It’s that time of year again. Not only to celebrate Christmas, but to drag out and start grinding again those old battleaxes about its true meaning.
Should Christians say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays”?
Does all our shopping crowd out of our minds the most important gift of all?
Should there even be mention of Christmas yet, since it is still Advent for crying out loud!?
All these messages and more will no doubt make an appearance this year, making sure that Christ’s faithful (and anyone else who might be listening in) don’t forget what all this cheeriness is supposed to be about.
Unfortunately, they also too often betray a scarcity of precisely that spirit which is supposed to characterize all our celebrating. In other words, as delivered from the pens of many “true Christmas” pundits, it would seem that Christ came not simply to bring joy to the world but additionally a giant “bah humbug” against any happiness that is less than explicitly Christian.
True, there is a fine line to walk here. A confessing Christian will not want to omit the “Christ” from Christmas any more than a Catholic Christian will want to omit the “Mass.” At the same time, our more militant members of the ecclesia militans may risk marginalizing one of the core components of the Christmas message: namely, peace on earth not merely among the already-believing, but upon all those of goodwill upon whom God’s favour also rests.
So, for instance, when we turn to a movie like the recent Netflix seasonal release Klaus, which claims to be about Christmas but does not speak a syllable about Jesus Christ, there may be some persons among us (and some little silent part inside the rest of us) who are tempted to call such a “secularized” depiction a distraction, if not a detraction, from true Christmas.
But is it?
At one level, Klaus certainly tells an untraditional kind of Christmas story. Focusing upon a selfish yet motivated postman who partners with a generous yet reclusive woodsman to deliver toys to the children of a feud-divided city, the film offers a fictitious historical origin story for the popular legends surrounding Santa Claus.
For example, the North Pole becomes a remote region of the sub-Arctic, the reindeer only “fly” because a half-sleeping child sees the sleigh momentarily airborne after hitting a ramp, and the donkey work of climbing down sooty smokestacks gets delegated from the massive toymaker to the much skinnier, and comic-mishap-prone, postal worker.
The tone of the film is good-natured, the animation amusing, and rather than aiming merely to “demythologize” the legend, the emphasis falls upon the real world transformational power of generosity. “A truly selfless act always sparks another” is the film’s repeated, big-picture philosophical takeaway.
And while this maxim may sound rather unspecific, arguably it does express in an optimistic register something of what Christians believe that first miraculous gift was all about.
All well and good, our inner humbug might grumble. But a truly Christian Christmas encompasses much more than such generic generosity and the giving of any old gifts. Moreover, where this film invents a fictional history for Santa Claus, Christian tradition can supply an actual history: that same Nicolas who lived in fourth-century Asia Minor, actually gave secret gifts to real historical persons, and was so conformed in his conduct to Jesus Christ that the Church calls him a saint.
Surely, it might seem, for Christians, this actual history offers the basis for a better, truer, more meritorious sort of story?
It may well do so. On the other hand, this might not be the only Christmas story worth telling.
Traditionally Christmas was celebrated for the 12 days following Dec. 25 (not, like many of our contemporaries, for the 60-odd days following Halloween), and in ages past the long, dark nights of these short, cold festal days were often occasions specially set aside for storytelling – Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, for instance, is testimony to this tradition.
Perhaps this year, after the ritual recitations of the Christmas Gospel and St. Nicolas’ story, and the rewatchings of White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life, you and your loved ones will find a night or two left over to enjoy a new story. If so, consider Klaus.
Standing alone on its own two feet, it might not seem very obviously Christian. But taken up and swept along in the merry movements of the season, you just might find it not only fits in, but even accentuates that special mood in which we no longer look out with suspicion upon a wintry world, but fling open the doors and exude the warmth that encourages the stranger in.