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December 2000 Sermons
December 3, 2000 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanDecember 3, 2000It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Macys: Holidays = CommerceIs there anyone in this room who has not bought a gift or is there anyone who does not plan to buy a gift for the holidays this month? (You do not have to identify yourself. Although I may want to talk to you for my service week after next on miracles.) I would be very surprised if even one of our number here would go through the holidays without making even one purchase related directly to Hanukah or Christmas or New Year’s Eve. And in spite of everything we say to the contrary, we would be sorely disappointed if tomorrow all the trappings of the holidays were to disappear and we would find the stores and the malls to be as ordinary as the month of August which is the one month with no national or mainstream holidays. We have to own it whether we like it or not, but the fact is: We are the reason for the commercial holiday season. The issues at hand for most of us are not that we do not want any expression of the holidays, rather, that we do not want these displays to start before the leaves fall or before Halloween and Thanksgiving get their fair share of our holiday attention. Most of us are sick to death of the commercial approach to Christmas and Hanukah by the time these holidays arrive precisely because it goes on ad nauseum from, these days, the end of August through the end of December. That is over one-quarter of the year. We have far, far too much, and it rightfully puts us out of joint for what it is we truly want to experience at these festive times of the year. So, we do have reason to complain. I have to confess a protest I made at the end of August when I was walking through one of the large department stores at the Christiana Mall. I was wandering around aimlessly looking for a birthday gift when to my surprise I heard the strains of "Have a holly, jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year . . ." in the well-known voice of Burl Ives, so I followed the sound around the corner, and there was a foot tall red-velvet clad Santa figure, wiggling his posterior, and singing the rollicking lyrics just mentioned. As I said, it was a hot day in August, and I felt completely disgusted since this is the first time in my recollection I had seen Christmas displays out in August, although, as with most of you, I have become used to them showing up in September and October. Anyway, I had to take action, so I just casually—but deliberately--walked over and turned him off! Then I left the store. I wasn’t any too sure I wasn’t breaking the law. Can’t you see the headline in the News Journal: Minister arrested for stopping Santa!" I am in complete sympathy with all of you who feel that the holidays have become too commercial, but I want to offer an alternative position for us to consider, which is that it really is not the essential commercial aspects we are most frustrated by, but the length of time that the process seems to keep stretching. Further, the fact is holidays equal commerce. Commercialism, though, is not primarily the irritant we perceive it to be, but a necessary part of what you and I have sought out, as representations of hundreds of generations of spiritually-directed humanity. There can be no argument that August is too early to hear Christmas music and see Christmas displays. What I hear from most people is that they would like to see Christmas decorations and displays appear as they did in my childhood, right after Thanksgiving. That seems respectable to most of us. The question is why? And the follow-up question is what can we or do we want to do about it? Most of us have been profoundly affected by the 20th Century movie screen depictions of the holidays. My favorite continues to be "Holiday Inn" with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney. The popular tune, indeed now part of the traditional music of the holidays, is the song "White Christmas," which was written for that movie. Another song, probably first heard in one of the Christmas movies of the 1940’s, and one I have heard all my life at this time of the year, is the song that contains the line (which may also be the title): "It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere I go . . . ." Both of these songs conjure up for me, and millions of Americans, the ideal picture of the holidays. Within this picture there is snow on the ground, lighted displays in store windows, Christmas trees in tree-lots, people bundled up in our Northern Hemisphere fashion, all the images most of us who grew up in this country have seen in books, magazines, movies, television for the better part of this last century. All of this, my friends, comes by way of the commercial enterprises we claim to hate. The truth is that the majority of us feel in equal measures both love and hate, for we forget or selectively remember (my bugabear) that we like as much as we dislike these things that make the holidays the holidays. