By Mark A. Taylor
My church”s annual Christmas pageant is wonderful. It engages its audience as well as any Broadway play with compelling pictures of the stable, the Baby, angels in the air, shepherds peeking into the manger, and regal Magi processing through the aisles.
But the first 20 minutes or so of the evening is far removed from Bethlehem. It”s a bouncing, laughing, dancing, show meant mainly to remind us that this, indeed, “is the most wonderful time of the year.”
In past years, this first act has featured a rollerblading Frosty, a rapping Rudolph, or a ballerina ascending from a life-sized gift box. The stage, decorated with evergreens and thousands of tiny lights, reminds the audience of a lavish shopping mall display. Manufactured snow, fluttering from the ceiling, has made a white Christmas, and no one”s surprised if Santa appears.
I”ll be one of those on stage this year, encouraging five audiences this weekend to have a “holly, jolly Christmas.” I”m glad to be there because I can”t imagine a more wholesome outlet for my Thespian-like longings. And I know the program presents the moving, miraculous story of the Messiah”s birth to some who wouldn”t show up for Sunday-morning church.
Some churches, of course, would never allow even 20 minutes of “secular” holiday frivolity into a church program. But others, I fear, will sponsor get-togethers this month that hardly mention Jesus. How should we celebrate a biblical event whose observance has been so thoroughly co-opted by society?
Charles Lippy, professor of religious studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, offers some insight. Our contributor Simon J. Dahlman interviewed Lippy for his weekly column in the Johnson City (Tennessee) Press. “Lippy thinks it may be time to recognize that many, perhaps most, of our holidays are really two celebrations now,” Dahlman reported, “the cultural and the religious. Even atheists give gifts at Christmas.”
“I don”t think we can ever completely diffuse the cultural and commercial from the rest of it, not at this stage,” Lippy said, according to Dahlman.
The challenge, of course, is achieving balance. How can we use society”s interest in a Christian holiday to gain a hearing for the gospel? How can we point out the Christian roots in many of our traditional Christmas symbols and proclaim the Christian message in carols thoughtlessly crooned by rock stars on the radio? How can we renew our own spirits during the holidays by reconnecting with God, the giver of every good and perfect gift? How can we enjoy the harmless in the secular without allowing it to overshadow “the reason for the season”?
I”ll be thinking about that this weekend””backstage as well as on.
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