Advent, the month leading up to Christmas, has always been about expectation and preparation. "The reason for the season," which every year we are admonished by some well-meaning soul to remember, is for many Unitarian Universalists less about the advent of Christ Incarnate and more about enjoying and rejoicing in the coming together of friends and family for a holiday, the sharing of gifts and love and traditions. Christians describe Advent as waiting for God to come to humankind. But after the rush and craziness of the Advent season, a.k.a. the Marathon Shopping Extravaganza, looking forward to Christmas can sometimes seem more like waiting for certain doom: the gifts that will disappoint. The tree that will turn brown. The relatives who will fight. The sadness that will settle once everyone realizes yet again that for all the preparation, for all the enthusiasm and energy put into Christmas, it has been, perhaps, just another day come and gone, leaving one's life mostly unchanged. And leaving us also longing for not just a holiday, but the reverence of a holy day.
In Advent, God comes to humankind as humankind makes its frenzied preparations. In the Christmas story, Jesus is born, God arrives on Earth in a baby's body, and the 12 days of Christmas begin. While I was pretty sure I had an understanding of the long, busy wait of Advent, when I looked into the holidays that fall after Christmas, I realized I had long discounted the meaning behind the 12 days of Christmas. Let's put aside the ladies dancing and the maids a-milking. Just as God was approaching humanity during Advent, humankind, during the 12 days of Christmas, is invited to approach God.1 In the Christmas story, this corresponds to the shepherds and Wise Men, who travel from far lands to rejoice and praise a tiny baby. In today's world, in the Unitarian Universalist understanding of the holy, we are invited to put aside the torn wrappings and already broken games, the stress of houseguests, and invite some calm, some quiet, some sacred time into our lives. The day after Christmas can be a true holy day in the midst of the holidays. As a Unitarian Universalist, when I think about seeking God, I don't think about a physical search for an anthropomorphic being who is personally concerned with the details of my life. When I seek God, I am seeking a sense of wonder, a wellspring of hope, a sense of peace, and the giving and receiving of joy. When I seek God, I am coming together with other Unitarian Universalists in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and as our living tradition states, "seeking a direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."2 A renewal of the spirit -- now that's something I can use after a week of very little sleep and too much eggnog.
The first place I went looking for inspiration was actual, calendar-confirmed, "day after Christmas" holidays. In America, we don't have official holidays for the 26th of December, but my day planner still mentioned something called "Boxing Day." I remembered always seeing that on calendars but never knowing what it was, so I finally looked it up, hoping for an epiphany on how to make the holidays more holy. At first glance, Boxing Day sounds kind of like the "Seinfeld" creation of Festivus. At Festivus, the holiday traditions are "the airing of grievances" and "feats of strength," and the holiday only ends when the head of the household is wrestled to the ground. However, Boxing Day is not, officially anyway, about boxing with rude relatives. One historian wrote:
Despite the lively images suggested by the name, it has nothing to do with pugilistic [explosions] between tanked-up family members who have dearly been looking forward to taking a round out of each other for the past year. Likewise, it does not gain its name from the overpowering need to rid the house of an excess of wrappings and mountains of now useless cardboard boxes the day after St. Nick arrived to turn a perfectly charming and orderly home into a maelstrom of discarded tissue paper. ... [The] holiday's roots can be traced to Britain, where Boxing Day is also known as St. Stephen's Day. Reduced to the simplest essence, its origins are found in a long-ago practice of giving cash or durable goods to those of the lower classes. Gifts among equals were exchanged on or before Christmas Day, but beneficences to those less fortunate were bestowed the day after.3
Boxing Day was and is about giving to those less fortunate, which is always inspiring. Yet it is more about giving to the fortunate in a way that preserves class lines -- top-down gift giving, rather than a gift exchange founded on dignity and love. My research on Boxing Day also turned up that for many Britons, Australians and New Zealanders, this holiday had become, like the Christmas season, one big crazy shopping day, the sale day to end all sale days. Not exactly a time for seeking the holy and reflecting on life's more meaningful gifts.
However, the historical descriptions of Boxing Day often mentioned that it was inspired by the Feast Day of St. Stephen. Stephen himself I will come to in a moment. The Feast of Stephen rang an immediate bell for me: Feast of Stephen -- "Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen"! It turns out that the good king was not really a king, but a duke of Bohemia, which is now the geographic region we call the Czech Republic. Wenceslas, like many of us here, including me, was born into an interfaith marriage. His father was a Christian, his mother was a pagan (sounds like some UUs I know). At the end of the first millennium, however, there was less room for incorporating both religions into one's life. No Christmas-slash-Winter Solstice celebration for Wenceslas -- he had to choose. Wenceslas decided to hold fast to his father's and grandmother's Christian beliefs. For Wenceslas, being a Christian meant holding a deep faith in the equality of all humankind and in the abiding power of love, in the face of family politics and struggles for power. He was known for acts of kindness to those in his dukedom as described in the Christmas carol -- bringing firewood and food to the needy. His opponents, hungry for power, tricked him into planning a supposedly peaceful meeting at the one place they knew they could count on Wenceslas showing up unarmed -- church. They murdered him, and the bloody battles of the kingdom raged on without one of the few people who had used his power to help the needy. When miracles like the ones described in the carol were reported, like his feet heating the snow, he was quickly crowned a saint. Wenceslas is a good if tragic example of standing up for what you believe in, and in the tradition of Boxing Day, he exemplifies a purer form of trying to share one's wealth in the face of poverty.