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas for me, mostly because I go to the stores in the first place. It’s a little bit like the woman who was walking across a parking lot after a spell of holiday shopping, when she saw a driverless car rolling rapidly towards her. With unusual agility, she tossed her parcels aside, shouted for women and children to clear the way, opened the door of the moving car, got in and pulled up the emergency brake. As she got out, a man with his sleeves rolled up came around to the door, among the fast-gathering crowd. "Well, I stopped the car! She said with relief, tinged with pride. "I know, " the man replied, "I was pushing it!" From my perspective, what we are feeling most these days is that it is not beginning to feel a lot like Christmas or Hanukah or New Years; rather, it is beginning to feel a lot like Macys and Kmart and Sears and all the other major stores who have tried mightily to outdo one another in the great race for our holiday dollars. And, why? Because holiday spending means big profits for the shops of all sizes--holidays equal commerce. What may surprise you, though, is that they always have. (By the way, have you noticed that there is almost nothing offered this year to mark the true millennium change according to our Gregorian calendar? Since we are not changing from19 to 20, in the physical markings of the calendar, and there is not so much to jazz up the idea of change. The millennium was, to all intents and purposes, purloined by the marketing interests for the year 1999, rather than the accurate year 2000 moving into 2001. I am, for one, not the least bothered by this, only surprised that both years did not warrant some commercial attention. I am celebrating again this year, too! The makers of champagne are still pumping out the wonderful stuff this year.) I suppose we could dump all this grumbling at the feet of the so-called Wise Men, who brought the valuable gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh to honor the new born Christ; at least that is how the story goes. But the fact remains that this practice of gift-giving, of commercial interests tied up with the holidays has much older roots. Through out the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament and in other holy scriptures of the world’s religions, plus the various other sorts of documentation of history, are the record of many festivals that depict a tradition of giving gifts of fruit and grain, gold and precious unguents like myrrh, flowers, money, and so on. The whole realm of sacrificial giving, of killing bullocks, lambs and kids (of the goat variety), and—horror of horrors—children, as well young male and female virgins, all the realm of giving to some named or unnamed deities. Giving, sacrificing as giving, had to do with honoring that god or goddess or the larger spirit world. I have read of no culture that excludes the practice of gift-giving in some fashion that is sacrificial, as was the long trip of the Wise Men to lay their gifts before the new-born king of song and story. Out of the simple gifts that in early days could be picked from the garden or taken from the field, but gifts of value nonetheless, eventually rose up the need for someone to provide those elements to those who lived in cities and in places where the practices traveled yet the traditional items for sacrifice and gifts where not available. So commerce arose to meet these needs. That we all have gotten carried away at times by our gift-giving, our sacrificing, cannot to be laid at the feet of commerce. If we didn’t buy their products, they would soon quit trying to sell them. In my Thanksgiving sermon, I related the Rev. Peter Gomes’ idea that we, you and I, are responsible for "redeeming Thanksgiving from the Pilgrims." And, here again, you and I are responsible for redeeming the holidays, Hanukah and Christmas and Kwanza and any other holiday or any other special day from whatever it is we perceive to be negative. That is the on-going message of Unitarian Universalism. We are the agents of our meaningful lives, and it is up to us to find what we need and dismiss what we do not like, or find a way to fix the problem if there is one that needs fixing. In the Nathaniel Branden reading from The Art of Living Consciously, he states: "Whoever continually strives to achieve a clearer and clearer vision of reality and our place in it—whoever is pulled forward by a passion for such clarity—is . . . leading a spiritual life." Part of our problem, that is, part of the problem of our modern American human condition, is that we quickly fall in line with the complaints and the complainers. I have been amused, and sometimes angered, in the last few weeks following the election, at how one group, one side, or the other starts parroting the same messages. Regardless of whether they are true or not. Truth, or examining how each of us would feel if put into the position of one or the other candidate, seems to be less important than trying to establish some perceived higher-ground. And I say "perceived," for not until this whole affair is over and the pundits have trailed off in various directions, will we know anything close to what is true. All I know is that if votes were dollars, we would never suggest that the banks should keep deposits put into our different accounts, just because of sloppy accounting procedures or that the end of the fiscal year was approaching and they needed to close their books. We would want every dollar accounted for. We as Unitarians have to live and account for every day of our lives out of our own substance and merit and judgment. We will not like everything we see and hear, nor everything we do or is done to us. Yet, we cannot put the responsibility for finding the right path, the clearer vision on to some other person, group, deity. The holidays are about lifting up things we think are important. We do not have to believe in Jesus Christ the Savior, or the Miracles of the Maccabees in order to do this, because we see that celebrating with family and friends is celebrating family and friends and that what is most important. That, and creating a little magic in life, especially for our children, for we know that there is a very narrow window for innocence and the belief that toys and goodies can just appear. No doubt you have seen like I have, that as people grow older and there are no small children in the house, the larger, commercial aspects of the holidays become less important. What becomes more important are the gatherings and the celebratory dinners, and, of course, attending special services. