December 24, 2003 -Christmas Eve

“We Need A Little Christmas”

There are some Broadway shows that I could watch or listen to the music from again and again. “Mame,” is one of them. Based on a novel by Patrick Dennis, the show carries a message that positive and open-minded attitudes can and do make a difference. I think every family has, or wishes they had, an Auntie Mame – the flamboyant, avant garde, don’t- worry- about-anything-just-keep-living, push the limits kind of person who makes life not only fun, but bearable….and keeps us in stories from year to year.

There’s a scene in the musical I particularly enjoy. After there’s been a reversal of fortune Auntie Mame decides that it’s not a time to be glum, but to celebrate – right now. So, in true Broadway fashion, they sing:

Haul out the holly
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again
Fill up the stocking
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now.
For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute
Candles in the window
Carols at the spinet

Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute
It hasn't snowed a single flurry
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry!
So climb down the chimney
Turn on the brightest string of light I've ever seen
Slice up the fruitcake
It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.

For I've grown a little leaner
Grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder
Grown a little older
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder
Need a little Christmas now!

For we need a little music
Need a little laughter
Need a little singing
Ringing through the rafter
And we need a little snappy
"Happy ever after"
Need a little Christmas now!

I suppose the charm of the song is in its longing for the familiar aspects of Christmas that make getting older – and even wiser perhaps – a little more palatable. With all the things that have gone on this year, including the ‘orange alert’ for the holidays, it seems that all of us have needed a little Christmas, right this very minute – and now it’s here.

As I have listened to the song, the words “right this very minute” seem to hold the key to understanding Christmas beyond its commercial/cultural trappings of presents, lights, parties, and all that goes with them. I know that the concept of “right this very minute” is hard to believe after having sat in traffic trying to get out of the mall three days before Christmas, but “this very minute” holds deeper meaning than simply getting on to the next thing I’ve got to get off my list. It reminds us that life is more than checking off all of the ‘to dos’ we’ve set for ourselves.

Time and again we’ve heard Luke’s words, “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manager; because there was no room for them in the inn.” We’ve also heard John’s,  “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” The stately language has become familiar to us, part of the Christmas scene, just as have phrases from “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” or Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Very few people forget that Tiny Tim said, “God bless us, everyone!” While commonplaces are good, it’s important for us to realize that there is more here than just the familiar.

Luke and John are describing more than the manger scene or a difficult metaphysical concept. They tell us that at that very minute – and every minute since – God is one with humankind. As long ago, right this very minute, God embraces humanity and wraps us with love.

Why do we not see it or experience it, as we should? It might be because we’ve heard the story so frequently that its perpetual newness can’t sink in. Perhaps, too, it’s because we have trouble focusing on the “this very minute”? Blaise Pascal record this in his Pensees:

Let each of us examine his thoughts. He will find them entirely occupied with the past and the future. The present is never our purpose. The past and the present are our means; only the future is our purpose. And so we never live, but rather hope to live and, since we are always getting ready to be happy, it is inevitable that we never actually are.

Though he wrote several hundred years ago, I think Pascal captures the problem of modern humanity – precisely because he captures the essence of the human condition. We’re either so preoccupied with analyzing, reliving, celebrating or regretting the past or planning, anticipating or fretting over the future, that we miss the joy of the present. We’re so busy thinking about how we’ve lived or we’re going to live that we don’t really live.

Christmas calls us to stop and realize that past and future are merged into God’s present moment. One author has even called it “the sacrament of the present moment,” because sacraments are a means of encounter. God speaks his Word into human flesh and time means nothing, for the whole of the human family is now brought into God’s life. John, bishop of Damascus, preached this reality to his people back in the sixth century:

The benevolent will of the Father united all things in his only-begotten Son. Man is already a microcosm who unites in himself all things visible and invisible. The Lord, whose good will created and governs all, determined that in his only-begotten consubstantial Son, divinity and humanity, and therewith all other created things, should be united, so that God might be all in all.

What he’s telling us is that in taking on our humanity, God has enabled us to share in his divinity. I suppose one could liken it to a version of “Trading Spaces” or an extreme makeover – God enters into our life in a wholly different way. Humanity is given a new dignity and all of life now carries the imprint of God’s blessing. We only perceive this if we seek to live in the now, to know the sacrament of the present moment.

So, we need a little Christmas, to remind us of the wonder that is humanity and the beauty of the world in which we live. Celebrate this wonderful gift of God by seeking to live in the present moment. Open the eyes of your mind and your heart to see the reality that Christ is born in you right this very minute. And though we may have “grown a little leaner/Grown a little colder/Grown a little sadder/Grown a little older,” if we can bring ourselves to see in this new way, the world takes on a very different look, because we are aware that God has been there through all that we have experienced. As to the holidays, I guarantee you even fruitcake will taste good and it will make spending time with the relatives far more agreeable because we realize what really counts – our relationship with God and with one another.

What God does for us in the Incarnation, the Enfleshment of the Word in Jesus the Christ, is to speak his Word into our lives and his peace into our hearts. The gift that God gives us is the gift of relationship, one could even think of it in terms of the “little angel sitting on my shoulder.”  God’s desire for us is to know that peace and to live the joy that is deep within us. To be successful, though, we must cooperate with God, and open ourselves to living in the now, in the present moment, and all of the risks that living in that manner entails. God opened himself to us, became one of us, so that we can share life with God and with one another – that’s a risk. In the same way, each of us is called to open ourselves to the risk of relationship, to loving as freely, as recklessly as God has loved us. “The happy ever after” most of us really need is found in that openness and it only comes when we quit analyzing it to death and just do it.

Perhaps that’s why the Letter to Titus reminds us that the “grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all people . . . to purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds”? When we take the risk of relationship, enter into God’s present moment it has an effect on the way we live. We approach people and situations differently than we did before, because our lives are connected with God’s life. The best Christmas gift we can give – and here I go being counter-cultural – isn’t a key to a car (no matter how artfully delivered). Rather, the best gift we can give is ourselves open to loving and caring as God would have us live. God glories in human beings living life to the full and the way we do that is by living in the “right this very minute,” seeing to the needs of others, and doing good.