. The big fear was the Jonestown massacre, and why on Earth, why did those people drink the deadly Kool-Aid? The fear was the collective mindset, the blind following the blind, and what was could possibly be their reason why.

My holidays were gentle times. We loved a little more, cherished a little more, and felt the miracle of being and doing. There was a joy in our good fortune to be Americans, and simultaneously be Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, or whatever, and all of us understood. the words of the angel, “Fear not. For, behold. I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Today, we no longer can comprehend what this means, or care. It was lost to power, and hate, and racism, and ignorance. We no longer can conceptualize joy. Joy and freedom are synchronous. One cannot exist without the other. We cannot feel joy in an intolerant society where no gravitas is given to authenticity, and the celebration of the free and rambling mind. And there is no joy without service. It is a balancing act of love to self, and love to others. As I write this, I feel a threat to my flow of words, as if my contemplations are a perceived threat to the new American regime. There is, however, no America, where words become prisoner to a madman’s whim and control.

I grew up in a time where North Carolina was coined the Education State. Sadly, we can no longer consider ourselves forward thinking, progressive, or warriors of a free and just state, or even the possibility and awe of transforming lives in thought and rigor. My great-great-grandfather was born in Tennessee. He traveled across the Blue Ridge Mountains to be a minister. He quickly changed his mind. He became the first president of Mars Hill College. Shortly thereafter, the Civil War began. After the war, he committed his life to education. He, his sons, and his daughter would go into the backwoods of the Blue Ridge and bring barefoot children out to be educated. At one point, they were educating over 6500 students across Southern Appalachia. One son became known as “the prophet of Appalachia.” The reasoning for this…the ignorance in the pulpit. Carved in stone on the campus of Mars Hill is this quote by Shakespeare…

“IGNORANCE IS THE CURSE OF GOD, KNOWLEDGE THE WING WHEREWITH HE FLY TO НЕAVEN.”

Maybe we are here at this crossroads once again. The conflicting messages from pastors. Those who cannot consider history and reality, within the construct of religious thought. Maybe Christmas is how we live our lives. Maybe Christ is a symbol for enlightenment, a rare love, a sharing of joy, not for a few, but for everyone. And joy is indeed a kind of freedom, and freedom begets authenticity and a realization that walls, visible or invisible, always block light and the flow of agape, all that America once strived for.

I saw a photo a few days ago of a cookie cutter neighborhood with tiny lots and identical homes in rows and rows decorated exactly the same with one huge inflatable Santa on the left front corner of each and every house. It looked dystopian and frightful. In many ways, we are there. We are angry and bitter, and our best call to action is to hate, a return to the worst of our past. We settle for mediocrity, a collective sameness, and we brand it Patriotism or Christianity or some other cult type behavior in an effort to denounce our own grief and pain. We are indifferent to a dying planet, a disappearing butterfly, a childhood worth remembering, a future worth living. We reject the Christmas story in every single way, and display our giant Santas in a frenzy of buying meaningless stuff that no one really wants in lieu of “…on earth peace, good will toward men.” How do we find this once again, or did we ever? I thought we did. How do we live beyond and above the lowest common denominator that lures us to the emptiness of a dystopian deadness, a bleak future for all of us? The reality is we are a nation of bullies, narcissistic people of bad faith, enjoying the misery of others in the name of some manufactured branch of Christianity that defies and dismisses the Sermon on the Mount. The surreal-ness of it all is beyond baffling.

Christmas is a stillness, a star, a hope, a new way of living. We have never bought it. We are too dark, too apathetic, too unsure of our own power, so we decided to hand it over to all that we have claimed to abhor. But a reckoning is coming. Climate change is barreling over the planet, God’s masterpiece, madmen are toying with nuclear prowess, education is losing its grandeur, health is bought, and life is consumed with owning a gun. We are captivated by ignorance. Yet ignorance is darkness, and Christmas is light. If we believe in the narrative of the Christmas story, we cannot also live on the cusp of doom. We must drop our armor and surrender to what is. The only fix is what remains in our hearts. It is the quiet of service, the joy of all living things, the salvation of peace, the awareness that we are not alone, that we are all connected in nature, enmeshed with all life. In that realization is a humbleness, a come to Jesus meeting for the soul. It is an acceptance that the story of Christmas is the goodness for and by all people. Not just Christians. Perhaps turn off the TV, stop the doomscrolling, stop the greed machine, the race against big tech and artificial intelligence, and step outside, look to the stars, and fall to your knees, and whisper, “I am here for something.” Listen to the universe, the sacred, infiniteness of something divine, as our planet spins around the sun, with a moon and the dance of the tides…we are here for something, and now is our time.

“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”

• Jean-Paul Sartre

https://youtu.be/eff0cqYefYY

• Patty Brown