The original meaning of the word
“Christmas” was the Mass celebrating the birth of Christ. From the church's point of view, a better word to
express the meaning of the event we are now preparing to celebrate is “The
Nativity.” Or perhaps even more simply, “The Birth of Jesus.”
Now greatly encumbered with creedal
and cultural overlays, it is difficult to discover the historical event and its
true meaning. A close study of the two narratives of the birth in the Gospels
of Matthew and Luke show how the early Church developed those stories. They
built their stories on the Hebrew scriptures read each week in their synagogues where the
first Christians worshiped. From the perspective of those early Jewish
Christians, Jesus was the Messiah, the fulfilment of their scriptures.
A quick search on the Internet will
reveal how contentious and confusing is the debate about the historicity of the
person, Jesus of Nazareth, let alone his birth as described in the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke. Even the most reputable scholars disagree on how factual each
narrative is. For example, N.T. Wright, former Bishop of Durham, in the Church
of England, and John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of New Jersey, in the
Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. are at opposite poles on the issue.
It is noteworthy that most of the
hymns and carols sung in celebrating the Nativity take a simple, literalist
approach in relating the story. Among the best examples in the traditional
carols Silent Night, Holy Night and The First Nowell. Indeed, many of the
traditional carols are paraphrases of the birth stories.
A relatively recent outburst of
hymnody in the latter half of the 20th century has brought many new
hymns to the attention of worshiping congregations. Voices United, a hymn collection published by The United Church of
Canada in 1996, includes a number of late 20th century hymns not yet
thought of in the same category as traditional Christmas carols.
Some of these new hymns depart from
the usual repetition of the biblical stories. Brian Wren’s Oh, How Joyfully, set to an 18th century Sicilian
melody, and Frederic Kaan’s Down to
Earth, as a Dove, to a tune from the 16th century, are two examples
that express the true meaning of the nativity rather than its literal details. A
third instance is Marian Collibole’s Ring
a Bell for Peace, which marks the promises of our Advent liturgies – peace,
joy, hope, faith – as fulfilled by the birth of Jesus.
The earliest religious song of
Christmas still used today is the familiar Of
the Father’s Love Begotten, sung to a 12th century plainsong
melody. Another Latin antiphon from the 9th century O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, was translated
by John Mason Neale, an Anglo-Catholic clergyman of the mid-Victorian era. Neale also translated more than sixty
other hymns from the Latin and Orthodox traditions.
Today, we Christians complain that the
religious celebration has been overtaken and almost obliterated by the
relentless advance of secularism. Historical analysis shows that the facts
should be reversed. The Christian Church captured and reversed what was
originally a Roman fertility festival of renewal of life in the natural world celebrated at the winter solstice.
In the simultaneously published
edition of the Massey Lectures for 2011, entitled Winter, broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in
November, Adam Gopnik presents pentetrating analysis of Christmas celebrations as primarily secular. Gopnik
summarized his analysis with the briefest of conclusions: Our modern Christmas celebrations
date from the Victorian romantic era of
English and American family and economic life. Its chief features are not the Nativity of Jesus, but Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol and cartoonist Thomas Nast's Santa Claus. Christmas today he says is “a winter
holiday meant for kids.”
A review of Gopnik’s study will be the
subject of our next blog entry. -30-
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