"Christmas" Lights or "Holiday" Lights?
The Woke's Vocabulary is a Weapon in Their Culture War
I
never had kids and when I look at Facebook friends' photos of their own I
realize that that's probably a good thing. I am a graduate of the school of hard
knocks. I know how tough life can be. Children's dewy, defenseless skin, their
huge eyes, the easy pleasure they take in puppies, dandelions, and bubbles,
break my heart. As a parent, I'd be wracked by anxiety.
The
other day, a grandchild photo, rather than making my palms sweat, brought forth
from me a rare and hopeful smile. The towheaded toddler's cherubic face,
unblemished by time or woe, was illuminated by a white glow. He was holding in
his two hands something he'd likely never encountered so closely before: a
string of Christmas tree lights. The anxiety I usually feel when exposed to
photos of children was replaced by the promise of joy and hope voiced in Luke's Gospel. "And, lo, the
angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about
them … 'Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which
shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Savior, which is Christ the Lord.'"
Yes,
the boy in the Facebook photo, like all children, armed only with limited
intelligence and resilience, will naively march into a world boobytrapped with
threats and disappointments. Yes, he will be rejected in love, fail tests, not
be picked for the team or the school play or the plum job. He will, one day,
thanks to a speeding car or meteor, a tired heart or some as yet unimagined
pathogen, die.
Many
belief systems insist that we humans resign ourselves: death is the end of the
story. What was the point of it all? Life's only point is the pleasure you
managed to enjoy, however briefly. For Christians, suffering is never
permanent, death is not the end, and mere pleasure is not life's telos or its meaning. Those Christmas tree lights, shining
in the darkness of night, are a material symbol of that light that transforms
human lives.
I
know that most people are not Christians, and I know that others draw forth
hope and strength from a variety of wells, from work to family, from friends to
art. I respect those paths. I offer this meditation on Christmas lights because
we are in the midst of a culture war. Our Woke overlords would like to
denigrate and then erase Western Civilization and replace it with a Woke
Utopia. Before we surrender Western Civilization, it is important to understand
it, and one of its three foundations. Whether we are atheists or believers, we
arm ourselves in the Culture War if we educate ourselves about the Ancient
Greeks, the Enlightenment, and the Judeo-Christian tradition, even in so small
a manifestation as Christmas tree lights.
Light
is a symbol for God found throughout the Old and New Testaments. "The
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the
land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined," writes Isaiah. In Genesis, God creates light
before he creates the sun. Light as a concept, not just the sun as a source of
light, is privileged in Genesis.
The
most eloquent equation of God with light appears in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.
Here God is "light." God is also "the Word." In the Greek
original, John uses the term "logos" for "Word." We
encounter "logos" in "biology," the study of life, and "cosmology,"
the study of the cosmos. The PBS series "Faith and Reason" defined logos as "A principle
originating in classical Greek thought which refers to a universal divine
reason, immanent in nature, yet transcending all oppositions and imperfections
in the cosmos and humanity. An eternal and unchanging truth present from the
time of creation, available to every individual who seeks it. A unifying and
liberating revelatory force which reconciles the human with the divine;
manifested in the world as an act of God's love in the form of the Christ."
John
writes of God as logos and as light. "In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God … Through him all things were made;
without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life
was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness has not overcome it."
And
that, in short, is why Christians make use of light at Christmas. Light
symbolizes God's incarnation on earth as a human; light come to mankind.
I
smiled at the toddler holding his first string of Christmas tree lights
because, rather than feeling my usual anxiety, I felt confident for him. I
believe that faith strengthens believers, as described in one of Paul's letters.
"Put on the full armor of God," Paul writes. Clearly, he is speaking
metaphorically. At this time, Christians were persecuted unto death; Paul was
not encouraging his readers physically to fight the Roman Empire. "Our
struggle is not against flesh and blood, but … against the spiritual forces of
evil … when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground … with
your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace."
When
I gazed at that barefoot toddler in his adorable little-boy pajama set, holding
Christmas tree lights in his hand, I did not see a defenseless creature at the
threshold of this vale of tears. I saw a human being armed with light in
darkness and logos in an irrational world. I saw a boy gripping a material symbol
for "the full armor of God."
Christians
believe that our lives manifest logos – meaning – and are illuminated by light
in darkness. This conviction affects us. Churchgoing Catholics like myself have
significantly lower suicide rates than the general population. Citing a JAMA
Psychiatry study, the L. A. Times wrote in 2016, "Against
a grim backdrop of rising suicide rates among American women, new research has
revealed a blinding shaft of light: One group of women – practicing Catholics –
appears to have bucked the national trend toward despair and self-harm … Among
especially devout Catholic women – those in the pews more than once a week –
suicides were a vanishing phenomenon."
