December 1999
 From Your Minister
by Rev. Jane Ranney Rzepka, minister, CLF
Still in the Game
I read a newsletter column by one of our Unitarian Universalist ministers in Salt Lake City, Tom Goldsmith, that I liked a lot. He describes a basketball player named Walter, a clear second-string player of enormous girth, unknown reputation, and ill-fitting shorts. The crowd had come to the game to see Mitch, the star, but Mitch fouled out early on. Thus Walter.
Walter played his heart out, once he overcame his bewilderment at being in the game at all. He jumped "as high as angels fly" in order to retrieve the ball, and the crowd loved him. He was really something!
| It doesn't get any darker than it gets about now. We sit here on our little planet; tilted into darkness and cold. The night is too long. And too cold.
So if we're Northerners, we do what people did in ancient times, long before churches and pews, long before Santa, long before Jesus, long before Hanukkah: We kindle a flame when the dark is darkest.
Already we are celebrating. And then we add Hanukkah. And so, according to the Jewish calendar, at the waning of the moon nearest the winter solstice, when sun and moon abandon us all, the time is right to light the Menorah, as we make our way out of the darkness.
Thus we add the victory of Judah Maccabee during the second century before the Common Era. Remembering the rededication of the temple, the story of the miraculous oil, we imagine the eight days of hope, born of despair. Eight days of light in the midst of spiritual darkness. We light the Menorah, that the spirit of freedom and miracle may burn for
everyone.
Still we are celebrating as we add another story, the story of a baby. Brand new. Flesh and blood. All wrinkled up. The Christmas baby Jesus. Who knew what would happen? All kinds of stories. The baby sneezed. Would he be wondrous? The baby cried. Would he save us all? The baby chortled. Miracle of miracles, a baby who taught us that the human spirit can do great things. That love is worth lifting up. In the coldest part of the year, we added a baby, that we might celebrate our deepest love.
We are celebrating the coming light, the miracles, the baby, and so we drag a tree in, and candles, and latkes. Ding Dong Merrily we go see Santa, we string up those lights and the holly and the ivy, we eat and we greet and we give and we receive that we might feel hope and joy and all good spirits. All best wishes of the season.
| Tom reminds us at the end of his column that saviors don't all look alike, that sometimes, great gifts do come in large packages, and that there are miracles in all of us.
That got me thinking about my own holiday message and three of my own conclusions with respect to Walter and the basketball court.
Point one. Sometimes, we don't live up to the stereotype. We aren't seven feet tall, most of us; and we aren't scoring any points. But still, there we are on the court, in the game, running around, jumping as high as we can, and that turns out to be more than enough.
In the holiday game, we may not have the presents completely under control, or maybe it's the food part, or the holiday cards still in cellophane, but we're still in the game. We have plenty of time to make one person happy with an extra smooch, or a phone call, or a trip around the block to see the Christmas lights or the night sky. Whatever we can do usually turns out to be more than enough. It worked for Walter on the basketball court, and it works for us during the holidays.
Some of us, though, are still on the bench. We get to feeling that we're in a rut. Nothing to do with the holidays especially, it's more the general time of year. It's dark. It's cold. We feel as if we're second string. Nothing's happening. We're 23 years old or 42 or 68 or 88 and we still haven't made our millions or achieved the perfect family life or written a best seller or found the career that suits us best. It's diaper upon diaper, or another unwelcome foreign post, or the same old grind at work, or we're a little scared that time is running out.
Point two is that the message of "Walter" kicks in, although we're more accustomed to calling it "the holiday spirit." The message is that we get another chance. The new baby Jesus is born with outrageous wonders in store. We can take that good news to heart and if we want to, we get a new life of our own, we get into the game in some new way, energized, hopeful, renewed. The Hanukkah story is the story of another miraculous chance—same with the solstice. We are in the game again, and we run and we jump, and maybe we never shoot the winning basket, in fact we may not score two points, but what a game we're playing, and how good it feels.
Point three is about miracles—the kind that happen every day—the unlikeliness of the good things that happen to each one of us. We know what the chances were for Walter of capturing the hearts of the fans, but a new day dawned for him, and the fans just loved him.
We're on the receiving end of that kind of luck too—all of us are. For one thing, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the days get shorter and shorter. And shorter. And then, in an unlikely move, on an ordinary day like today, the days will get longer. Even though the sunrise will be no earlier than the day before, the sunset will be later.
The solstice will arrive. For every one of us, the sun will come around again with its new light, just like that. New light. New spirit.
