Christmas 2003: Saddam Hussein is captured from a pot-hole in which he'd been hiding and news media can't stop splashing his physical examination over the television for two weeks solid.
Christmas 2004: Massive tsunamis disrupt South East Asia, killing thousands and destroying homes, crops and animals.
Christmas 2005: Jane Creba is gunned down in Toronto's Yonge Street on Boxing Day, presumably in gang crossfire. 6 others are wounded.
Christmas 2006: Saddam Hussein is hanged by the neck until dead.
Christmas 2008: Rocket fire is exchanged between Israel and the Gaza strip; it's expected this will lead to a ground campaign.
Every year I go home for Christmas, it seems like the world is trying extra hard to throw up on itself. Granted, many terrible things happen outside of the Christmas season (Virgina Tech, Hurricane Katrina, the Oscars) and granted, militarily, fighting on Christmas Day or thereabouts is a common tactic (Holla at ya Pearl Harbour!) Gunfights and gang warfare do not stop just because the Whos in Whoville are holding hands. But instead of waiting in joyful expectation for the coming of Jesus, I just wring my hands in expectation of death waves and corporal punishments.
Could it be that these events are lessons to teach us about goodwill to our fellow humans? Civility and nobility and love and all that good stuff? If so, the good Father needs to step up his learnin' on humanity. If anyone paused in ripping the glittery paper off their new iPod or PS3, it was only to buy a shiny new HDTV to watch the misery roll in. If it was talked about at all around the dinner table, it was silenced by dessert and liqueurs or the occasional angry family member stalking off in disagreement.
Sometimes I think we self-censor in the interest of preserving the shiny ideal of secular Christmas, without poking at the livid underbelly of true Christianity. Don't rock the boat, and for god's sake, don't piss off Grandma; she's old and set in her ways. If the past few years are any indication that the secular joy comes at a great cost in humanity, we need look no further than Christ's own incarnation. The joy of a warm swaddled child smelling of milk and hay explodes in an orgy of blood and violence in only 30 short years. Life is nasty, brutish and short, but so sorry Hobbes, you're wrong, it cannot be solitary.
I had the pleasure this season to cook for some friends and the cream of the new church. Stressful as making your first turkey is, there was a certain joy to be had in preparing food for friends, knowing that each person around the table is cognizant of where the meal came from, who it can be attributed to, and that there are those out there who have neither friends nor food to stave off the cold loneliness.
In expectation of moving the baby Jesus into the nativity scene of choice, I think it's dishonest to just see the baby. With the infant comes the slaughter of the innocents. With the benevolent rabbi comes the crucified slave. With Christmas comes the world and all its horrors and responsibilities. It sets us our jobs for the year to come.
Comments (2)
If there are leasons to be learned, they're probably ever present every day, but ignored or overlooked. Seems silly to reserve an important lession for a day on the man-generated 365-day calandar. Blood on Xmas doesn't surprise me any more than Blood on any other day. I hadn't put death days together quite like you have, but seems like the whole middle east sees death all the time. The day almost seems coincidential. Gang violence is pretty farked up though.
I largely don't pay attention to Xmas. It's such a family/comercialised day that it's hard to enjoy it without the family involvment. Same story for Thanksgiving (and being Native doesn't really make that one appealing beyond the Turkey). So I tend to ignore media and related things durring Xmas season. The exception being Saddams' execution. I heard about that pretty post haste. It was hard to not notice the death of a man who was on Americas personal hit list.
But I digress. If there really is a lesson to be learned from all the bloodshed, lets hope the deathtoll doesn't get to high.
I agree with both points: horrific things happen year-round and that for most, Christmas is largely secularized and commercialized. I think this is why my rant turned into a point that for Christians (for whom Advent, the beginning of the Christmas season, is the New Year) we need to let Christmas set the stage for our year and be aware year-round of things like this.
The reasoning is different for secular humanists, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, and all others, but I think the end desire is the same: to assuage and slow the suffering of humanity.