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 urfing
the channels this weekend, I chanced upon the film of A Christmas
Carol. It was the recent version with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge,
and though it cannot quite match the classic 1949 Alastair Sim portrayal
(which is as perfect a film as Charles Dickens' book is a novel),
the story soon had me in its benevolent power. The tale of the grudging,
mean-spirited, sour, old miser who, much against his will, is given
the chance to repent by the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present,
and Future, and who discovers the deep joy of giving pleasure to
others, never fails to enchant — and also, in a thoroughly
wholesome way, to disturb.
For, all year
round we are torn between the Spirit of Christmas — generosity,
love, friendship, compassion — and the Spirit of Scrooge —
selfishness, egoism, narrowness, and cold calculation. There is
a never-ending competition between them for dominance over the souls
of even the best of us. And Scrooge wins more often than he should.
At Christmas,
however, the deck has traditionally been stacked against the Spirit
of Scrooge. Charles Dickens, aided by a whole host of allies from
the Three Wise Men to Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, overwhelms
us with evidence that we will be happier ourselves if we strive
to bring tidings of comfort and joy to others. And if the joyful
Christmases I remember from my childhood onwards are any guide,
this lesson is at least temporarily learned. Christmas is indeed
a kinder, gentler season.
Which makes
it all the more alarming that the Spirit of Scrooge is abroad in
the land seeking a hostile takeover of the Christmas message. Here
is a shortened list of recent outbreaks of the anti-Christmas Spirit
compiled by the Washington Times:
The county school board in Covington, Ga., deleted the word Christmas
from the school calendar after the American Civil Liberties Union
threatened legal action.
In Kensington, Md., the council banned Santa Claus from its annual
tree-lighting ceremony when two families complained that his presence
would make them uncomfortable.
Two middle-school students in Rochester, Minn., were disciplined
for wearing red and green scarves in a Christmas skit, and for ending
the skit by saying "We hope you all have a Merry Christmas."
Two ninth-graders in Plymouth, Mass., were told they could not create
Christmas cards that say "Merry Christmas" or depict a
nativity scene.
Many other
examples could be cited. Indeed, one website, vdare.com,
is running a competition for the most outrageous example of what
it calls "the War against Christmas." Latest dispatch
from the front? Ramsey county, Minn., has evicted the red poinsettias
(symbolizing Christmas), from the courthouse, replacing it first
with ribbons (representing "flags from around the world")
and then, after protests, with white poinsettias (representing nothing
in particular.)
These examples
are the sharp end of a general social trend. They are drawn from
places, such as schools and town councils, where officials have
the power to ban expressions of the Christmas spirit. Elsewhere
they rely on our conforming voluntarily to the recent etiquette
of either never mentioning Christmas or replacing it with some anodyne
substitute. Pittsburgh some years ago replaced Christmas with "the
Sparkle season." British towns have adopted "Winterval."
And "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings"
has replaced "Merry Christmas" on the cards of every ambitious
politician.
When objection
is made to these advances by Scrooge — and people are usually
too embarrassed to raise the matter openly — the usual reply
is that Christmas is a religious festival that leaves some people
feeling excluded: notably Jews and Muslims. To celebrate it too
loudly might be to cause some children psychological damage.
To that last
wrinkle, the distinguished Jewish theologian, Jacob Neusner, made
a very adequate reply some years ago: namely, that his sister seemed
to have escaped any serious psychological scar despite playing the
Virgin Mary in the school pageant for several years running. The
awkward fact must be faced that children may be more emotionally
robust than bureaucrats. But the larger argument fails too.
The sensible
response of religious minorities to the sight of Christians celebrating
the birth of Our Lord is surely to mark their own religious festivals
with equal enthusiasm. And, to a considerable extent, that is now
happening: Hannukah, Eid (the feast at the end of Ramadan), and
even the Afro-American nationalist holiday invented in 1966, Kwanzaa,
are celebrated by their devotees and increasingly promulgated to
the rest of society.
Nor need these
celebrations be held behind closed doors or hidden from children.
Indeed, the acceptance of different faiths and traditions is something
we should encourage generally, but especially in children. It is
part of any realistic upbringing. We all need to know that we can
disagree with each other without coming to blows-indeed that we
can join in each others' celebrations insofar as that is fitting.
That being
so, the majority of Americans who are Christian can reasonably ask
that their traditions too should be celebrated without their being
made to feel that they will thereby give offense to others. If Kwanzaa,
then Christmas-especially since most African-Americans are devout
Christians. And what makes this argument still more compelling is
that Christmas is both more and less than a religious festival.
Though it is second only to Easter in the Christian calendar, Christmas
has also been a secular cultural celebration of general good will
and fellowship throughout the West and the English-speaking world
since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. Severe Christians,
indeed, have sometimes objected to the commercial excesses of this
Yuletide. But its central message of good will embraced everyone
— including unbelievers and Scrooge. No one who offered a drink
to a non-Christian on Christmas morning had the covert intention
of converting him. He was simply loving his neighbor as himself.
But there is
a sense in which all this is beside the point. Behind these civil
justifications for the anti-Christmas movement, at least in some
cases, lie darker motives. There is an animus against Christmas
that has nothing to do with being sensitive towards those excluded
from its religious comforts. It is obscurely resented by those who
dislike the traditional beliefs and practices of their own society
— both religious and cultural — and who wish to uproot
them in their drive towards a more "rational" and consciously
constructed social order. Both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks sought
to replace Christmas with their own daft festivals — the Nazis
with a kind of pantheistic worship of winter itself, the Bolsheviks
with a Santa Claus impostor going under the chilly name of Father
Frost. And by their own lights they were quite correct. Christmas
stands squarely in the way of their own vile utopias because it
connects people with their families, with their own childhood, with
their country's past, with their civilization's beginnings, and
as Scrooge discovered, with their finest and most generous qualities.
That is why
people loved Christmas, still love it, and always will love it.
Attempts to make it a celebration of season or snow or mere meteorology
will fail — but there is a danger that they will succeed in
annoying most Americans to the point where they will wish others
a Merry Christmas not from merriment and kindness but as an act
of irritation, defiance and aggression.
And that really
would be the triumph of Scrooge.
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