I have to admit…I love Christmas. I love spending the time with family. I love the lights. I love the cheesy movies. I cry like a little girl at “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Carol”. But when I walked into the multinational corporate box store monstrosity (I lovingly refer to this particular store as “Volde-mart”. Harry Potter fans will get the reference) before Halloween and saw decorations up and heard Christmas music playing I was appalled. In the following months the decorations only got more and more garish.
This year it seems like our economic “instability” has us clinging ever harder to our materialism. Now, more than ever in my life, consumerism is being treated as equivalent to patriotism. Christmas is a celebration of the God of the Universe, the Creator of everything, putting on skin. It is the birth into our space and time of the Ultimate Reality! It is our God coming as our Savior, born into poverty in the shadow of a cross. We have cause to celebrate. But let’s all make sure to take time out to remember what we are celebrating, not just that it’s time to celebrate. Don’t make the celebration itself the end. The end goal is the celebration of the Ultimate Reality, of God Himself! Don’t mistake the menu for the meal!
So, with that in mind, have a cup of hot mulled cider, eat yourself a clementine orange and enjoy this reminder from Lawrence Ferlinghetti…
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
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
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