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that a great deal of the commercial part of Christmas that becomes so irksome to us has to do with our own excesses. In many ways, we are still reacting as a country to the Depression of the 1930s when so many of our parents and grand-parents felt the great poverty and want that stamped them for life. The prosperity of the post-war years saw our country able to provide better salaries and benefits, and that generation most affected by the years of struggle wanted their children, you and me, to have what they did not, and that has led to bigger and better everything. Not just the holidays. Try to buy a normal size portion of food these days. I used to be perfectly satisfied with a regular hamburger that is nowadays barely mentioned on the menus of the cafés and burger joints of the land. Everything is quarter-pound, double or triple bacon, three-cheese jumbo burger, with a biggie or jumbo side of French fries and a drink you could swim in. I never go out to eat that I don’t bring half of it home with me for another meal. What I would really like is for them to make smaller portions and charge me less. Yet, I keep eating hamburgers and going to restaurants. Is it the restaurants responsibility if I eat too much? I can either stay home to eat, which I do most of the time, or eat less. The truth is that people who have something to sell will use every legal, available means to sell it. To the extent that they go over the line, we have laws and advocacy to put a halt to it. I rarely have time for regular TV watching since evening meetings are a big part of ministry, and I have no small children at home, and the TV is used mainly to view movies my husband and I buy or rent. This last week, we were visiting relatives who watch a lot of TV, and I was struck by the 7-8 commercials for food that interrupted the programs every 7-8 minutes. No wonder we eat too much when we watch television, and of course, none of the food was whole-grain, low-fat, high fiber, no sugar, which is what most of us ought to be eating, but mostly junk. But that is what sells. And it is what sells which brings the programs on commercial television. And neither would happen if people like us did not watch and buy. Some one in this congregation once said to me that she would not be buying any more clothes for the rest of her life, at least not better clothing, for during her professional life she had acquired enough suits and dresses of good quality to last her the rest of her life now that she has retired. What a novel idea, what a novel way of thinking. I have enough, she was saying. How often do we say to ourselves, I have enough? My children have enough. My pets have enough. My house has enough. Most of us have enough of nearly everything. The only things I can never have enough of, and the only things you can never have enough of, is love, caring and understanding. Back to Branden, who wrote: " Authentic spirituality is reflected in how one lives and how one experiences existence, not in what one professes to believe . . . " All of which is to say, it is okay if you want to go to excess for yourself and for your children, as long as you understand why you do it, and the ramifications of that excess. The same goes for declining to participate in the commercial aspects of the holidays. There are lessons to be learned all around. Wendell Berry is one of my favorite writers, a man who attempts to live the simple life on a working farm in Kentucky. Yet, he created quite a furor over an article he wrote for a major magazine in which he laid out his moral reasoning behind not buying a computer. The main grief he got had to do with the fact that he said his wife types out his handwritten text on a standard, that is, non-electric typewriter. All of this was in the context of living more simply, not using plastics, and the whole nine-yards of consumer culture that suggests that because we have computers, all writers should have one, etc. I believe he would have garnered a lot less grief and a lot more praise if he had owned up to the fact that even as simply as he lives, he does not live outside the world of commerce and its problems. There have to be people who make non-electric typewriters, as well as continue to make parts and ribbons for that machine his wife uses. There have to be people who make paper, a nasty and environmentally objectionable enterprise if ever there was one (and my daughter works in that industry). There have to be people to put the magazines and articles together, transport them across the land, and stores in which they are sold. Or I would never be able to read what he writes. And for each aspect of his life, and your life, and my life, the same holds true. We have commerce because it makes communal life possible. No one lives a completely simple life that does not impact the planet. What he was trying to say is that he wants to impact the planet less, to use less, to keep things longer, all of which is laudable. But life is made up of the sublime and the ridiculous, and to a great extent, regardless of culture, but especially in this one, we choose where we will fall along the line of that continuum. I really want there to be stores like Macy’s with decorations and music to make the year feel festive and gay and joyful. I really want there to be an excuse for doing special things for and with special people. I really want there to be people who grow things like poinsettias to make a darkening world bright with color, and people who cook and sew and manufacture things that I can buy for gifts for people I love. I just have a notion that I would like it better if everyone waited until thirty days before any given holiday to start making the big advertising push. And, pu-leez, no more inventing holidays for card and flower and candy giving. A few years ago someone started Secretary’s Day, which seemed a nice thing, to honor a corps of hard-working, often under-paid people, and this year I heard there was Boss’ Day—give me a break. Does that mean I have to buy all of you a bunch of flowers! Peter Fleck, the