Not
all religious beliefs or practices generate the same statistics. "Muslim adults in the U.S. were twice
as likely to report a history of suicide attempt compared with individuals from
other faith traditions, according to results of a survey … published in JAMA
Psychiatry." The study's author was herself a Muslim, Rania Awaad, MD,
director of the Stanford Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab at the
Stanford University School of Medicine.
Those
without faith appear to have higher suicide rates. According to The Cambridge Companion
to Atheism,
"Concerning suicide rates, religious nations fare better than secular
nations … of the top ten nations with the highest male suicide rates, all but
one are strongly irreligious nations with high levels of atheism. Of the top
remaining nine nations leading the world in male suicide rates, all are former
Soviet/Communist nations … Of the bottom ten nations with the lowest male
suicide rates, all are highly religious nations with statistically
insignificant levels of organic atheism."
America
has been experiencing a demography-skewing epidemic of "Deaths of Despair,"
that is deaths by drug and alcohol addiction and suicide. Some observers relate
this epidemic to America's retreat from religion. "There's a spiritual
void in America, a loss of meaning," opines a New York Times op-ed
writer. "Secularization is killing middle America," pronounces author
Tim Carney. "The Human
Flourishing Program at Harvard University has assembled a body of evidence that
suggests that about 40 percent of the increase in suicides from 1996 to 2010
was attributable to declining religious participation," reports Brendan W. Case. Princeton scholars Anne
Case and Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton, whose work brings attention to deaths of
despair, write, "We believe that
much more important for despair is the decline of family, community, and
religion."
When
I look at innocent, defenseless babies, with all of life's pains before them, I
tremble. When I see a towheaded toddler holding, as if they were a jump rope, a
string of Christmas lights, when I see his face lit up like a candle, I think,
hey, he's in good hands.
I
read the caption of the photo. My Facebook friend identified the lights the
toddler was holding as "holiday" lights. My heart sank a little. My
Facebook friend, if she posts about Christianity at all, posts to alert her
readers to some Christian somewhere who did a bad thing. A pastor preached an
obnoxious sermon; a reality show Christian was arrested on morals charges. This
toddler, I fear, will be raised on a bigoted distortion of Christianity.
After
I saw the caption that identified Christmas lights as "holiday"
lights, I posted on Facebook that I believe in Christ and Christmas.
My
friend replied. She said that Christmas lights are not Christmas lights at all.
Rather, she said, "these *are* holiday lights." The asterisk before
and after the word "are" adds emphasis. My friend informed me that
people from many religions have holidays. Use of the word "Christmas"
indicates a lack of "kindness and respect." To use the word "holiday"
lights "is inclusive, not exclusive."
I've
celebrated Diwali, Shiva Ratri, Holi, Buddha's birthday, Eid, Passover, the
anniversary of the liberation by the Red Army, Burns Night, and various Wiccan
solstices with Hindus, Muslims, Jews and others, in the US, Europe, Africa, and
Asia. I live in a city where the Muslim call to prayer is announced over
loudspeakers, and where there were several historic
synagogues,
and Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Hindu houses of worship. My friend has
lived her life in an area with virtually no Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, or
Jews, and with a one percent African American population. And yet it is my
friend who must lecture me on diversity. So often Woke's lectures don't follow
any real-world logic, but, rather, counter-factual Woke dogma.
My
friend argued that it is "exclusive" not "inclusive" to speak
the words "Christmas lights," because, after all, lights on a string
decorating a tree is a custom belonging to many traditions. Was her statement based
on facts – and was it really "inclusive" – or was it representative
of a Woke attempt to erase one chapter in the history of Western Civilization,
by being as "exclusive," and as divorced from real history, as
possible?
The Library of Congress
reports,
"Before electric Christmas lights, families used candles to light their
Christmas trees. This practice was dangerous, and led to many home fires. In
1882, Edward H. Johnson, Thomas Edison's friend and partner, put together the
very first string of electric lights meant for a Christmas tree. He hand-wired
80 red, white and blue light bulbs." Smithsonian magazine quotes a witness of these
first Christmas tree lights. "At the rear of the beautiful parlors was a
large Christmas tree presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect. It was
brilliantly lighted with ... eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass
eggs, and about equally divided between white, red and blue … One can hardly
imagine anything prettier."
