You'd think him a freak if you saw him near the end of his year, or at least think him someone that might start proselytizing to you about the coming of the Lord, or Armageddon transpiring next week. By his own admission, A. J. Jacobs - the fellow who wrote the book, A Year of Living Biblically, which the reading came from this morning, looks a little sketchy. At the end of a year, his beard looks as he says like, "somebody who has stopped taking his meds." He carries a wooden staff with him at all times and dons tassels attached to his clothing to remind him of the 10 commandments during all his waking hours. But his appearance aside, I was fascinated by his quest.
In total he gathered 72 pages of commandments, laws and rules he would try to live literally by for a year. Every aspect of his life was affected: his talk, walk, eating, habits, bathing, dressing and even hugging his wife. Some rules are good for him. Indeed good for all of us: No lying, coveting, stealing. Honoring your parents, loving your neighbor, those kinds of things. But some as he says, he questions whether or not they will make him righteous or not - bathing after sex, not eating fruit from a tree planted less than five years ago, paying the wages of a worker every day. And as he says a good number are just baffling, and now clearly outlawed: like. . .destroying idols, killing magicians, sacrificing oxen.
So in order to be as authentic as possible with this project he gets himself ready: He consults a stack of various bibles from the King James version, to the New Revised standard version, to the Moody bible. He even picks up a copy of The Bible for Dummies and The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Bible. His friends send him bibles too; one is a waterproof outdoor bible so he can study commandments even during floods and other Old Testament weather patterns. Another friend sent him a hip-hop version, where the 23rd Psalm reads, "the Lord is all that," or otherwise translated, the "Lord is my shepherd." He has so many he consults that when all are stacked, they reach his waist.
Further he surrounds himself with advisors, religious leaders he consults on an almost daily basis: A retired Lutheran minister, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a rabbi in Brooklyn. Finally, his quest takes him many places, to not only meet but interview and experience what life is like for those around the world who live as close to a literal interpretation of the bible as possible - from the Mega church Jerry Falwells of the world, to the Red letter Evangelical Christians, with their very left interpretations of Jesus' acts and parables. He visits the Amish and Orthodox Jews in the states and in Israel.
And what does he find with this experiment? Well some of it is quite moving and you are in admiration that he is trying, really trying to see how an authentic following of the bible would affect his life. How it would guide his spiritual life, give him a grounding in some significant values with his living and loving. For example:
In Proverbs 13:5 it says: A righteous man hateth lying. . .
As Jacobs points out, there are many, many references to not lying. And as he says, "Man do I lie a lot!" AJ says he knew he lied a lot but when he started keeping track, he says the quantity was alarming. A sample from one day:
Now as he says, why worry about these, they are white lies, not serious, not a big deal. They're not the kind of lying like: "Hmm I don't remember that meeting Senator," kind of lies.
But still, the bible as he points out is strict, no lying. And one conservative minister counsels him to think of it this way: you have a date with a friend, but you just want to stay home and watch TV. You don't want to hurt her feelings, so you say you're sick. The friend comes over with a pot of chicken soup and finds you healthy. She can never trust you again. Just tell her the truth in the first place. He says.
By trying to live strictly to these values and rules, by following them as authentically as possible, he finds that yes indeed some of he rules are seemingly ridiculous, while others clearly make him a better person. Jacobs found that because he had to think about them all the time, he wasn't always living up to their calling, but by trying to do them it was slowly making him a better person even if he fell short. And in the end, after a year of praying numerous times during the day, following obscure and not so obscure rules, he says: "I am now a reverent agnostic. I recognize that Life is sacred. That there is something transcendent beyond the everyday." He concludes, "It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance."
When I finished Jacobs' book, I was humored, moved and inspired to live out our own Unitarian Universalist values in my daily life with as much authenticity to my living and lovbible. And I had another motivation. I wanted to get to the original intent, meaning and value in the Christmas Story. Indeed if someone was living out ing as he had with the the bible literary, some of Christmas values and meaning must be in there. I was hoping to find even more insight as to why in particular participating in the Greater Good project we do at the church, as a means to live out the most important values with the holiday season could be mirrored in the bible. Except in reading Jacobs' book, I was reminded of something, which I knew but had forgotten. The Celebration of Christmas - a holiday set aside for the celebration of Jesus' birth isn't in the bible. The biblical version is a story of his birth, a proclamation of the event of the birth, not a guide on how to celebrate the event.
Jacobs' book reminded me that the holiday in and of its self came about later, and that some Christians don't celebrate Christmas at all, as it isn't in the bible - Jehovah Witnesses, for example. With that said, I wanted to do a full investigation as to what really is at the meaning of the holiday, and how could we tap into that authentic meaning to better our own celebration and holiday, to really get at the true value of the experience for ourselves and our families.
