Christmas Series: #1 The Focus
I was fetching my son from preschool the other day and looking at the art they had displayed on the pinboards in the corridor. Over the last few weeks we have seen reindeer, snowmen, Father Christmas, elves, and Christmas trees, and all of those a few times each. On this day the kids had all drawn pictures of elves wrapping presents and at the top of each picture the teacher had written for them "For Christmas I want…" and recorded what each child wanted. I read a few of them:
"For Christmas I want an iPad."
"For Christmas I want a Wii TV Game"
"For Christmas I want a remote control car, a skateboard and a leapster."
It grated me to read what sounded like such demanding requests. I decided to peek my head in to the classroom to see if by any chance there would be evidence of teaching about Jesus' birthday (seeing as though they taught on Diwali during that festival) but instead I found Father Christmas and his reindeer on every conceivable wall and display table, and even massive Santa Claus paper puppets hanging from the ceiling.
Now personally, I'm a fan of tradition and I have very fond memories of my childhood Christmas's. But as I looked at the magnitude to which Father Christmas had already been exalted without my help, I felt that for me to bring a correct understanding of this celebration, I needed to stop aiming for 'balance'. As so often happens, my 6 year old son helped me to put it in perspective.
"You know what this reminds me of, Mom?" he asked looking around his classroom at the things he and his classmates had created. "It reminds me of those guys in the bible long ago, who used to make gods out of gold. Then when they prayed to their gods, and their gods didn't answer because they weren't real and couldn't hear them, they would get cross and melt their gods in a fire and make new gods. We've made all these Father Chrismas's out of paper, and we've told him what we want. If we don't get what we want for Christmas I wonder if we'll just cut up what we made and make a different Father Christmas next year. It's pretty silly."
Ok, so my 6 year old son sounds like a religious fundamentalist. That wasn't my intention, and yet as I listen to him put it so simply, I think, wow, what exactly ARE we trying to teach to our children? That there is a mythical character who rewards good behaviour? Our God is not like that at all. He is not put off by our behaviour. On the contrary, like a (good) parent He loves us no matter whether we deserve it or not, He blesses us far beyond what we can earn, and when we're 'naughty', He makes a way to restore us to His family and our position.
I'm finding more and more as my children are questioning the traditions that I (yes, I, not them) have held dear, I have no answer for them but, "I'm not sure why we do that. Actually, we probably shouldn't do that… Ok, let's scrap it."
We need to look at our traditions and make sure they represent the heart of the celebration. The last thing I want to do is sound like a radical fundamentalist, but then again how can anyone respect a faith that is not authentic? Christianity is a unique faith because in part it has been adopted as the culture of many western countries, South Africa included, and yet for many western Christians it is a code of morals and etiquette, rather than a faith in a God and King. If people around us are ever going to see evidence of the relationship that we have with God, then you can be sure it will be in our authenticity and uniqueness, and not in our keenness to blend in.
