« The Passion according to Tolkien | Main | Across Divides »
December 18, 2003
Kurtz Provokes Thoughts
I hope I’ll be forgiven if, as an outsider, I ask about the state of Christmas in America. My impression, based on inadequate information, is that Christmas is in a slow but noticeable decline. My neck of the woods is pretty urban and dominated by apartment buildings. Still, there seems very little in the way of Christmas decoration around here. Despite the occasional Christmas pop song, radio stations have long since given up playing real Christmas music....At least in blue America, where I’ve always lived, Christmas seems on the decline, and secularism on the rise. I’m ready to stand corrected in all this, because I haven’t been paying close enough attention. But is it coincidence that the big cultural event this season is about a pagan fantasy world? I think Lord of the Rings carries some of the moral weight that Christmas used to carry–good and evil are still there–but in a way that safely appeals to an increasingly secular and culturally divided public.
Well, first, on the public square level and all that, there is definitely a war on Christmas, the battles of which - from salespeople being warned not to say "Merry Christmas" to the White House Holiday Tree - is well documented and annually hashed over.
Regarding his more general point, though - over here in the red states, there's no - absolutely no - letup in Christmas. The houses in our neighborhood are awash in lights, there are at least two local radio stations that go to all-Christmas-all-the-time about ten days before Christmas, and the town is lousy with pageants and cantatas.
But I have done a lot of wondering as I wandered over the town these days about what exactly we're celebrating. We being Americans. Now, it's not as if Christmas was ever really generally seen as a high holy day for its religious significance, even in the old days of Christian America, as they say. Sure, the government could pay for a nativity scene at City Hall, but when you examine artifacts of popular culture, from the time the kind of popular culture we know was born sometime in the 19th century, it wasn't images of Jesus that filled the air. It was essentially the same as today: family gatherings, warmth, and gifts. Further, America is the land settled by anti-holiday Puritans whose descendents only grudgingly allowed themselves to celebrate under the influence of European immigrants and Victorian sentimentality. And church? I've known more than a few low-church Protestants in my day, including on my father's side of the family, and the little Catholic granddaughter was always exceedingly puzzled by the fact that going to church was not even faintly a part of her relations' celebration of Christmas.
I'm willing to be corrected, but celebrating Christmas as the feast of the Incarnation has never, it seems to me, been a priority for American Protestants, and for most of its history, it's the American Protestants who have framed American public culture, with the Germans, Irish, Italians, Africans, Hispanics and others eventually making a dent, but only, as I've said, after St. Nicholas and the Christkindl - two religious figures - somehow came out on the other end as the marketer's dream named Santa Claus.
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/316823
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Kurtz Provokes Thoughts:
» My head, it hurts from Too Much To Dream
Oh my god. Lord of the Rings is a "pagan fantasy world"? Kill me now -- I can't take it any more. In the Corner Stanley Kurtz says this in an aside in a post about the possible decline of... [Read More]
Tracked on Dec 20, 2003 11:36:28 PM
Comments
I think this five-year old column from George Will is pretty much on target:
Christmas in America nowadays is largely an artifact of nonsectarian figures such as Charles Dickens, who poured a syrup of sentiment over the event, thereby making the fun of it accessible to all and offensive only to those who enjoy taking offense. This is one way a nation accommodates religious differences -- by allowing some religious matters to be treated as desacralized bits of the common culture.
Of course devout Christians don't necessarily forfeit Christmas to the general public, they just allow the public to gaze upon and enjoy the picturesque elements while they do the real thing on their knees. On balance, I'd guess that more souls have been transported from idle curiosity to true faith by lingering in this vestibule than have left the faith out of boredom or disgust with semi-secularized half measures. By analogy, I suspect the Holy See's toleration of heathen tourists trooping through St. Peter's has snared more converts than it has led pious Catholics into apostasy by sharing their worship space with unbelievers.
Posted by: PM at Dec 19, 2003 12:56:22 AM
Back east in very-blue Boston, lights abound. They go up even before Thanksgiving, and are down at New Years. It's been this way for over a decade. (Where I grew up outside NYC, lights went up in mid-Advent, and stayed up through Epiphany).