So I did a lot of sleuthing this week. And I'll be frank, what I found was intriguing and well down right disturbing:
Early Christians, for centuries, didn't celebrate Jesus' birth. In fact, Christians who were very strict about the bible's literal application condemned anyone for celebrating the event. As one minister wrote 300 years ago, "If Jesus had wanted us to celebrate his birthday, he would have told us exactly what day it was on."
It is a complicated and long history of how we got to where we are, but I wanted to hit on the most intriguing and distressing aspect for me. It has to do with Wassailing. Wassailing, was pretty much a holdover from the pagan celebrations of mid-winter and the solstice. Wassailing involves a reversal of roles. Servant to owner, owner to servant. The poor initiated it, not the wealthy. In an Agrarian culture, it meant that the workers or serfs of a landowner would go to the manor house for drinking, eating, and general frivolity. They were invited in but it was more of a demand of recognition, of being seen than an invitation that originated from the wealthy. And for the landowner's hospitality, the workers would extend their goodwill - usually through drinking songs, and give the landowners a reprieve from their presence and the reality of their circumstances until the next year. The landowners at the time thought of it as their duty, their responsibility for one day to change the landscape of class. And for the most part this worked quite well until the industrial age. But then things changed. Now the poor who went a wassailing were no longer your servants, or serfs - you didn't rent out land to them, they weren't in relationship with you. Instead the poor were laborers, fisherman, factory- workers, and domestics. They didn't live on your land, or anywhere near where you reside. As the industrial age grew, and the working class and the wealthy got farther and farther apart, both in proximity and in experience, wassailing degraded into a more threatening kind of behavior, "combining carnival rowdiness with urban gang violence and Christmas-season riots. So given these changes in wassailing - you can begin to see how their would have been an appeal - in particular - from the wealthy class to give a new spin to the season."
Enter Clement Moore - wealthy landowner in the beginning of Manhattan's history - he owned all of what we now know as modern Chelsea. His estate, which was one of many, pretty much was all of Chelsea in 1830- was worth $500,000. The equivalent today of an 11 Million dollar estate. Moore had money, and influence.
Pretty much he and his friends were distressed by this wassailing business, and wanted the season to take the attention off of the poor coming into your home, and basically rioting in the street. So what did he do? He wrote: "The Night before Christmas." You know this one, don't you? "It was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring not even a mouse." "ow, I like you thought that this was just a story of Santa Claus described in Moore's poem that was simply an old Dutch tradition brought to the New World and slowly Americanized. But no, that is just what Moore and his friends wanted us to believe.
Moore and his friends were part of an elite social niche known as the Knickerbockers set in the early 19th century in NYC. As a rule, the members were British not Dutch, and belonged to the Episcopal Church. In The Battle for Christmas historian Stephen Nissenbaum describes the Knickerbockers like this: "They were politically conservative, reactionary even, opposed to democracy (which they identified with mob rule), and fearful of both the working class and the new bourgeoisie. The Knickerbockers felt that they belonged to a Patrician class whose authority was under siege. And from that angle, their invention of Santa Claus was part of what we can now see as a larger, ultimately quite serious cultural enterprise: forging a pseudo-Dutch identity for New York with a placid "folk" identity that would provide a cultural counterweight to the commercial bustle and democratic misrule of the early 19th century New Yorkers."
And in short, it worked. Santa became the symbol of Christmas. It moved from the streets to the home. It moved from adults to children. It became domesticated. And what happened to the family relationships on this holiday, when children became the center of attention and the recipients of lavish gifts? Well, the same problems we have today were troublesome at its outset, Christmas became too commercialized. Indeed, as Nissenbaum points out, "The Christmas tree itself, first entered American culture as a ritual strategy designed to cope with what was already being seen, even before the middle of the nineteenth century as a holiday laden with crass materialism - a holiday that had produced a rising generation of greedy, spoiled children." Christmas as Nissenbaum expertly articulates, is an invented tradition.
My response to that Whew! And Ugh! Because where does that leave us? And what the heck do we do with an invented tradition?
Well, I think the key is in the invented part. All of our traditions are invented aren't they? They are all assimilation, amalgamation, appropriation, melding, crafting, re-inventing, mix of the old and the present day. There is nothing new with that, it's just means that we can't go back to something and say "Oh we want to celebrate a pure, authentic Christmas holiday, that taps into the power, values and meaning of the celebration." But here's where I say - so what! In fact, I think that there is a strange grace that we've been given with the celebration of Christmas, because it is - an invented holiday. Which means what? We get to invent it so that it matches our values and our beliefs in a way that is more meaningful, powerful and authentic to our values than the commercialized version it has become. Better yet, we have some places to turn to help us in that construction.