But it was St. Stephen who provided the true inspiration behind both Boxing Day and St. Wenceslas' journey through the woods. Stephen is known as the first martyr, the first Christian to be murdered for his beliefs. In the Bible, after the death of Jesus, the apostles realize that they need help caring for all the people who need help. Stephen was named as one of the first deacons of the apostles, someone whose specific task was to assist the apostles in providing food, comfort and clothing to widows and other needy people. His evangelization ended up enraging the locals, and a mob formed, stoning him to death as he prayed that God might forgive his killers.
I searched Stephen's life and death looking for something that might aid us in our search for a quiet, sacred time now that the holidays are drawing to a close. One inspiration I found is that Stephen is often associated with Psalm 63. I know many UUs think a minister would do well to stay far away from the Bible, especially the psalms with their calls to an anthropomorphic, warlord God who tends to promise that one's foes will be smote. But Psalm 63 has a beauty that speaks to our desire here today, a yearning for meaning and holiness after the chaos of Christmas. The Psalm begins:
1 O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
The psalmist continues, praising God's steadfast love, which has saved him.
5 My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips ...
7 for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
"In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy." A comforting security blanket of downy feathers, an angel's song harmonizing with the song of a human praying. The shadow that falls after Christmas does not have to be a sad one. The childlike expectancy is gone, the counting down is over, feasts have been picked through, and goodbyes must be said. But the shadow that falls can be a comfort to us, a protection that allows a hush to enter our soul so that we can finally "hear the angels sing."
Edmund Sears, a Unitarian minister, wrote "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in the early 1800s. As you might imagine, it was immensely popular as soon as it was published. However, by the late 1800s, when it was starting to be included in various hymnals and carol books, Sears' Unitarian message of love, peace and a glorious "age of gold" didn't feel fiery or Christian enough to some ministers, so the lyrics were edited in many collections. One hymnal creator, Edward Bickersteth in Britain, thought the hymn so "unbiblical and humanist" that he reworded the entire last verse to cut out the idea of an "age of gold" in favor of describing Jesus as the Prince of Peace. Since Edmund Sears was a Unitarian, and many of us here probably prefer our hymns unbiblical and humanist, you might assume as I did that we have the full original, unabridged version of the hymn in our hymnal. But with some research, I found that our hymnal has cut a verse of "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear." It is a beautiful verse that recalls the message of Psalm 63 -- a soul longing for spiritual nourishment, yearning for comfort in hard times, who is finally able to give thanks for the transcendent relief he receives.
O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow;
Look now, for glad and golden hours
(or: Take heart, for comfort, love, and hope)
Come swiftly on the wing;
Oh rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing.4
The message of the 12 days of Christmas is a very Unitarian Universalist one. The time of waiting with trepidation and hope is over, our anxious preparations are stilled. Advent is over, Christmas has come and gone. The time of expensive gift buying and receiving is over. The decorations will come down soon. It is time for a simpler way. Our responsibility now is to seek the renewal of the spirit, to be open to the mysterious forces of life. As the 12 days of Christmas pass on by, let us carry in our hearts the essence of humankind's yearning for love, an inner and outer search for wisdom, beauty, truth and reason.
The abundance of Christmas flows into the simple wintry resoluteness of a new year. On this day after Christmas, on this Feast Day of St. Stephen, our mouths have been satisfied with rich feasts, and we have sung our carols of praise. We in this community are so very lucky, and so very blessed, in our health, in our riches both tangible and intangible. But among the blessings of our lives lie challenges as well. The biggest, most showy Christmas celebration does not mean it is the happiest. The wait for Christmas is gone, and it is up to us to start the journey toward a simple wholeness, a simple peace, a simple blessing. A journey to give of ourselves and receive the sense of wonder and thankfulness that maybe went missing this past month.
And so I pray: As we go on our spiritual journey away from the Advent season and into the new year, if we are walking in the bitter snow, may our feet be warmed with a sense of purpose and the desire to serve humankind. If we are parched in a dry and weary land, where there is no water, may our souls be quenched with the living water of life's great mysteries. If we are bending low with painful steps, let us take this time to rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing. Amen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Footnotes
1 http://www.internetpadre.com/christmas/stephen.html gave
some background to this concept.
2 UU Principles and Purposes.
3 www.snopes.com.
4
http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/it_came_up
on_the_midnight_clear.htm.
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