[Another provocating offering from my Episcopalian/humanist friend…]

It’s Not Over Yet

Harry T. Cook

12/28/08

A Sermon for the Fourth Day of Christmas

One vexing thing about Christmas in America is that it effectively begins around November 1 and comes to a screeching halt when the 11 o’clock news comes on Christmas night.

In every elevator and shopping mall and on most every radio station, one can hear some rendition or another of “The 12 Days of Christmas” starting when the leaves are still on the trees but ending abruptly when the stores close on Christmas Eve — meaning that on not one of the actual 12 days of Christmas is one likely to hear “The 12 Days of Christmas.”

What’s more: a lot of my neighbors have discarded their denuded Christmas trees at the curb by midday on the 26th, having, of course, put them up while the remains of the Thanksgiving turkey were still being picked over. In the Christian calendar, Christmas begins at 12:00:01 a.m. on December 25 and ends at 11:59:59 p.m. January 5, giving way to the Feast of the Epiphany.

The good news is that Christmas, while it comes but once a year, lasts for most of two weeks. The bad news is that you have to endure 12 partridges in 12 pear trees, though only one day’s worth of 12 drummers drumming. Of all the industries in the world, our very own Michigan-bred one, besieged as it is, shuts down between Christmas and New Year’s. While I’m sure that paid holiday time was not awarded workers because of religious observance, it certainly is in keeping with what, at its best, is a time for family and friends. To have 12 days, more or less, to invest in people rather than machines is to put the focus on person and personhood. In its colorful mythology, Christianity has imagined its unseen deity expressing itself in human form — a hint perhaps to what may be of first importance in our part of the universe in the present epoch. While Christmas lights and decorations will soon enough come down and be stored in attic or basement for another 11 months, the snows of winter will eventually give way to spring and summer, the people who matter in each of our lives will remain, if they and we are lucky.

It may be the fanciful longing of mythology that the ground and source of being is eminently representable as human, but what the existence of the myth means is that human beings may actually think they are individually and collectively worth more than it may seem. Right there is the beginning of ethics and morality. (“As ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”)

My fellow creature is not an inanimate rock I can casually kick down the road, but, rather, a center of freedom and dignity meriting respect. That is the core religious meaning of this holiday season of which today — December 28 — is the fourth, with eight more to come.

So keep that tree up and trimmed into January. Play and sing those carols. Wish your neighbors and friends a merry Christmas for a few more days. Maybe not chucking out Christmas at the end of its first day would have a wondrous, humanizing effect upon us and our part of the world. Maybe it would afford some measure of “peace on Earth and mercy mild” in which the offended and the offender may be reconciled.

And, by the way, today’s gift is “four calling birds” to go with yesterday’s “three French hens,” Friday’s “two turtle doves” and Thursday’s “partridge in a pear tree.”

Enjoy!