Unwrapping Christmas in a Different Paradigm (1 of 5)

Introduction: HERE’S RELIEF! Economic Giving Is NOT the Meaning of Christmas

For this year’s season of Advent-Christmas, Lee Van Ham is presenting other ways to look at this special season, his comments rooted in the cosmological nature of the birth narratives told in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.

When unwrapped in a jubilee economic paradigm, Christmas does not have giving at its core, but a redistribution that minimizes the wealth-poverty class injustices which are commonplace in today’s economic structures. Changing the wealth-poverty structures is very different from giving and charity. Christmas is a story bigger than charity and giving. It is a story bigger than Caesar or the U.S. economy.

“We won’t be able to have much of a Christmas this year” are words that could come from millions this December. But it’s true only if Christmas equals buying and giving commercial gifts. It’s true only if the story of the malls is the true Christmas event.

Neither is true, of course, and this is the first of five pre-Christmas, jubilee messages that will unwrap Christmas in a different economic paradigm from the one heralded by shopping malls. The next four messages will come one per week during the four weeks of Advent that precede Christmas, beginning November 28, this year.

The large chain stores that serve as outlets for the corporations that rule the economy love a theology of Christmas that puts giving at the center. The gifts of the magi brought to the child, or an emphasis on Jesus as a gift to us from God, both serve very well the commercial path of giving. A giving theology of Christmas is exploited by thousands of ads, arousing the sense that we MUST buy something for EVERYONE on “our list.” Christmas is huge economic news. Depending on the business, 20% to 60% of annual sales come from Christmas gift-giving!

Economic indicators are followed closely every holiday season on the various business reports of media and magazines. Are consumers buying? Are we buying more than last year? Will merchants show strong earnings? Or do merchants need to entice shoppers into their stores with big discounts because economic times are hard? Indeed, weak demand from shoppers leading up to and during the Christmas of 2008 resulted in many stores, including some big chains, holding going out of business sales.

Many people lament the stress of shopping. Though an element of spirit and romance can be found in it, gift-giving can overwhelm Christmas. Each year people vow to do less of it. Some succeed. Congregations struggle to focus the Christmas story religiously, fighting its takeover by the shopping mall as the primary religious ritual of the season. But many congregations fail to truly take back the Christmas drama from the mall. Instead, many offer beautiful Christmas eve worship to an audience swollen for a family tradition—attending worship on Christmas eve, especially with candlelight. Though the time, work, and money invested in such worship can be great, and though worshippers may be very pleased to have been present, going to church at Christmas is largely a part of the whole calendar of Christmas—along with Santa, shopping, festive parties, family traditions, and the power to create good feelings and goodwill as widely as possible.

To be clear, I do not wish to disconnect Christmas from economics, but to speak of a connection that differs greatly from the one of the shopping mall. When unwrapped in a jubilee economic paradigm, Christmas does not have giving at its core, but a redistribution that minimizes the wealth-poverty class injustices which are commonplace in today’s economic structures. Changing the wealth-poverty structures is very different from giving and charity. Christmas is a story bigger than charity and giving. It is a story bigger than Caesar or the U.S. economy. It is a story of the birth of a divine consciousness among humans that shows us a whole new paradigm in which to live abundantly, to do our celebrating festively, and to arrange our economy sustainably.

Here are the following four “unwrappings”:

1. Mary’s Song of Joy! It’s Not Heard in Mall Christmas Music
2. The Birth of Jesus Is Wildly Cosmological; Caesar and the U.S. Aren’t
3. Empires Say, “Fear! But We’ll Protect You!”; Angels Say, “Fear Not!”
4. Having Christ Born in Us —It’s the Doorway to a Different Paradigm 

Comments

[Galen]

What a wonderful beginning, Lee. I am compelled to read more because of the premise which you have clearly laid out. I have not been celebrating christmas for years. "Christ" and "Mass" leave me cold, but the winter solstice celebrating the return of the light, warms my soul, especially when standing around a fire with my earthen brothers and sisters, releasing the darkest places within and replaces with new light, and singing with one voice our joy of life and the natural beauty and worth of all living things.