Via Media Holidays

Via Media Holidays

re-posted from The Trinitarian December 2011

(Parish Newsletter of Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland Oregon)

 

A few years ago one of my friends, a bartender who was very much a professional and proud of his profession, gave me an interesting but troubling factoid. 

“What day of the year, do you suppose, is the biggest sales day for bars, pubs, and taverns in the United States?” 

“I don’t know,” I replied, “I’d guess maybe New Year’s Eve or St. Patrick’s Day?” 

“Wrong,” he said, “New Year’s Eve, most people are going to parties that night and not to bars, though it is a very heavy night at bars because of loners who don’t have parties to go to or people who want to top up before they go to parties.  Only a portion of the population celebrates St. Patrick’s.  The heaviest night of the year, surprisingly, is the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving Day.” 

“How could that be?”

“Just think about it a minute.  Thanksgiving is the holiday for all Americans, not just Christians, not just Irish Americans and Irish American wanna-be’s.   College kids, young professionals, and even some middle-agers, both with and without young families, are all headed back to the family manse to be with their parents or in-laws, and with siblings.  Often it’s to celebrate the holiday with people they’d rather not spend time with.   Older parents are about to have their calm, happy, empty nests invaded by the offspring they finally succeeded to launch on separate living arrangements.  All those nervous, slightly discontented people head to the bars with spouses, partners, or friends for one last chance to get loaded before they descend into a day or two of the Hell of Bringing Up Father or the Brady Bunch!  They drink at bars because they can’t drink at home, either because they’re traveling or they’re already uncomfortably on stage at where they are spending the holiday.”

This sad factoid gave me a perspective on the holidays I had never had.

There are many reasons to love the season, but there are also tensions.  The holidays bring with them a whole lot of expectations, what we need to do, who we need to be with, what we ought to do, to properly celebrate and to not give offense.  The holidays can bring us face-to-face to our own failings, those places where we do not measure up, either to the expectations of others or to our own.   

Ten years ago, Jo Robinson and Jean Staeheli published their little book, Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season.  They discussed how our expectations could distract us and ruin the season, and how a simpler celebration could help fix matters.  It is still a good read with a lot of good suggestions for having a joyous, and even holy, festival.  

We must not beat ourselves up over the fact that we have not simplified enough.  That too is an expectation that produces unhappiness.   The point is that we need to pace ourselves, and truly celebrate in ways that bring joy to us and to those about us.  

The Feast of the Nativity, or Christmas (Christ’s Mass), is the Feast of the Incarnation, of God becoming truly human.   By becoming truly human, God tells us that it is O.K. to be not O.K., and shows us that acceptance of who we are and who those about us are is the starting point of spiritual progress.    Jesus liked a good party, but did not want party planning to control life.  Note that in the story of the wedding at Cana, he provides hundreds of gallons of the finest wine to the joy of the guests, but also questions his Mother’s desire to control every little detail. 

Anglicans and Episcopalians have always held to the Via Media, the middle way, whether between Catholicism and Protestantism, the traditional and the innovative, or smoky and clangy High Church ceremony or snake-belly low, hands-in-the-air come-to-Jesus Evangelicalism.    Treading the path between two extremes in order to be as inclusive and as comprehensive as possible is the hallmark of English Prayer-book Christianity. 

We need to walk a middle path in our approach to celebrating the holidays too. 

We often hear this time of year calls to “put Christ back in Christmas.” People complain about commercialization, too much partying, and not enough praying.  This phrasing of the question gets the issues all wrong. It separates the partying and celebration from spirituality. Granted, some people see the holiday solely as a consumer or marketing event. The holiday is thus diminished, often becoming a source of stress and depression.

The problem, however, is not too much celebration, but too little. “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God” says Isaiah. It is not just “the spiritual side” of us that should rejoice. To want to turn Christmas into a sectarian prayer meeting rather than the public, boisterous, and commonly shared party that it currently is—for both believer and unbeliever—stems from bad theology.  Incarnational theology demands that our prayer be common prayer, or prayer in community, and our holidays be publicly shared. 

The fact that in the Western catholic tradition we observe a light penitential season, Advent, just before Christmas helps us moderate having too much fun in the run up to Christmas.  The fact that we celebrate the nativity of Christ for twelve full days, Christmastide, from December 25 to January 6, forces us to pace and moderate the celebration.

Elena and I will be arriving in Ashland on December 30, and look forward to starting our lives together with you before Christmastide is over. 

Let’s all get through the holidays in one piece, happy, but rested as well.   

Peace and Merry Christmas. 

Father Tony+