Can UU’s Have a Merry Christmas? It’s Complicated

 

Rev. Scrooge prepares his any Christmas scolding.

Note—Yesterday at Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry Chaplain Dave Becker’s sermon, Inventing Christmas: How Unitarian Universalists Shaped the American Holiday was an inspirational review of the history of Unitarians and Universalists helped create the modern American Christmas celebration.  I covered much of the same ground in a blog post back in 2008, but I also discussed a trend among some UU clergy, theologians, and Social Justice warriors to denigrate the American holiday as an orgy of capitalist exploitation and greed, a menace to the environment and threat to survival,  exploitation Third World workers and corruption of their traditional cultures, drive small business out and overwhelm consumers with debt, just to mention some of their grievances.  We are better now, on the whole, about respecting each other and learning from each other but some of the same attitudes still pop up.  Can we reconcile seasonal traditions and practices with clear-eyed understanding of injustice in the world?  We’ll see. 

Nothing brings out the latent Puritan in some Unitarian Universalists like Christmas.  Some years the tisk-tisking and finger waving seems to start as soon as we put away the sugar skulls from the Day of the Dead service.  And sometimes the harping and scolding never lets up.  UU bloggers and social media influencer stew and fret.  The list of reasons to downplay—or boycott—the holiday grow yearly.  Sometimes it seems that the sanctimonious sneer is the order of the day. 

In my own congregation, not a year went by without a well-beloved former minister giving what some congregants called his slash-your-writs sermon.  This is the one where he went on—at great length—about all of the folks who are depressed and lonely over the holidays.  He never said anything that comforted those folks, but he sure did make everyone else feel guilty if they took a scintilla of pleasure in the season.  He was chronically depressed and could no resist his gloom One year we had folks from a parade of committees light Chalices all season in competition with each other over how austere we should make our own holidays to save the rain forest or an African AIDS orphan.  Some years later the congregation offered support for the lonely, alienated and melancholy at Blue Christmas vespers services.

A Christmas Eve Candlelight Service at historic Arlington Street Church in Boston.  William Ellery Channing, the Congregation's influential minister and Unitarian Transcendentalists revived Christmas in New England in the 19th Century.

I should point out that this is not universal.  In fact, I think most occupants of UU pews are fine with the holiday and keep it in their own lives and families in their own ways.  Some of the old theological wars between the UU Christians, humanists, and pagans seem to have dissipated of late and there is a greater tendency to respect each other’s traditions while finding common ground in Season of Light.  And a lot of ministers are gifted at creative, inclusive, affirming liturgies. 

In my own Congregation some most spiritual worship experiences come in this season via lively and engaging children’s pageants, great music including choir concerts, traditions of sharing and generosity, and the lovely Christmas Eve candle light services that include a reading of the traditional Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke and end with singing Silent Night in the darkened sanctuary as we light candles had to hand. 

The tendency toward Christmas Grinching seems to come from an earnest but loud minority including some leading ministers and self-appointed guardians of UU morals, and, unfortunately, folks intently focused on social justice and ecological issues.  It seems to me that both of the latter could more effectively find ways to adapt obvious seasonal connections instead of giving in to self-satisfying harrumphing for the sake of being purely countercultural.  Besides, such lofty disdain and pronunciations practically guarantee that their messages will be lost on most folks who in some way still treasure the season. 

 

Look, like I enjoy simplicity in Christmas.  Lord knows the two nickels left in my pocket preclude a consumerist orgy.  But I do love the season.  Stripped of way too many faux Santa Claus, there is still something warm and even inspiring in the festivals of light, the sense of generosity and community.  I’m already singing carols under my breath and enjoying sparkling lights on Woodstock Square. 

Maybe we should reflect a moment how our Unitarian ancestors rejected Puritan priggishness about Christmas and did a whole lot to make the holiday we celebrate today.  The Rev. Charles Follen introduced the Christmas tree to New England.  The Rev. Edward Hamilton Sears gave us It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.  James Lord Pierpont scribbled Jingle Bells while serving as organist at his brother’s Savannah, Georgia church and he was home sick for New England.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poignant I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day after hearing his son was badly wounded in the Civil War.  

 

From across the puddle Unitarian Charles Dickens wrote the perennial classic A Christmas Carol with no hint or mention of the Christ child.  Louisa May Alcott gave us one of the first detailed descriptions of a family Christmas celebration in New England in Little Women. 

The Marsh family home as seen in the 1994 version of Little Women with Winona Rider as Jo was carefully modeled on the Alcott family home  Orchard House which they moved into in 1858 after Ralph Waldo Emerson had earlier subsidized them in a home next to his own in Concord, Massachusetts.  It;s depiction of a New England family Christmas was the earliest and most detailed.

More famed choral conductor Robert Shaw, music director at UU congregations in Cincinnati and Atlanta, gave us too much glorious Christmas music to count.  Actress Michael Learned was the mother on of all The Walton Christmases.  I’m sure I’ve left someone out. 

 

Anyway, have yourself a merry little Christmas—and a happy Chanukah, joyous Solstice, bask in the glow of all the Festivals of Light.  I will.