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Holidays for the Rest of UsBy Merle Harton, Jr.Holidays for the rest of us. On January 1, we will have six holiday celebrations behind us—Thanksgiving, Festivus, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and the New Year—and not a single one of them is mandated by God or by Scripture. Two of them were made by men in our lifetime. What they all have in common is that each is able to satisfy a human spiritual need, to provide a cohesiveness or inclusiveness within a community, and to give continuity of past and present within traditions. My point here is that we should cease to cry out against the paganism of Christmas, stop fighting the commercialism of the holiday, and recognize that, while it exists at many social-spiritual levels, it is not in effect a religious festival at all: it is a time of giving (and, yes, of receiving) and the birth of Christ is really just a pretense for another party. Like celebrations of the New Year, Thanksgiving never was a religious festival: it is a pure American invention that uses the encounter between Native American Indians and European settlers as a reason for a dinner party every year. Festivus, well, that was a holiday invented by Seinfeld character Frank Castanza ("Festivus for the rest of us!") as a complete, purposeful alternative to Christmas. Falling on December 23rd every year, Festivus requires a bare aluminum pole, a "Festivus pole" rather than a tree, and includes among its mandated activities the "airing of grievances" (where you get to tell family and friends how they have disappointed you during the year) and "feats of strength" (the holiday doesn't get to end until the head of the family has been pinned down). Chanukah, or the Festival of Lights, is a Jewish memorial that celebrates both the victory of the Maccabees over Seleucid occupation of the Jerusalem Temple in 164 BC and the miracle of a cruse of oil that burned for an entire 8-day period. Kwanzaa, which runs from December 26 to January 1, was invented in the mid-1960s by Maulana Karenga as a cultural holiday—it has never pretended to be a religious festival—in celebration of seven principles found in the aggregate of black African culture: black unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. Festivus looks like the only standout as a totally made-up holiday, but there really is no cultural difference between Festivus and any of the others. At some point its genesis becomes irrelevant to the celebration and participation becomes more important than point of origin. Paul reminds us that our reality "is found in Christ" alone [Col 2:17]. "Therefore," he says, "do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration, or a Sabbath day" [Col 2:16]. The keeping of days is nothing more than a human invention, a mere "shadow" of man's longing for what God requires, and points not to substantive spiritual issues but rather to the black holes in culture, engendered by psychological emptiness and phantasms of the human mind. |
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"Holidays for the Rest of Us" |
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