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Christmas Eve 2013
Westminster United Church, Regina
Saturday, December 28, 2013
by Timothy W. Shire
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I feel privileged to have been able to attend the Christmas Eve service this year in Regina's Westminster United Church. Though I have since been back to the church one or two times since, I joined and sang with the choir in that church in 1962 as a first year college student. The sound of the organ is just as rich, perhaps richer than I remembered, but the atmosphere was far more than a nostalgia trip, it was a comfortable awareness of where we are in the here and now.

There was one other element of the past that enhanced the evening. Thirty-seven years ago I was principal of Imperial School in the Long Lake School Division and the choir director for Westminster United Church is the school division band director of the time, Tom Magnuson. His daughter, grand daughter and grandson are seen in the picture below and on the right, performing during the service.
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For more than an hour, we were immersed in the music, both from the choir and the carols we sang , scripture readings, a children's story and a sermon from the minister, Darrell Reine, all made the time pass in a warm pleasant flash.

The message was a contemporary consideration of the birth of Jesus Christ about 2013 years ago and how that event needs to be viewed, not as some fairy tale, but rather as a extremely serious matter for the mother, her fiancee and the new born child, in an unfamiliar town, without an ER and paramedics.

As I experienced the unfolding of the evening, I really wanted to share that experience with you, not because I thought it might be inspirational, but because now is the time to talk about the meaning of Christmas. There is no doubt in my mind that in the social, political, economic and spiritual context of now, the dying days of 2013, we really need to put all of what we have seen and experienced this Christmas, into perspective.

At Christmas each year, everywhere there are people who grew up as part of a Christian community and a substantial number who did not, truck out the old stories, dust them off and reboot their mythes for yet another year. This is not a harmful thing and since the beginning, which was a few hundred years after the birth of Christ, the church and its followers, added on some enhancements, some additional apps to round out the colour and complexity of what it is all about. This process has rolled right along, decade after decade, as new songs are created, whole new characters created and through it all, comes some surprising harmony. Santa Claus, elves, reindeer, snowmen and a kid with a drum, are only a few of the cast of extras. What's even more interesting is the process is a very long way from being over, as each new year will see more touching up of Christmas just like the ornaments on the German pagan Christmas tree seen all around the world at this time of the year.

This year, though not the first year for this to happen, but perhaps a bit more vocal than other years, people in North America are more than a bit unhappy with the scrubbing of the name by the commercial retail advertising world, to make "Happy Holidays." "Seasons Greeting." and other unrelated names to December 25th, which the American stores launch their main push for the year, on the Friday following the American Thanksgiving. Though all this seems uncomfortable, there is nothing wrong with digging in your heels and boisterously declaring, "Merry Christmas."

Throughout the twentieth century, songs have been churned out to secularise Christmas. They have been winter songs, playful songs about reindeer, snowmen, and falling in love in the snow, but many of them have stuck to the spirit of Christmas, as the society defines it. Interestingly enough, those wonderful songs were almost all written by Jewish song writers.

Now as you look back on what I have just said, you realise that all of what we consider Christmas to be about, is pretty much mythical, legendary and dynamic, growing and evolving with time. Alas, this is the morale of this story.

The primary fundamental question is this, what is the Christian religion and what do its followers believe? For the definitive answer to that question, just ask anybody, absolutely anybody and you will get that person's opinion and it will be just as valid as your priest, bishop or cardinal. You see, this is what you need to know. For something to last two thousand years, somewhere deep inside that matrix must be something that will adapt to the changes of time, something that will always be current and something that will always be alive.

You will recall, that the man on whom the religion was based, lived a very short life, was executed by Roman authorities with the support of the Hebrew religious leaders of the time. He is supposed to have taught some important things about living, with both man and the divine, and his believers are certain he ascended into heaven. All of that had a very big impression on his followers, but it was more than two hundred years before anyone got around to writing down the details. There is a good chance what was written was pretty much made up, just as all of the additions since then.

All of the world's great religions are dynamic, they are not frozen in the past, they are not based on facts, they live on and flourish as their succession of followers interpret what that faith means today, right now and tomorrow and tomorrow. Jn every religion, there are purist who advocate immutability, they see their religion as a dead thing frozen in time. You will have no problem finding such groups in Islam and in fundamentalist Christians. For them, all interpretation is inadmissible and all who oppose them are heretics and blaspheming infidels.

There was a lot of noise from American media this year when a woman journalist on Fox proclaimed what she assumed everyone knew, that Jesus was "white". She came to this conclusion when pointing out that Santa Claus was "White." Alas this unfortunate lady belongs on Fox because Santa Claus, as we know him, is the creation of an advertising promotion by Coca Cola and only his name has any connection with the Turkish, and definitely brown skinned St. Nicholas. As for Jesus being white, that is really interesting. As you will recall, I mentioned that all along through history, there have been additions to the Christmas story. Well when it came to creating a visual aid, a painting to represent the likeness of Jesus, the religion was firmly established in northern Europe and with nothing to go on, the convention became to portray the man with fair hair, fair skin and blue eyes. They decided to make him movie star tall and had he actually looked like that in Galilee, I am pretty certain he would be consider an alien and definitely not a semantic man, an Arab.

What is the nature of modern day Christianity? It is a very pluralistic group and even with careful analysis you might find it very difficult to find common primary elements among the various groups. One of the largest organised segments of Christianity is the Roman Catholic Church based in Rome Italy. This past year they elected a new pope with the hope that he would take the church in a new and continuing positive direction. The cardinals who elected him, are what might be called conservative and so, they selected a priest from the Franciscan brotherhood assuming that he would be a hard liner on the burning issues of today. The man is perfect for one of the world's biggest religions. He is adaptive and brings with him into office, his background and determination to see the church go forward. Republicans in the United States are shocked by his pronouncements and refer to him as a "communist." Of course that really is not a bad thing since it is pretty clear American Republicans have no real understanding of Christianity or Communism, so being condemned by them is actually pretty positive.

The dynamic nature of a successful religion came to mind when I read over a story that appeared on Public Radio International's web site entitled: "What do you preach to a church full of Jews on Christmas?"

Christmas is only partly over for this year, as the Greek Orthodox portion of Christendom will celebrate on January 7 in keeping with the Gregorian calendar, which means that the cherished rituals and traditions of Eastern Catholics will be performed once more from Winnipeg to Edmonton and all points along the former Grand Trunk rail line where people from Eastern Europe settled and continue living in their tradition to the present day and beyond.

Christians, Muslims and Jews do not roll themselves up in the dogma of the past, but put into practice what they consider the concepts to live by. They practice what they preach, they are part of a living religion that affects their social conduct, their political beliefs and how that plays out is what it is, not what it was, this, right now, is the living experience, with which they define how and what they are.