The Tangle of Tradition

 God Rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay---

Things are so nuts right now that we struggle this Christmas season to find rest and be merry, let alone be gentlemen, but I sit here right now looking at my decorated tree and I find myself delighted at how silly, how quirky, and how charming are our Christmas traditions – I’m willing to part with none of them.  How fun to think of a visiting – say -- Martian trying to make sense of a society that, in the dead of winter, cuts down millions of small trees, sets them up in our homes, and covers them with all manner of, well, of junk.

As the only girl in a family of five children I was often disappointed in our Christmas trees – all festooned with pasty construction paper chains, hanks of tinsel, and tiny bells made by sticky-fingered little boys out of foil milk-bottle caps. I yearned for something stylish and sparkly. Though my grown-up tree has never come in contact with library paste, it’s far from trendy. I am of the tasteless belief that there’s no such thing as too many ornaments, so my tree is laden with everything from Fostoria crystal snowflakes to 10-year-old candy canes.  From where I sit right now I can see a square-ish reindeer with 3 glittered trees growing out of his back, a crocheted white angel, a pewter teapot, a bread-dough doll, some brass horns, a knit Santa, a ballerina…. See how confused a Martian anthropologist would be?

My tree, I confess, is a plastic facsimile; in fact we were among the first to own a petroleum by-product tree. Not strictly traditional, but it has saved my marriage and my sanity. My dear husband has always been a gentle Scrooge – “Bah! Humbug!” he’d exclaim at the idea of paying good money for a dead tree, for a tree dry enough to drop needles all over the carpet, dry enough to burn down the house. The grousing stopped when in the late 60’s I spent $25 on a fake tree. I could put it up myself, no need at all to ruffle his crabby feathers. We’re on Tree G-3 now and I adore it.

My perfectly shaped, synthetic tree has, for ages, been topped by a stuffed reindeer, which looks disturbingly like a camel, and carries a load of presents on his back. His limbs wrap around the leader and his facial expression makes it clear that he’s sure he’s falling. He has no symbolic significance – I just find his “How did I get up here?” look amusing and he reminds me of the time I told my 4-year-old, geeky grandson to listen for Santa and his reindeer. Ben put his hands on his little hips and shook his head. “Gravity, Nana. Gravity?” My tree deer is worried about that, too.

Besides the tree, I also love my snowmen. Ages ago I made them out of gourds – one of the dozens of hobbies to which I am unfaithful. The five snowmen gather annually and flirt with each other – Levi and Guinevere have had a thing going from the beginning, and Herkimer still looks like someone just goosed him – Hermione, I suppose; she appears to be having a private giggle.  Henry, who is 2 feet tall, just beams; he’s a merry gentleman, even if no one else is.

And what’s Christmas without my row of hand-painted Victorian houses (another abandoned hobby)? I can imagine the tiny inhabitants “hanging their stockings by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. ”  Speaking of cultural phenomena that would confuse the Martians -- how would they connect that to the porcelain nativity scene by the front door?

How silly are we? Whatever does a 2,000-year-old Jewish baby have to do with Norwegian reindeer and fat men in red suits? Why do they come down the chimneys? What’s with the angels? Or the gingerbread houses? Or the three kings on camels? And snowmen – were there snowmen in Judea? And what’s with the stockings? And the lights? Oh my goodness, the lights! And people rushing around buying presents and music everywhere. …

Ah, God rest ye merry, silly, endearing gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay, for Christ was born in Bethlehem upon this Christmas Day.

And the Martians will just have to deal with it.

What Man is This?

I love the old hymn set to the 17^th century English tune Greensleeves -- “What child is this who’s laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?” Lovely, soft, and haunting, yet it is not the child that matters; it is the man He became, the man who died, the man who rose again.

Jesus Christ -- Immanuel (God with Us) was, during the short time He was with us, a complete human being, as well as God Almighty. I know -- my brain doesn’t get all the way around that one, either, so for now let’s just look at the man. The Gospels show only glimmers of Who He was when He wasn’t actively involved in His ministry; we talk about his “missing” childhood, but when you go to look for the grown-up, off-stage Jesus, He’s just as hard to discover. We’re used to finding out anything we want to know about someone’s private life, but the personal Jesus eludes us.

I want to see a glint of humor in His eyes when His mother tells him that the wedding wine has run out, yet the words He speaks to her sound curt and purposeful and she responds pretty intensely herself. “Whatever he says, do it, “ she tells the servants. Yet certainly He had a quiet chuckle as the freshly water-filled jugs instantly turned to well-aged wine. It amuses me how narrowly the clueless host escapes embarrassment and how fooled the wedding planner is – surely it all amused Jesus, too.  But He had a serious purpose – He had started showing people who He really was; He had opened the curtain – the show had begun.

But, surely He must have been fun to be with. What did He and the disciples talk about as they walked those dusty roads and ate bread together? (We know of one silly conversation amongst the disciples about which of them would be the greatest, but Jesus was not a part of that.) Did they tell jokes? Talk about politics? Tease each other? We don’t know. 

The Pharisees criticized Him for hanging out with the tax collectors and prostitutes and I can picture Him seated at a table completely at ease with this rough crowd. I like to think of Him throwing back His head in laughter, offering a toast, nodding and smiling, clapping someone on the back, shaking hands with newcomers, but nothing like that is recorded, and His own account tells us we should picture those meetings more like the teaching sessions He held in the synagogues.

I can feel His exhaustion and claustrophobia after those long days healing the multitudes. He was a rock star, on at least two occasions drawing crowds of 4-5,000. They followed Him everywhere, crushed in upon Him, wouldn’t let Him breathe, and each crowd was heavily laced with the vicious hatred of the religious leaders, waiting lustfully for the slightest misstep.

I have a friend who talks about the rebel in Jesus, and it’s true that He had no respect for the man-made law of the Pharisees, and that He found many an occasion to show them that contempt. He was not, however, the rebel the crowds wanted. They thought He came to save them from the Romans, to become their new king, so the pressure from the multitudes must have been overwhelming; they wanted so much from Him – leadership, hope, healing.

When He heals the paraplegic in Capernaum the crowds are so thick that his four friends have to break through the roof of the house where Jesus is speaking to lower their friend into His presence. The intensity of that moment – the pressure of the bodies, the lack of air, the heat – just the thought of it makes me choke. Add into that the hatred of the Pharisees – who had made sure of their spot in the room – and you have a real pressure-cooker. We know that He occasionally escaped to pray by Himself, that He asked the disciples to act almost as bodyguards, that He occasionally spoke to the crowds from the safety of a boat. I would have done that too.

Only twice do we see His calm, patient surface craze a little under the pressure – His weeping for Jerusalem, for His doomed nation, and the night in Gethsemane before His arrest when He was actually sweating blood.

How human He was. Even though we can’t yet know Him the way we would like, we’ve had a peek, a glimpse of the man Who will greet us in heaven someday, the man Whose birthday we celebrate not just because He healed the sick or fed the five thousand, but because He went through with it; in spite of His terror, He finished the job. Tetelestai He said, and He died and then He rose again, as will we who believe. It is indeed a Merry Christmas.