Once again, December is upon us, and so once again, the Christmas Wars. Once upon a time, in Fr. Feeney’s day, these were described by him thusly: “I do not know what Christmas in the United States is going to be like from now on. I frankly do not! I have seen how it has deteriorated in the past twenty-five years. I know the deceivers and haters of Jesus and Mary, across the street at Harvard College, will go through this Christmas religiously as fraudulently as they went through the last one. There will be red lights blinking on Christmas trees, this year the same as last year. Light, revealing nothing! Light, meant to be the means of making things visible, with nothing to show!
“Undoubtedly, somebody like Theodore Spencer, of Harvard — who called Jesus a ‘myth,’ before he died — will get up and read Dickens’ Christmas Carol. That is supposed to be very Christmasy! Some noted actor, if he is able, will do a little Christmas barking on the radio. Some notorious comedian will roar like Santa Claus!
“That is the culture that goes with Christmas now. And because I, once a son in the Society of Jesus, see it as sad and tragic, and say it is sad and tragic, I am resented. People do not want to see! They would much prefer to hear about an invisible Christmas, and an invisible Church, that we could have in common with those who deny or despise Christ’s Divinity and His birth at Christmas from the womb of a little Jewish girl, Mary of Nazareth.
“When the angels said to the shepherds, ‘Go over to Bethlehem!’ they did not mean, ‘Go over and commune with nature.’ They did not mean, ‘Turn to Bethlehem, the way a wild Mohammedan would turn to Mecca!’ They did not say, ‘Close your eyes and imagine what profound depths there are in you.’
“The angels said, ‘Run like men, and find the Baby — and His little Mother, with Him!’”
All quite true, to be sure. Nevertheless, in comparison to what we have to-day, the culture that went with Christmas then seems positively devout. At the time Father wrote those lines, not a movie house in the country would be found that did not have a special “Merry Christmas” message to its patrons from “the owners and staff of this theatre.”
But for decades, the very name of “Christmas” has come under attack, because of its offensive first syllable. In its place an attempt has been made to replace the name of the holy day and season with “Holiday.” This has even led to such abominations as chat about “Holiday Trees” and the like. Last year, Cambridge, Massachusetts’ famed “Christmas Revels” renamed themselves as “Midwinter.”
Bad as all that is, however, as bad as the notion of the “Holiday Season” is, at least is still carried with it a notion of giving to others, of closeness to loved ones, and the like. Now that too has come under assault. The British retail chain Marks and Spencer unleashed an ad with a song entitled “Love Thismas (Not Thatmas),” which shows several celebrities doing things connected with Christmas they liked, and destroying the things they did not — the idea being that the “Holidays” should be all about self-indulgence rather than looking to the wants of others. This is not merely the obscuring of the Incarnation in a midst of bright lights and warm feelings, but its total opposite — its utter negation, as it were. Christmas is under siege as never before.
But this is far from the first time that the feast of Our Saviour’s birth has come under attack. The Puritans in both Old and New England declared open war of the observance — going so far as to outlaw not only the feast itself, but the means of merrymaking associated with it — mince pies, and greenery brought in to the house. In response, the Catholic and High Anglican Cavaliers — supporters of the King against Cromwell in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms — redoubled their continuance of the Medieval Christmas customs of their fathers. The personification of these became known as “Father Christmas,” who was seen as a political ally in the struggle — and who in time became the major gift giver for children. In sharp contrast to the New England Puritans, their Dutch brethren in what became New York retained Christmas, and most especially the figure of St. Nicholas, who then and now was the gift distributer of Yule in the Netherlands and the rest of Central Europe. He, of course, in turn became our Santa Claus, who has since turned Father Christmas into a sort of clone, despite their wildly different origins.
That particular war would in the end be won for Christmas in the Anglosphere by four unlikely partners. The first was Sir Walter Scott, who, by rehabilitating all things Medieval, paved the way for both the Catholic Revival and Anglo-Catholicism on the one hand, and for a heightened appreciation of Christmas on the other. The second was New York writer Washington Irving; having already popularized the Dutch Christmases in New York, he came to Great Britain, met Sir Walter, spent a lavish Christmas at Birmingham’s Aston Hall with a friend of the Scottish writer, and wrote about the experience. These and Irving’s subsequent writings about the fictionalised place won the attention of and inspired a young man named Charles Dickens, who in turn wrote A Christmas Carol and several other Christmas tales which became wildly popular. At the time they first appeared, Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, brought the Christmas Tree from his native Germany, and popularized at the Royal Court the kind of family observance he had enjoyed as a boy — and which soon became the ideal.
But no sooner was that victory won, when a new battle opened up. The first salvo was fired in 1890, by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer, with the publication of his Golden Bough. Therein, he basically traced Christianity to the pagan fertility religions, using the various pre-Christian traditions the Church had sanctioned as proof — so the mistletoe and holly of Christmas joined the May-Pole, pretty much everything about Halloween, and a host of other calendar customs as “proof” of his assertion. This would be enlarged upon in the 1920s by the inventrix of Wicca, Margaret Murray, in her Witch Cult of Western Europe and subsequent writings. Although somewhat depopularised by the Nazi Party’s embrace of these theories during World War II, they have been embraced subsequently not only by Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, and other such, but by many anthropologists. Thus the rejection of Christmas by the Nazis in favour of a repaganised “Yule,” and its current substitution with “Solstice” by such as the Revels. From thence, these notions have filtered out into popular culture, having the effect — in response — of causing many devout Christians (even orthodox Catholics) of rejecting all such on that basis.
So where does that leave us? Despite all the best efforts of the varying kinds of Christmas opponents, its observance remains one of the most palpable witnesses to the original ethos of the formerly Christian world — and to the intrinsic vigour of the Faith. If recognition of the Kingship of Christ, described by Pius XI in his 1925 encyclical, Quas Primas as essential to the salvation of both men and states is usually lacking throughout the year, it is at Christmas-time that the weary world comes closest to recognizing it. In countless Nativity Scenes, public and private, the act of the Three Kings in honouring the Divinity, Sacrifice, and Kingship of the Infant Christ is brought before us, implying as it does His ongoing Empire over the World. At least during the Christmas Creep, Advent, the Twelve days, and indeed — for those in the know — up until Candlemas, those with the wit to see it can see the echoes of that rule. All of the countries, provinces, counties, towns, and villages that mark it in their very different ways form, at least during that blessed time, part of that glorious Kingdom of Christmas, which itself s a very partial actualization of the Kingdom of Christ.
So in addition to our personal, family, and parish celebrations of the great feast, let us take part in whatever civic observances of Christmas take place, albeit giving them the right intention. Community Christmas tree lightings, carol singing, Christmas plays, and the like — so long as they retain the word Christmas! — are a great way of encouraging our fellow citizens in keeping this remnant of the honour all public entities owe Our Lord. The same is true of the various “Period” Christmases that diverse historic houses and districts indulge in, or the neighbourhood Christmas light displays. To be sure, much of this is precisely the kind of thing Fr. Feeney rightly complained about in his opening quote; we must pray — and work — that it become a means of bringing its practitioners to Christ.
As for those two old battle-scarred veterans of the Christmas Wars, Santa Claus and Father Christmas, let us re-separate them, and give them their particular due. The first as the great St. Nicholas, who defended the Incarnation physically in his day as he witnesses to it in our day, and the second as the personification of the Christmas spirit of joy, in opposition to both Oliver Cromwell, and his evil master! And from myself to you all, a very Merry Christmas!