Smithsonian
continues. "Johnson's lights were indeed ahead of their time – electricity
was not yet routinely available – and they weren't cheap. A string of 16
vaguely flame-shaped bulbs sitting in brass sockets the size of shot glasses
sold for a pricey $12 (about $350 in today's money) in 1900. But in 1894
President Cleveland put electric lights on the White House tree, and by 1914, a
16-foot string cost just $1.75. By the 1930s, colored bulbs and cones were
everywhere … it all started with Johnson's miracle on 36th Street."
Light
is a symbol for God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Lights on a string, used
in December to illuminate evergreen trees, were not invented, as my friend
wrote, as "holiday lights" belonging to "a multitude of religions
and spiritual practices, including, but not limited to, Christianity." Rather,
they were invented quite specifically as "Christmas lights."
When
interacting with our friends on the left, it's impossible not to collide with
selective outrage. The left tells us that Christmas lights are
"holiday" lights, but the left also tells us that it's a very bad
thing to "appropriate" someone else's "culture."
On
April 22, 2018, Utah high school student Keziah Daum posted photos of her prom on Twitter.
She wore a cheongsam, that is, a Chinese-style dress. Keziah, pretty,
young, and fit, is drop-dead gorgeous in the form-fitting red dress with the
thigh-high slit. Tens of thousands of outraged tweets followed. "My
culture is not your goddamn prom dress," read one. Keziah was a white thief,
guilty of "cultural theft" from "BIPOC."
In
2017, a Portland burrito shop was forced to close,
and proprietors Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly received death threats, because
they are not Mexican. "These appropriating businesses are erasing and
exploiting already marginalized identities for profit and praise," The
Portland Mercury said. "Because of Portland's underlying racism, the
people who rightly own these traditions and cultures are already treated
poorly."
Wikipedia
defines "cultural appropriation" as "adoption of an element or
elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity.
This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from
minority cultures."
The
very definition of cultural appropriation relies on selective outrage and
morality-by-identity. One must condemn "dominant culture" members who
make use of cultural products associated with "minority cultures." No
one condemns a black professor for teaching Shakespeare or calculus. Similarly,
whites associated with the left are much less likely to be accused of cultural
appropriation. The Beatles famously cribbed from African American artists. An
online petition demanding that the Beatles pay Black Lives Matter ten million
dollars in reparations for this cultural appropriation garnered only twenty-six signatures.
Keziah
Daum, Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly never claimed Chinese garb or Mexican
cuisine as their own. Daum did not lecture Chinese people, "It is unkind
to refer to the cheongsam as Chinese. Please be inclusive. The cheongsam
is an American garment." Wilgus did not tell Mexicans that they were
being "unkind" and "exclusive" by claiming burritos. Woke
appropriators of Christmas do insist that Christmas is not Christmas, but,
rather, a deracinated, relativized "holiday."
Cultural
appropriation is related to another Woke concept, land acknowledgement. The
Microsoft 2021 Ignite event began with a so-called "land acknowledgment." "First, we want to acknowledge that the land where
the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish,
the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish,
the Tulalip, and other coast Salish people since time immemorial – a people who
are still continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage."
Land
acknowledgement, like cultural appropriation, is a concept whose ethics apply
only to certain ethnicities. No one expects contemporary Comanche to
acknowledge the Apache whom they displaced. A nameless people once lived in
northern North America from Russia in the east to Greenland in the west. This
people disappeared as Inuit, a.k.a. Eskimo, moved into their territory. No one
expects contemporary Inuit or other northern tribes to perform a "land
acknowledgement" for the nameless people they replaced. No one would dare
demand a "land acknowledgment" from Muslims occupying what had been
Christian North Africa, the Christian Middle East, Zoroastrian Persia, or
Buddhist and Hindu Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.
Woke
demands that white women who sell burritos in Portland be threatened with death
for doing so. For whites to make burritos is "cultural appropriation."
Woke demands that Microsoft acknowledge that the land its campus occupies was
once home to Salish Indians. At the same time, Woke insists that "Christmas
lights" be dubbed "holiday lights," belonging equally to "diverse
spiritual traditions." Woke exercises this selective outrage because Woke conflates
Christianity with the West, and the West is bad, and the West must be erased in
a cleansing cultural genocide. BIPOC are good. In Microsoft's words, we must
"honor and bring to light the ancient heritage" of the Muckleshoot,
proprietors of "The Northwest's Biggest
and Best Casino."
Simultaneously, one must trash Christians. The Woke's march to triumph tramples
over the appropriated cultural products of the West.
