Holy day or holiday? Xmas is now the spiritual ticket to unholy cheer

There is a perception that Christmas is a holy day. But all is not well about the “holy” expectation. Something is wanting. If you want to know the impact of Christmas, ask the butcher, the matatu driver, supermarket operator, banker, or prostitute. Ask the bartender. The bartender has a way bigger congregation and is way busier on this holy day than the priest. She is at the center of the action.

She will tell you the crates of beer they have sold is greater than any other time in the year. She will tell you they had to force people to leave, because it was way past closing time. She will tell you that many slept at the bar, lying prostrate in the presence of liquor and woke up to some bottles of beer to sober them up.

If the spirituality of the country – the impact of the church – was to be measured by the behaviour of people during this holy day, then the spiral is downhill. The church is closed and the security firm is left in charge to guard the holy place on this holy day. The priest puts on sunglasses and hits the beach and Christmas goes on just fine. The holy day is a holiday! Even if churches were closed on Christmas day, Christmas would still go on because Christmas is not driven by the church. 

Christmas was long taken over. You just need to open a December newspaper and see the Christmas advertising for sales, special offers, extended hours of operation and spiced up hedonistic spots – then you will know who drives the season. You will find a half-page advert from a politician with a Christmas well wish to all Christians – read voters!. The biggest Christmas billboards are by manufacturers and service providers – pointing people to their Christmas offers. You will not see churches taking up prime advertisement slots calling up people to their Christmas offers. It is a high day served with low power. The result is invisibility. 

One key dilemma that Christianity faces is the trap of symbolism. While the story of the birth of Christ was real, over time it has been frozen into a romantic nativity scene. The dramatic experiences of that night in Bethlehem are tamed and the characters made to look like fiction.

The church is unable to unfreeze and enliven these characters to speak to the realities of the present. While scientific laboratories produce real cures for Covid, Christmas does a repeat of a symbolic display. They are supposed to mediate salvation. While Christmas is described as “the greatest story ever told” the inability to enliven this story chokes its greatness. There may be a wonder in symbols but what the world needs is a conversion of those symbols into actionable power.  This is where demand for a sign is valid. But the church seems lost in translation and transmission.

Parables have their place – but some instances need demonstrations of practical power. The salvation Christ intends cannot be symbolic. The church in some ways has become too mysterious that it has become a mystery even to itself. 

Being lost in mystery has the effect of making the church look either too self-involved and disinterested in world questions or unable to decode its message into evidence that can be beheld and touched. This exposes the church as cosmetic and abstract. The question of authenticity makes it disappear from the list of go-to institutions for solutions facing the community.  Such sluggishness and cluelessness contradict the manifestations in the scriptures where seas part deliverances and even a virgin is found with child!

There is a danger of overemphasizing Jesus as a baby. Underplaying the mysterious virgin conception drains away a lot from the Christmas moment. This mind-boggling reality is covered by a baby in swaddling clothes. This baby is helpless and needs full attention. The overplayed toddler’s helplessness does not rattle the matured evil that chains the community. This baby has no whip. All is bright. All is calm. Born on a perfect night! Christmas dances around a narrative that is stripped of all disruptive aspects. The child is rocked by the mother and has no intent to rock the world. The people consume the scene with a baby feeling, seeing more of how the baby needs them! But what if the Church re-engineered the Christmas narrative to emphasize not only the baby Jesus but also tie it to the lives Christ birthed? Jesus was in the business of making stories new. He was born to midwife the birth of others. He gave many people opportunities to begin again. He made the impossible possible. What was normal in His nature was a miracle for the community. From this perspective, such accounts as that of Legion – the demon-possessed man - would make it to Christmas! The thirsty woman who “drank” Jesus at the well would make it to Christmas too!

Exorcising demons and saving of prostitutes are unlikely to be plays acted out by children on Christmas eve. Some of the stories would make perfect horror movie scripts. But such is the confrontation the community needs. It exposes the resident evil in our communities. At the same time, it refreshes the community by pointing all to the existence of a spiritual resource that delivers new narratives to persons and communities. This way, Christmas would empower people with righteous anger and raise a choir of valor that sets out to drown out the voice of evil that want to claim the earth.  But not all is dull. The family is a big Christmas winner. Something in Christmas provokes a sense of home more than any other holiday. Congestion in transport termini. Heavy traffic in travel websites. Determination to pay high prices for a ticket to be with family.  Fully booked resorts. Christmas invokes an admirable family force.

People from the city go home to impress the village. The village economy experiences a vibrancy unseen in prior months. Distanced kin reconnect and tell exaggerated stories around the village fire. Parents and grandparents are revived as they show-off their children to confirm to the village that they have people too! Rented cars roar in the village inspiring images of things hoped for. In it all, the village is happy. The village that sleeps early extends its hours more into the night, extensions whose yield will come crying nine months later hopeful that in three months, the December visitors will come bearing love.   

Jesus did not come because things were right. He came because things had gone wrong - so wrong that they demanded the Creator’s intervention. Christmas tells that our messes are open to God. But He refuses to sadistically sentence us. Instead, he points us to transformation. The Christmas season ushers in God’s grace in that God so loved the world that He came. He came to give Himself to all. The indiscriminate nature Of God’s embrace is incomparable. This intensive and inclusive generosity that flows from God’s core is a testimony to His love. Sadly Christmas is increasingly a spiritual ticket to unspiritual festivities. To re-awaken its spiritual sense, Christmas is badly in need of sanitisation.

Reverend Buri is a PCEA theologian and founder, the Institute of Ethics and Youth Affairs