Let's start with Wassailing:
Wassailing is older than Christianity. Hear that again. Older than Christianity. If we want to get to the origins of this season and what to pay attention to, it is this tradition, that stayed around for a couple of thousand years, until Moore and his cronies got rid of it. And wassailing is what? It is the poor wanting, demanding to be seen. The modern day equivalent of this is perhaps a homeless person staring you in the face until you meet their eyes, and see them as human first not as homeless first. It is being seen. It is recognizing that the poor's life and circumstances are different than our own predominantly middle class lives. It means, I think for one day, metaphorically taking them into our homes, and being the host and that we see that as our responsibility. It means sacrificing in small or big ways on their behalf. It means of course, like days of old, that those who have less than we do are the recipients of our hospitality, generosity, and gifts. That at the very least, for one day of the year, we try to reverse the role in significant, meaningful ways.
Since we are inventing - I think A. J. Jacobs' quest has something to add to this as well. In reading his book, how vigilant he is in keeping with his prescribed rules and how hard it is to do alone. From loving your neighbor, to not lying, to turning the other check, to not coveting. It's hard because though he has advisors, he is doing his experiment in isolation. He is trying to live out these values, these prescriptions without community. By his own admission, he admits that he thinks it makes his task even more cumbersome and torturous. Because it is in community when we live our values out together, that we gain insight, and inspiration. It is in community that we get a better picture on how our own values affect and determine others, how they keep us motivated to live out of the best of ourselves, because we can offer support, solidarity and enthusiasm to each together.
In regards to the greater good, I think this whole idea of cutting your holiday spending in half would be nearly impossible to do as an individual family, especially when the consumerist values of Christmas is the water that we all swim in each holiday season. But as I went around this year with youth who proposed the Greater Good projects in the classrooms to 4th graders on up, I was struck by something - community matters. When the youth asked for their peers buy in, and asked them if they were game to cut their Christmas spending in half so others could simply live, they were all in. Why? We'll I'd like to think that we are building empathy and compassion in our religious education classrooms, but I think it is more than that. I think the kids were all in with it, because they had others living out their values right beside them, and it is harder to opt out and easier to opt in when others are doing it with you. Community matters.
And Finally - since we are inventing - I think we have to keep in mind this. This is my Jesus Action figure. My friend Martha gave it to me, and Scott and I keep it on our desk. I must say, I'm a little jealous of course that I got the low end model because evidently there is a deluxe version that comes with 8 loaves of bread, two fish, a jug of wine and his hands well, they glow in the dark because they are miracle hands. But heck, I dig the simpler version and am grateful to Martha for giving it to me. Now our office is filled with Religious statues - Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan. They each serve as different reminders for living well.
For years, Scott and I have tried to find a representation of Jesus that worked for us. But most of them, I'll be frank, are a little on the placid side. Jesus is often rendered as a bored sheepherder, as a baby, or on the cross as a savior. None of these worked, because they don't fit who Jesus was, at least for us. To us, there is no way to read the bible - the words that are attributed to Jesus and not see how radical he was. He questioned the establishment, and was living out his Jewish roots with all of his being, in fact calling his fellow compatriots to live more authentically into their tradition than what he was seeing most of them do. Besides idolatry, there are more references in the bible to taking care of and seeing the poor than anything else. Than anything else. And that is what Jesus made his Jewish ministry of. That's it. He saw the poor, and he worked with them, healed them, acknowledged them, loved them. What did he do, he put his faith into action. And that my friends, is why of course, he should be an action figure! He lived his religion. As should we!
Which means, when you take all the things to invent the holiday with: wassailing - and giving what you have to the poor, living one's values out in community, and of course, celebrating who Jesus was - for those of us who don't believe he died to save our sins, you get to celebrate - Jesus in Action. The Jesus whose life and ministry gave to needs greater than his own. Whose life and ministry were all about living simply so others could simply live. With this grouping, what you get is a celebration of the best we can get to the origins of the holiday, and perhaps - I believe best expressed through the Greater Good.
What we are doing with this is not simple. Yes you will likely have to engage in possible uncomfortable conversations with co-workers about not participating in the secret Santa at work, or with a friend about getting coffee together instead of your yearly shopping trip to NYC. Is that always easy? Nope. I'm with you. When you express your values in such strong ways as participating in the Greater Good, you will undoubtedly get weird looks, and a reversal of judgment about your decision. Is it easy to have that conversation with your children or parent? No, but hopefully this year, it will be easier than last year.
But I do think I can bet you one simple thing.
I guarantee you that by participating in the Greater Good; you will invest yourself and your family in your values. You will be authentic in your living and loving with others. You will have said no to a consumerist culture that most people can't figure out how to get un-entangled from. And you will have made a difference to many, many people's lives. More than just your family, or your friends, or your co-workers, but 100's of school children, who will delight and thrive from your investment in their wellbeing with Rochester Roots, and another couple thousand lives will be transformed, indeed saved in Honduras because of your sacrifice. But if that isn't good enough for you, how about this. I'm betting that by changing around the value of Christmas to be about needs greater than your own, that we will have created a whole generation of children, who will gladly live simply so others can simply live. That it will become their ethos and values, and goal when the holiday rolls around. And I'd bet my house, that that in and of itself, is worth the investment, and the sacrifice.
return to main page