But,
you may be thinking. Christmas lights aren't really Christmas lights because
Christianity stole, or appropriated, Christmas from Pagans. If you think that,
propagandists have successfully brainwashed you.
Early
Protestant Reformers sought to discredit Catholicism. Some disseminated stories
insisting that Catholicism was all just revamped Paganism. Though many
Protestants came to embrace Christmas, celebrating Christmas was actually
against the law in seventeenth-century New England. To Puritans, Christmas was "Papist
idolatry," that is, Catholic Paganism.
Hostility
to Christmas among Christians did not die out when the very last Puritan,
wearing a tall, black hat and a long woolen cloak, disappeared into the mists
of history. Many fundamentalist, "sola-scriptura" – "Bible only"
– Christians today are adamant that no Christian should celebrate this Pagan
day. These Christians disseminate the same anti-Christmas myths that have been
circulating for centuries. See, for example, here, here, and here.
What
"facts" do Atheists, Christophobes, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pagans, and
fundamentalist sola-scriptura Christians cite to prove that Christmas is a
Pagan festival, "stolen" by Christians from Pagans? The following:
*
December 25th was chosen as the date of Jesus' birth because it was
once the date of the birth of a Pagan deity, Mithra;
*
Ancient Germanic Pagans brought evergreen trees into their homes and decorated
them with baubles and candles;
*
Santa Claus is based on a Pagan deity;
*
Yule logs are a Pagan custom.
As
is so often the case with "everybody knows" facts, none of these
facts check out. That Jesus is Mithra, for example, is roundly rejected and
even mocked by serious myth scholars. You can read more here, here, here, here, or watch this short
video here.
Michael
Jones is a prolific YouTube Christian apologist and University of Arizona grad
student in philosophy. He has investigated the claims that Christmas trees,
Yule logs, and Santa Claus were originally Pagan festival items. Citing ancient sources and modern scholarship, Jones argues that
every one of these "everybody knows" claims lacks support. Christmas
trees, Yule logs, and Santa Claus, whatever you think of any of them, were,
Jones argues, first recorded as customs associated with Christians celebrating
Christmas. Jones is interviewed here.
"Everybody
knows" that early Christians selected December 25th to
celebrate the birth of Christ because that date was a Roman holiday. Have a
look at one listing of holidays
in Ancient Rome.
Of course, not only Roman Pagans celebrated holidays in Ancient Rome. Various imperial
populations, Persians, Egyptians, Jews, etc, celebrated their own holidays as
well. No matter what date early Christians selected, that date would inevitably
fall near or on some Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, or local holiday. That
December 25th falls near some Roman holidays proves nothing.
The
Bible does not report the date of Jesus' birth, and the few things we know
about that event provide no definitive clue. Shepherds were watching over their
flocks by night, Luke reports. Readers ask when that
activity likely occurred. Henry Baker Tristram was one of those
Victorian polymaths – he was a clergyman, a Bible scholar, an ornithologist,
and an early supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution. During his travels in
Israel, he noted that what little rain that does fall in arid Bethlehem falls
in winter. This rain brings forth growth; growth that the surrounding hills cannot
support during the dry summers. Only, he wrote, "during the winter and
spring months … is pasturage is to be found on these bleak uplands." Thus,
he argues, it is quite possible that Jesus was born in winter.
Luke 1:5 mentions Jewish
priestly divisions. These divisions entailed fixed terms of service. These
terms may provide a clue as to dating. Dr. Alfred Edersheim, a Jewish convert to
Christianity, used the information in Luke 1:5 in his calculations. He decided that the
December date is acceptable.
Andrew
McGowan is Dean and President of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and
McFaddin Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. His scholarship
has focused on early Christian thought and history. In the December, 2002,
edition of Bible Review, McGowan introduces
readers
to the scholarship of Louis Duchesne and Thomas J. Talley. Their scholarship
showed that early Christians came to believe that Jesus was conceived on the
very same date as the date of his death.
Jesus'
death date was relatively easy to calculate, or at least estimate, given the
Gospel accounts of the Passion. Jesus died, they calculated, on the 14th
of Nisan, or March 25th. Thus, Jesus was born nine months after that
date, on December 25th. The idea that Jesus was conceived and died
on the same date is not Biblical, and it is utterly foreign to modern
Christians. But it did take hold among early Christians, as written records
from that period attest.