great Unitarian lay minister once wrote that we need all this holiday folderol to help us stop and take notice of life and how we live it. These times, commercialism included, help us to remember that we have people we want to make feel special, and take time to enjoy their company. Sure, we probably should find ways to do this all year long, but we would not want this approach but occasionally. That is the major part of ritual and festivity, the occasionality. Our struggle any given day is to be the best man or woman we can, the holidays can give us a helping hand in the process. So if we feel grouchy about certain parts of these days in December, remember it is a learning opportunity, a chance to grow spiritually, if we take the time to examine those feelings. You and I are meaning-making beings, and the up side and the down side of that exercise is tested every time we go through a day. May each day, especially each holiday, be a time of testing. We will each be the better for it. So be it. December 24, 2000 SermonRev. Nancy D. DeanChristmas Eve 2000It came Upon a Midnight ClearPart 1- How long had it been since she had seen him? Twelve months, though it surely seemed much longer. The war has been thought to be short, but he was writing that there would certainly be many more months before it would all be done. "Pray for me," he wrote. "Pray for me," she responded, and "We both shall pray for our three small children. Let us pray they never see a war." She stood on the porch step looking at the black night sky, clear of all clouds and mist, with each star standing in sharp relief from the empty space between them. Inside the children were all abed, and so was her mother and grandmother to him who was away at some nameless battle on this sharp cold night. And could it be that now he, too, looking up at the stars thinking of her? She had a tune in her head, a song from what now seemed the long ago the days of her youth, a religious song of hope and a message about peace on earth and good will to all men. How glorious it would be, she thought, if the savior, a savior, could come now and stop this awful warring. Stop the battles and then the soldiers could all come home. Then the father of her children would be back on the land of their birth, working and eating and praying with his family gathered all around him. That… that would be the most wonderful thing of all. Turning round to the west she glimpsed a falling star. An omen for good luck, so she played the game, the wishing and twirling round three times. She turned her gaze toward the north and for a moment struggled to find the red star, the North Star, the patient, unwavering star that can always be found to guide the lost. She then looked south to find Orion, the belt of three stars, and nearer still the Pleiades. Old favorites, these stars: something dependable when so little else seemed to be. The stars she realized were the same for her as for the people of two thousand years before. Had Mary looked up at the stars while holding her newborn son in that rough manger on the edge of Bethlehem this day so long ago? Part 2 - She had come with her husband to this wild land, a frightening place compared with the old home of her young life in the town back east. They had hopes of better things, of land of their own, something to work and improve. A place to strive; a place to make a better life for themselves and then pass on to their own children one day. They had worked hard, clearing the land, building a cabin that eventually became a home. Then the babies began to come, and of them three survived and now thrived in the western land that was so far from their native Massachusetts. Here the skies seemed to be down close, almost on top of one. The stars were ever so much brighter than they seemed in her old home of Wayland. She knew that they lived now on higher ground, how much higher she did not know. Some said it was nearly a mile high in the valley to the west of this spot at the edge of the plains. The mountains were a sight to behold; greater than anything she had ever imagined though they were far in the distance. Snow was always on the highest peaks, even in the hottest summers. Now, in the winter, it was snowy all around their modest home. Worse yet to come in this windswept land, that was certain, and no man to keep the pathways clear to the barn, or bring in the wood and carry the heavy pails of water and milk. Three women, one elderly, but all working to keep the place going, and wondering every day if they could do it if he was gone much longer. And it was hard to keep from thinking the worst. What if he did not come home? Could they stay, should they pack up and return to Massachusetts? Could they even do that? It was all too frightening to consider. She was beginning to feel the cold, although the evening was still and not so cold as it had been. Gazing up at the skies helped her feel closer to her husband. She would sometimes sit with her children on the grass in the summer and tell them to look skyward for their father would look skyward too, so they might be looking at the same stars at the same time. She would try to sing to them songs that their father had sung to them when they all gathered after supper on the front porch when the weather was fine. He had a good deep voice. That was how she first knew him. Singing in the choir at home. She was not much of a singer herself, but loved to hear him sing. It was he who first told her that the Reverend Sears has written a song for Christmas, and they had sung it down in Quincy at the church only the year before. The Wayland church choir was singing it that year, and she had been awed by the beauty of the melody and the powerful words of peace and hope. How did it go? she wondered, trying to recapture the words. Da, da, da, da , the tune was elusive in her thoughts, and the words stayed away, which was too bad, for she needed them now more than ever. The thing