KEEPING MASS IN CHRISTMAS

Of the many and various ways my spirit is afflicted over the Yuletide season are the strident calls to “Keep Christ in Christmas”, and its variant “Put Christ Back in Christmas”, as if the baby Jesus snuck off and was partying somewhere else, and we have to snatch him up and stuff him back into the feast, or else the time will simply not be redeemed.

These rallying cries are part and parcel of the program  of the currently reigning King Herod (remember, Jesus called him a “Fox”) in their never ending drumbeat to resist and defeat the “War on Christmas”, which rears it hoary head each 25^th of October or so, to remind us that “they” are out to destroy our faith, and we must resist, mostly by refusing to live by any of the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) when it comes to our brothers and sisters who think different than us.  Hear ye angels, the cry of the strident masses defending the faith:

“I will get mad at you if you say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, and will righteously proclaim that ‘as for me and my family, we say MERRY CHRISTMAS!’  I am sorry (ed. Note: read “not sorry”) if that offends you.”

Apparently this ancient chant has the power to shame all heathens back into the fold, and we can all go merrily shopping for Christ-like gifts at all the imperial emporiums promising hundreds of door busters.

(I know, Ferlinghetti does this better—so look him up!)

The door busters of Jesus’ time were the boots and staves of the Roman occupiers, kicking in the doors of Jewish Palestinians, forcing their men into the army, raping the women, terrorizing the children.   The door busters of our time are the Taliban and the 2^nd Amendment Heroes shooting up school rooms, the barrel bombs of the Assad regime dropped on children, the narcos and politicos collaborating to kidnap and murder students, the police who kill unarmed black men, the ever tightened glove of hunger, violence and hate.

That is where Christ is found this Christ-mass, among those suffering masses.

I have no need to glorify “the masses” and make them into a righteous vanguard.  We are as human as human gets, and that gets pretty ugly.  But the little baby we so coo over at Christmas, loves ugly.  Loves brokenness, loves hurt, loves even death—not in the style of warm feelings, but in the style of hot actions to break the bonds and set the captives free.

(You blessed nullifidians: hang with me for awhile.)

Christmas was meant to be Christ-mass, and yes, in many ways it was started as a feast in order to co-opt the old harvest, solstice and even war gods.  I mean who, doesn’t like a baby (I mean for an hour or so, not a sick baby up every hour every night for a week).  Our Christmas is a mix of Norse, Germanic, Roman and more and more Nahuatl and African celebrations.  But the Mass part remains.

From a cultic point of view, the Mass meant a gathering of the faithful, often under persecution, in order to have their faith renewed. It meant hearing the old prophecies that

“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,
    and the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
and the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.”

It meant praying for those in prison or in sickness, and then organizing missions to serve them. It meant honoring the dead who had lived for a better world.  It meant sharing a feast. And it meant holding to the courageous faith that:

“They shall not hurt or destroy
    in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.”

That is the mass of Christmas. That and Mary’s cry that God has

“Scattered the proud in their conceit,

Cast down the mighty from their thrones

Lifted up the lowly.

Filled the hungry  with good things,

Sent the rich away empty.”

That’s the Mass I want to see in Christ-mass.  It is the mass of mission, of turning the world upside down again, or right side back, so that the justice and mercy and love planted deep in all creation may flourish.

I want to share two pieces of liturgy this early Christmas-time morn (it’s 5:02 am at my kitchen table).  First Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

And Gustavo Gutierrez:

“The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.”

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be a mass of hope and struggle.

Patrick