So I like the piece about Walter on the basketball court. It's a good reading for this time of year, for a day like today when we're ready to acknowledge the miracles, the promise, the spirit, and the liveliness of the season. It's holiday time, bathed in new light, and we, each one of us, are in the game.
Jane Rzepka, Minister
Quest December 1999 Contents
 REsources for Living
Betsy Hill Williams, Religious Education Director, CLF
It's the night before Christmas. Two children plus their parents, all bundled up against the biting cold, drive past the brightly lit store windows and straggling shoppers to the place where they spend every Christmas Eve. Their faces shine, the excitement is contagious. They carry a box, a lantern, and a blanket, and we aren't quite sure what they're up to.
So begins the engaging Chinaberry book review of a new children's book by Eve Bunting, Night Tree. It turns out the family is headed deep into the woods to greet an old friend: an evergreen tree that has been "their" tree every Christmas Eve "forever and ever."Out of the box they take popcorn chains, apples, and oranges strung on strings, and sunflower seeds pressed with suet and honey—all for hanging on the tree. And there are breadcrumbs and pieces of apple to scatter under the tree for the creatures that don't climb or fly. After they decorate the tree, they all settle on the blanket to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and sing a few bars of their favorite Christmas carols.
Without even looking at the pictures, I knew I wanted to do this. I love the tradition of bringing greens indoors each year, but I do cringe as I watch 18-wheel flatbed trucks stacked with hundreds of twine-wrapped evergreens zoom down the highway. And in response to such apparent excess, my family has had its' share of "Christmas trees" from the backyard: thin and scraggly and taking the shape of a Christmas tree only loosly, if at all. I'm definitely buying this book. And this year, I'm going to suggest that our family add this wonderful idea to our
Christmas tree tradition.
Notice I use the word "add." Because I know that bringing in the green will always be a part of my Christmas, as it has been at the heart of winter celebrations for thousands of years. And the Christmas tree tradition has a unique place in Unitarian Universalist history as well.
According to Edna Barth (Holly, Reindeer, and Colored Lights: The Story of Christmas Symbols), the first record of a Christmas tree is in a German book dated 1604. Origins of the practice, however, date much further back. In the winter solstice celebration known as Saturnalia, Romans decorated trees and placed an image of the sun god at the tip. Druid priests in the Celtic region that is now England and France, decorated oak trees with gilded apples and lighted candles to honor the sun god and the god of fruit.
With Christianity came new symbolic interpretations of the Christmas tree. One legend tells of a missionary in Germany who, in trying to convert the pagans of the area, cut down the oak under which they were worshipping. In its place, a small fir tree miraculously
appeared. The missionary told
those gathered that the fir tree was the tree of Christ, a symbol of goodness and love that should be taken into their homes. Another legend involves Martin Luther, the 16th century German Protestant leader. One Christmas Eve, inspired by the beauty of the tall firs against the starry night sky, he cut a tree down and took it home to his family. There he decorated it with lights to symbolize the stars in the heavens above Bethlehem.
By the 18th century, the tradition of bringing a tree indoors and decorating it with candles and ornaments was widespread throughout Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. German soldiers, fighting for the British against the American Colonists during the Revolutionary War, set up Christmas trees to remind them of home. But it did not become a popular tradition in America until much later. Many of the early colonies outlawed the celebration of Christmas, because the Puritans considered it nothing but a rowdy, pagan celebration with no biblical sanction. With the influx of Europeans after the war, many different Christmas customs came to America, including the German Christmas tree and Kris Kringle. So popular were these customs and traditions, that soon all states made Christmas a legal holiday.
One of the people credited with introducing the Christmas tree in America was Dr. Charles Follen. A German-born professor at Harvard University, Follen wanted his young son and family to experience the magic of the glowing Christmas trees of his childhood. One year he surprised them with a fully decorated and lighted tree. The Follen family invited neighbors to gather round their indoor tree. One of the guests wrote about the event in a local magazine, and a New England tradition was born. Charles Follen later became a Unitarian minister. The Follen Community Church in Lexington, Massachusetts, known to some as "The Christmas Tree Church," is named after its first
minister, Charles Follen.
So as the days get short and the holiday season approaches, gather your family and explore the woods or parks near you. Find a tree to adopt as your every-year-evergreen Christmas tree. On Christmas Eve, or perhaps on the winter solstice, decorate your tree with edible gifts for all the wild animals. Make this an annual event and as you return to your tree year after year, your family, like the little boy in Night Tree, will notice changes and growth—in the tree and in themselves.
Quest December 1999 Contents
Last updated June 12, 2005
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