The Lies We Buy at Christmas

I don't mean to mislead by the title, "The Lies We Buy at Christmas," but I'm not on a rant about shopping and malls and commercialization. I'm as tired of those rants as I am of the actual commercialization.

Actually I'm thinking this morning about Christmas carols. We all sing songs mindlessly, I realize that.

[Digression: I'm occasionally shocked when I hear a song that I enjoyed from my youth/young adult years -- the 70's and 80's -- and pay attention to what the lyrics are saying. "I like that song, but I didn't know it was saying THAT!!" Hmmmm . . . maybe that's why my mother didn't want me listening to those radio stations!]

As someone who gives attention to corporate worship experiences, however, I try to pay attention to the message that songs convey. What does a song say? What is its tone? When people sing it, especially in a setting of worship, what do they carry away?

[Confession: I'm not a big Christmas carol guy. I'll sing them . . . if you make me. But I'm not someone who tunes the car radio to ALL-CHRISTMAS-MUSIC-ALL-THE-TIME beginning Thanksgiving. To my knowledge, I've never gone "dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh." So why sing it? Last week at a Christmas party we sang, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones we used to know." I've NEVER known a white Christmas, so I have no dreams of one. "And may all your Christmases be white"? Nothing against Bing Crosby, but if that's his Christmas blessing for me, I'm cursed!]

Really, though, I'm not as concerned about Bing Crosby and "White Christmas," or about the fantasy world of "Jingle Bells" nearly as much as I am the "religious" Christmas songs we sing that make Jesus into a fantasy character.

"Away in a Manger" may be a sweet lullaby, but it offers an image of Jesus that is pure fantasy. "The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes." Really? I thought the point of Christmas was that God became one of us, that God took on human flesh, that God entered the world fully human, not as an invincible Superhuman, but as a vulnerable, authentic person. Have you ever known a human baby not to cry . . . at least once, at least at some point? The carol doesn't feel honest to me. It misses the point of Christmas. Maybe it's fine to sing at family gatherings or at the Garden Club, but it's not a worship song.

There are other songs, as well, that present some stylized, photo-shopped Jesus, the kind of Jesus was wish for, the kind of Jesus we want Jesus to be.

On the other hand, there are Christmas songs that are intensely real, songs that refuse to airbrush God or our lives.

"O holy Child of Bethelehem, descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!"

And I particularly like the old monastic chant that has thankfully made its way into our hymn books . . . and hasn't yet been purged from them:

"Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded,
for the blessing of his hand,
Christ our God to earth, descendeth,
our full homage to demand."

"King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
in the body and the blood;
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food."

So I sing selectively during Advent and at Christmas. My life is already full of enough lies. I don't need to propogate more of them.