wfn.org | Commentary: Christmas and Consumer Captivity

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Dec. 17, 1998 Contact: Thomas S. McAnally*(615) 742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.  {745}

NOTE: A head-and-shoulders photograph of the Rev. Leicester Longden is
available.

A UMNS Commentary
By the Rev. Leicester Longden*

No season of the year presents more vividly the tension and the
intermingling of the sacred and the secular than Christmas. The result
is that many congregations and pastors are pulled back and forth between
the critics of the commercialized Christmas and the sentimentalizers of
the cultural Christmas. 

The critics come in various prophetic styles. The Puritan types throw
out Santa and all his toys. The theological types campaign to "keep
Christ in Christmas". The pragmatic types call for resistance to
consumerism. The sentimentalizers don't see what all the fuss is about,
and if they complain, it is because the pastor forces them to sing
Advent hymns while all the shopping malls are playing Christmas carols. 

There can be no doubt that the consumer culture has transformed
traditional ways of celebrating Christmas. But that transformation holds
both surprises and opportunities for Christian congregations. Perhaps
the biggest surprise is how quickly the critique of consumerism becomes
itself a marketable concept. A protest slogan like "Jesus is the Reason
for the Season" appears almost instantly on cards, coffee mugs and
sweatshirts. The lesson here is that a powerful consumer culture tends
to swallow anything that resists it. 

This is why some Christians have taken the Puritan approach. They see no
way to avoid the consuming and co-opting powers of the surrounding
culture, so they try to make a complete break. The Puritan protest has
its place in the vast chorus of Christian witness, but it does not
escape the consumer culture by simple denial. As Leigh Schmidt points
out in his book, Consumer Rites, a wonderful study of the interplay
between religious holidays and consumer culture, "Prophets are quickly
turned into Scrooges and Grinches, cheapskates and skinflints, joyless
and hopeless idealists." 

Another lesson congregations are having to learn is how to celebrate
Christmas in the midst of an increasing religious pluralism. When our
neighbors are celebrating Channuka or the Winter Solstice, we can't
avoid noticing that the religious messages in the marketplace are now
more mixed. When the consumer culture turns Christmas into a
multicultural gift-bazaar, Christians are forced to reconsider their
place in the society. On the one hand,  we have to ask ourselves whether
campaigns to keep Christ in Christmas are sometimes motivated by a
desire to maintain a Christian dominance in society. On the other hand,
we are faced with the temptation to reduce Christmas to one more option
for cultural, religious or consumer expression.

The startling claim of the Christmas event itself points a way beyond
captivity to the culture or total rejection of it. In the middle of all
the world's mythologies, religions and cultures, there appears this
enormous claim.  As G.K. Chesterton put it,  "the mysterious maker of
the world visited the world in person" by appearing in "the daily life
of the Roman Empire." This is either a vision of reality or a
mythological daydream. The cultural opportunity for churches is to live
the Christmas story in such a way that the
real world of Bethlehem outshines the fairytale land of Santa's
workshop. 

How is this done? It seems to require both feasting and fasting. That
is, the coming of Christ gathers people around tables, inspires the
giving of gifts, overturns the rhythms of work and play, and creates a
Festival. To silence all this for fear of excess is to silence the claim
that the Light of the world has in fact penetrated our darkness. At the
same time, the divine humility which takes up residence in a stable and
becomes a refugee challenges cultural assumptions about happiness
through spending. It prompts Christian believers
to find their place with the poor.

In recent years the congregation I serve had an opportunity to house in
its building a shelter for homeless people during the Christmas
holidays. Numerous families found their perceptions transformed by
eating and celebrating with the homeless. The gritty reality of the
families without a place to lay their heads challenged the comfort of
the families who were at home in consumerism. The surprise for us all
was that Festivity broke loose. And the fetters of consumer expectation
were broken.

#  #  #

*Longden is senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Lansing,
Mich.  He is a clergy member of the West Michigan Annual Conference of
the United Methodist Church, where he serves on the Conference Board of
Ordained Ministry.

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necessarily represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United
Methodist Church.

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