More telling to me among Catholics is how masses early on Christmas Eve are packed, and those of Christmas Day sometimes deserted. Families retain their feasting traditions at home, but getting Mass out of the way seems to be quite the order of business. Sigh.
Posted by: Liam at Dec 19, 2003 5:23:20 AM
I live in the American South, and I spend a lot of time in rural areas. My friends are rural people, Protestants, belonging to sects that we Catholics herabouts referred to as "crazy Protestants" when I was a kid.
Over the last 10 years or so I have been struck by the creeping Catholicism that has begun to appear. At Christmas time, in churches with no heat, they perform the Second Shepherd's Play from medieval England. Clapboard buildings that are barely more than houses now have stained glass--not the windows of Chartres--but still genuine folk expressions of devotion and celebration where once clear panes were de rigueur and Catholic sacramentals deemed bizarre if not horrifying distractions from The Word.
You see their pastors--often refugees from far away places like Sri Lanka--struggling with their flocks to think through moral issues now coming on to the scene like cloning, stem cell research, etc. They've no knowledge of brilliant theologians like Aquinas, how Catholics have over the centuries have trod these intellectual paths before them, but it is heartening to see the human spirit begin to emerge after being stifled in some ways by the old Protestant conviction that the human intellect was completely extinguished after the fall. The Catholic belief that it was dimmed but not plunged into utter darkness has taken hold.
And you'll play Hell finding people who still believe that we don't have free will.
The most effective defense of Catholicism that I heard during the height of the scandals was on a call in radio show. I was driving home from a hunting trip, and some mincing sophisticate (think of Tom Oliphant)was skewering the Church. Some pastor from The Gathered Apostolic Brotherhood of the Bloody Lamb (or some such) called in and in a determined, soft-spoken voice began by saying "No church that has lasted 2000 years and produced Mother Teresa and done so much good can be far from God." In the simplest language he went on to overwhelm the cheap shot artist. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both. Three cheers for whatever off-the-wall bible school he went to for a month. I wish I'd heard even one of our pasty-faced own get to the point the way that guy from the piney woods did.
The Puritans outlawed Christmas but their descendants who haven't oscillated towards Unitarianism seem more and more comfortable with the old Catholic spirit of it, and of lots of other things. The pro-life movement has brought strangers together. I don't call them crazy Protestants any more. As folks used to say in the old Army of Northern Virginia, "They'll do to tie to."
Posted by: George Lee at Dec 19, 2003 7:49:57 AM
It's off topic, but it is only fair for me to add that if there is creeping Catholicism in the American Protestant South, it often seems to be creeping out of our own churches.
I have absolutely no idea what the people in the pews with me believe. I just know that they all believe different things from me and from one another.
And I sho nuff know that everyone believed the same things in 1964.
Posted by: George Lee at Dec 19, 2003 8:10:38 AM
I'm also here in Blue Massachusetts, and while I can certainly find things to bemoan, I see plenty of evidence that the celebration of Christ's birth is still important to the people. When I lead our annual Christmas dinner distribution to the poor of the parish tomorrow, I'll have dozens of volunteeers...last Sunday I was in a packed St. Paul's, Cambridge, listening to a glorious concert by the Archdiocesan Boys Choir. Last night I listened to my 7th grader's public school choir sing Vivaldi's Gloria Deo in Excelsis. My neighborhood has tons of lights, wreaths, creche scenes and other decorations.
And yes, the Christmas Eve Masses at 4 pm and midnight will be more crowded than the 10 am on Christmas day...but that's the same as what happens at Easter, when the majority come out for the Vigil, and the day is more sparsely attended. But celebrating with Mass on the vigil of these two feasts is a looong standing tradition.
Christmas can be merry as well as Holy. Hope you all have one that is both.
Posted by: Steve Cavanaugh at Dec 19, 2003 8:54:28 AM
I pretty much agree with Amy. While Christmas continues its slow decline in modern culture, it is not plummeting, and I wonder if it ever was as pure a religious celebration of Christ's birth as some people think it must have been in an American golden age.