that made her feel so sad, was that she felt so angry most of the time. He did not have to go off to war, for they were in the territories, well out of it, but he had gone because it was the right thing to do, he said. It was well-known that the Rev. Sears, though dead now, but still holding a powerful place in the heart of her man, had been an advocate of abolition, all the Unitarians were it seemed. Most everyone in the north felt slavery was wrong, an evil, but few wished to get embroiled in the abolition battles that had begun around Boston and across various parts of the country during those years. Then Lincoln got elected, he had certainly been a controversial choice, and more of the southern states decided to join the secessionist movement, so war was bound to happen, and it did. Lincoln, had quoted the Bible, about a house divided against itself cannot stand. Her husband’s brothers were called up, and then nothing would stop him, but that he too should go back and fight along side them. Slavery was evil, a sin against humanity, he told her. How can I stay here when I am needed there. She would never question his motives, but what about their family here on this lonely homestead, his obligation to them? The wind blew in from the north and lifted her shawl. She tugged it tighter to her chest and gazed a million miles up, straining her neck as she looked high above her at some trapezoid of stars she could not name. The stars are faithful, and music too. Oh, how does that song go? Da-da, da-da-da . . . something about angels bending near the earth. Oh, if only they would. Would that they would touch the warring world. Would that he would be home, with peace on earth and all good will the birthright of every one. Part 3- She could not remember exactly when she had first allowed her gaze to wander to the young man in the choir loft. His voice was strong and often rose above the other voices in solo parts. They always sat in their family pew in the First Parish Church of Wayland. The ancient Rev. Mr. Sears was famous in eastern Massachusetts, for he was a fine preacher, and himself possessed a grand voice. He wrote music to express his religious views, growing more and changing more as the times were changing. He was very modern, eclipsing most of his congregation, but it was to be expected of men of books. She did not understand half of what he said, but then she did not listen to two-thirds, as her husband would later point out. He was fond of the great preacher, and had learned to respect his views on philosophy and social policies in particular. He would have liked to go to Harvard and studied for the ministry, but, alas, there was no money for the fifth son of a farmer. There was no choice but that he should strike out on his own and find a way to make a living. Education was for the well-to-do. He would have to learn what he could on his own. The old minister had often leant him books, and he deeply treasured a Jefferson Bible left to him when the good Rev. Sears had passed away. He loved the music of their church as well, and daily could be heard singing snippets of one hymn or another. She saw him in her mind’s eye, standing in the First Parish Meeting House, in his well-brushed black suit, the collar so stiff it would leave a red rash from the starch. He seemed almost an angel himself as he sang. It was at Christmas, she remembered now, and he was singing with the choir that hymn. She was very young at the time, her hair still flowing down her back, not pinned up yet as a young lady would wear. He was seven years her senior. Oh, how did that song go. It would not come to her. She wished powerfully now that she could sing it herself; sing it tomorrow to the children, for that is what he did every Christmas. The children knew it, though. They were more musical, like their father, and she was still the one who was usually the audience. Well, they would sing it to her on the morrow, and they would have a fat goose for their Christmas dinner, and try as hard as they could to be jolly for his sake. She knew that he would be hoping that in his far away trench, with only a memory of roast goose to comfort him. She felt the cold wind pushing at her back, and she shifted to get the protection of the lee and turned at last to the east. She remembered the old carol, "People look East, the time is near, for the crowning of the year . . . ." The stars in the east, Pegasus, and oh wouldn’t it be grand if a star as bright as the one that led the shepherds would appear in the sky. A sign, maybe to see angels. She had to smile at the thought of angels out on this lonely prairie. Angels seemed good stuff for churches, but they did not come well into even her fanciful imaginings on the hard-bitten flat land that lay all around her now. He had always teased her for her curious turn of mind, her wondering, romantic bent. She knew he had feared she would not be up to the hardships of this frontier life, and she had feared it even more. But love gives one untold strength, and now she had three more to love and then she only had him. The eastern stars would be the ones he would turn to tonight, if—if, please God—he was still able to look to them at all. Only weeks before, they had learned that the eldest of the brothers had fallen in battle, injured beyond hope, and died in a makeshift surgery on an open field in Pennsylvania. Her prayer rose up unbidden to the eastern sky, to whatever angels might be bending near the earth, to God, to the stars themselves if they be eyes of love from unseen powers above. Let him come home. Please let the war be done. Let there be peace on earth. She pulled the shawl close to her, and returned to the shelter of her home. Da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da—hmhmhm. Oh how does that song go. Well, it would be clear tomorrow. [sing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"] |
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