This
concept was popular among Eastern Christians as well. They, though, held to a
different calendar than those in the West. Their dates were April 6th
for Jesus' conception and death, and January 6th for his birth. These
different dates were informed by the same idea: that Jesus was conceived and
died on the same date.
McGowan
writes, "Connecting Jesus' conception and death in this way will certainly
seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings
of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant
expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of
the angel's Annunciation to Mary – the moment of Jesus' conception – the baby
Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see Master Bertram's
Annunciation scene);
a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through
Jesus' death … The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same
time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the
Talmud … 'In the months of Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs
were born; on Passover Isaac was born … and in Nisan they will be redeemed in
time to come.'"
Yes.
Christmas lights, history shows, are indeed Christmas lights, not generic
"holiday lights." Yes, Christmas is a Christian holiday; it was not
"stolen" from Pagans. Yes, some Woke today would like to culturally
appropriate Christmas as a relativized, deracinated "holiday," and
erase the true meaning of the day. And that's not all. Our Woke overlords
desire to appropriate more than strings of lights to claim as their own. They
want the Biblical deity. They want to relativize the God revealed in the Bible
into a generic deity, as Christmas is relativized into a generic holiday. Solstice
is the new Christmas; sunlight itself is no longer a symbol of God, but the new
god.
On
December 21st, 2013, the winter solstice, I posted the following on my Facebook page:
"Light
doesn't care about you, my Pagan friends. It is inanimate. It is not sacred. It
is insensate. It is impersonal … Seeking consciousness in light is really no
more deep or romantic than seeking consciousness in consumer items. It's a
spiritual dead end. Humans are hungry.
Light is not that for which we hunger. Light is only a metonym, a figure of
speech, for that for which we crave that we associate with light. Our souls cannot find rest until they rest in
that for which we truly hunger. We hunger for a consciousness that loves us.
That consciousness is not light. It is something we associate with light. It is
God."
I
was immediately denounced as a "judgmental douchebag" and an "intolerant
inquisitor." Stating that the solstice sun does not care about humans hit
a bit too close to home.
Those
who appropriate Christmas very badly crave the Biblical God. And so they
re-invent him, in everything from the solstice sun to the TV show "The
Good Place" to the phrase "The Universe," as in "The
Universe wants me to take the job in Buffalo." "The Universe Has Your
Back"
promises the title of a 2016 bestseller by Gabrielle Bernstein, a scantily clad millionaire blonde.
The Universe sent us here, Bernstein promises, "to be love and spread
love." In fact the Universe is an extremely cold, silent, and empty place.
It has no consciousness with which to evaluate whether or not the job in Buffalo
is a good idea, and no heart with which to care about you or your job. The
Universe has no arms to support your back. The God who is love is unique, and
he is found in Biblical verses, like 1 John 4:16.
Read
Barbara C. Sproul's Primal Myths: Creation
Myths Around the World. You will meet the Zoroastrian Ahriman, who gives birth to
demons by sodomizing himself. You will meet Egyptian Khepera, who masturbates,
swallows his sperm, and spits out his children. You will meet Hindu Parusha,
whose sacrifice establishes the caste system, and all its evils. In what is now
California, the Old Woman of the Sea and the Eagle fought to the death; the
Eagle's victory over the Old Woman resulted in the world. In Australia, the
Djanggawul, a brother with a giant penis and his sisters with clitorises like
snakes, have sex, wander around, and drop children. Dogon high priest
Ogotemmeli recounts the creation story that sacralizes female genital
mutilation. Ogotemmeli's country, Mali in Africa, has an over 90% FGM rate.
In
no other creation myth from no other culture will you read of one,
transcendent, omnipotent, omniscient, loving God, who creates all of creation
in one act of love, and pronounces it good, a God who knows each one of his
creations intimately,
"in whom we live and
move and have our being." It is that God who is most often culturally
appropriated.
The
Christmas tree lights the toddler was holding cannot be understood through my
friend's relativism, her insistence that those lights represent "a
multitude of religions and spiritual practices, including, but not limited to,
Christianity." Those lights do not represent Ahriman's auto-sodomization.
They do not represent Eagle killing off Old Woman. They do not represent
ancient justifications for the caste system or FGM. They represent the light
that shines in the darkness, a light the darkness will never overcome. Please,
I beg of you, take this God if you want him – believe me, he wants you even
more. But do not take him in an act of cultural appropriation that disguises
the truth through cultural relativistic mumbo jumbo. Take all of this God. No
matter how hard you try to hide it, your heart's yearning for him is revealed by
the tracks of your own search.
Danusha Goska
is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at
a Monastery
Amen.
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