Indeed, I hear Christmas music all the time: radios in offices turned to All-Christmas radio stations, background music in department stores singing clearly about Christ being born to free us from sin.
We should continue to do what we can to “keep Christ in Christmas” in our own lives, both personal and public.
By the way, of course, I respectfully have to take issue with characterizing LOTR as a “pagan fantasy world.” First, there is no explicit religion – pagan or otherwise – in LOTR. Second, the Catholic underpinnings of Tolkien’s story are well-attested (several articles in the secular media have discussed this in the past few days).
Posted by: Gray Eminence at Dec 19, 2003 9:57:01 AM
I'm here in "Blue" New York -- in one of the "outer boroughs" as they say-- and lights and Nativity scenes on little plots of front lawn abound. I live in the diocese of Brooklyn and Queens...the so-called diocese of Churches, so we have a heavy Catholic population and heavy immigrant population. Churches are packed. God willing, we'll have more priests in the future. Mass is celebrated in a multiplicity of languages. Things aren't perfect, but Christmas seems to bring out the best in people here. I've heard more religious Christmas songs over the airwaves and piped through stores than in the past. In fact I was having a meal at a kosher restaurant last night and they were playing religious Christmas carols! God bless us every one!
Posted by: Marilyn at Dec 19, 2003 10:00:29 AM
I live in New Jersey and work in New York, and I can't say I agree with Mr. Kurtz. I see no decline in Christmas decorations. In some ways I think they are actually more opulent now than when I was younger, His argument seems to be that society is becoming more secular, and this has led to a decline in Christmas lights, Christmas lights, etc. As others have pointed out, however, the logic here is a little faulty because Christmas lights and Christmas TV shows (and movies) have always been very secular. I think that Buddhists, atheists, Hindus and Muslims have always celebrated the secular aspects of Christmas and will continue to do so.
Whether or not people view Christmas as a religious holiday, and whether their numbers are increasing or declining is a more difficult question, but I don't think that is what Kurtz was talking about.
Posted by: John P Sheridan at Dec 19, 2003 11:06:59 AM
"I think that Buddhists, atheists, Hindus and Muslims have always celebrated the secular aspects of Christmas and will continue to do so."
John, you definitely have a point, at least about American atheists. My father is a "devout" atheist, but he has always had a Christmas tree and lights. Even plays Christmas music at his house.
Posted by: Stacey at Dec 19, 2003 3:15:11 PM
Even if people aren't aware of it, the Light of Christ is reflected in the many lights at Christmas. The Truth is the Truth wherever we can find it and God peeps through.
Posted by: Jeanne Schmelzer at Dec 19, 2003 10:49:05 PM
Kurtz is right in one sense: Christmas is out in blue America, in in red America. My husband and I just returned to the East Coast from a round of visits to our many relatives in Southern California. In blue upscale Pasadena, where my mother lives, Christmas decorations are in severe decline. The main street, Colorado Boulevard, used to feature lamppost holly wreaths until the day after Christmas, when Rose Parade decor replaced them. Now, the lamp-post wreaths are gone, and the Rose Parade decor instead goes up right after Thanksgiving. I guess someone there actually read the words to "The Holly and the Ivy." No lights on many of the houses (a contrast to my childhood, when nearly every single front door sported a wreath. Blue America, of course, is the place that spawns those "I'm So Depressed at Christmas" and "Let's Not Exchange Gifts" essays you have to plough through in the newspaper every December. But in the red zones of Southern California (the far burbs, the high desert), what a difference: house after house and fence after fence outlined in colored lights! And Catholic customs are indeed seeping into Protestant households. All my husband's Prot aunts, uncles, and cousins had creches on display in their living rooms (indeed, multiple creches). Now it may be that many blues are procrastinators like me--haven't even shopped for a Christmas tree, yet, and I don't like to decorate too early, because it interferes with Advent. But don't count on it.
Posted by: Charlotte Allen at Dec 20, 2003 2:39:05 PM
