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Did You Know? ...that you can nominate candidates for the CLF Board or Nominating Committee until 1/1/2008? Contact Lorraine at ldennis@clfuu.org or (617) 948-6166.
BY DENNIS HAMILTON, MINISTER, HORIZON UU CHURCH, CARROLTON, TEXAS
(Editor’s note: As you read of Sherman Lumley and the good folks of Bodacia, Texas, you may find yourself wondering whether or not they are real. My best answer is that “real” is not the same as “non-fiction.” Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus—and a town of Bodacia, Texas.)
Well I got a Christmas letter from Sherman Lumley over in Bodacia, Texas. For those of you who have never been to Bodacia, it is a small West Texas town southeast of Amarillo, northwest of Abilene. In fact, if you drive west out of Abilene and keep driving until the NPR signal fades out, you will see a farm-to-market road leading north into the red dirt country. Follow that road ‘til you see the grain elevators. You can’t miss them. They are painted with the proclamation “Jesus is Lord Over Bodacia, Texas” and below that, sandwiched between two ferocious bulls wearing football helmets, “Home of the Fighting Brahmas.”
Sometimes it is good to get some perspective on life in the big city by going to the small town. Things can happen in a place like Bodacia where everybody has a name and your reputation is earned early and stays with you all your life, where people live by their beliefs and die by their prejudices, but where, if you look hard enough, you find out that compassion is still accessible beneath the prejudice.
Sherman Lumley is the agnostic hardware store owner. Anyway, Sherman has news from Bodacia. Here’s the letter:
Dear Preacher Boy,
Sherman Lumley here, bringing news from Bodacia, West Texas, where drivers still wave to each other, generosity and small mindedness have found a way to coexist, and the horizon keeps receding into the sunset no matter how far you drive—just like the future.
Well it’s Christmas time in Bodacia again, and I have to fill you in on the details of last year’s Battle for Christmas. As you know, the city has been decorating the courthouse there at the corner of Church and State Street for many years. You might remember the controversy twenty years ago when they got a new preacher at the Baptist church. He had taken Greek in Bible College and when it was his turn to put up the lights on the courthouse roof, he spelled out “Bodacia, Keeping the X in Xmas,” which confused all the other preachers. He explained that the X meant Christ in Greek, and you had to read it “Keeping the Christ in Christmas” but it sure raised a ruckus. That controversy was viewed as the battle against modernity by the Church of Christ back in the eighties. They were suggesting that the Baptist church was abandoning traditional values. It was an in-house battle as far as I was concerned. Well, I got an outhouse battle going last year.
As you know, I never have been much of a believer. The longer I live in Bodacia, the less I think I believe. I been gripin’ about hypocrites and back-biters for forty years. I been damned and cursed more times than Satan hisself. I pissed off every single preacher I ever met and scandalized every church lady I could—just because I have been so sick of all that religious goody-good stuff on Sunday and all the petty nonsense the rest of the week.
But somehow I stuck it out here, and I don’t know why, but I do love these stiff-necked, wrong headed, Samaritan-hating-Pharisees—because for all their shortcomings, they are still the most generous, courageous and funny people I ever knew. And they’re my people. And they might disagree with me, but I am theirs as well, their boy to work on, to try to save. And as agin’ religion as I have been, I saw something that has even me about to say “Hallelujah!”
It was all about the nativity scene they put on the lawn of the court house. I have been opposed to mixing church and state all my adult life, but since we formed the Tumbleweed Unitarian Universalist Fellowship here in Calamity County, more people have come out of the woodwork voicing their religious opinions. Actually, I liked being the only heretic in Bodacia. Now we have forty-one heretics, all members of the Tumbleweed UU Fellowship.
Anyway, at the Fellowship we had a big discussion about the nativity scene last year. Some were for suing the town and county. Some, the Fellowship’s Christian Group, thought we ought to help sponsor it. So the Fellowship’s Social Transformation Council decided it would bring the matter to the public’s attention. The Fellowship invited the mayor, and the pastors of the Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, and AME churches to come debate the issue with the public and other interested parties, namely the Unitarian Universalists. Ruth Ellen Carpenter, the president of the Fellowship, would preside.
I gotta say, being in a small town where everybody knows everybody else can be intimidating. For years, nobody wanted to speak out for fear of being ostracized. But I gotta hand it to Ruth Ellen Carpenter, our young lay leader. She is fearless. And she has an innocent faith in humanity that I lost forty years ago. And since she is a UU Christian, she can take it to the Fundamentalists like I cannot. In Dallas, you probably couldn’t get fifteen people to turn out for a debate on the separation of church and state. In Bodacia, it was just about the biggest thing since, well, since the last religious debate. Everybody had to come see the fireworks and bet on which pastor would win the debate.
So Ruthie gets this forum going and begins with the issue of the nativity being a religious symbol and how some say the separation of church and state makes it unconstitutional to have religious images on public property. She reminds everyone of the case in Mississippi with the Ten Commandments monument being declared unconstitutional. That brings gasps to half the crowd, since it was news, but it does start the debate with some fuel. Pastor Brimstone begins saying America is a Christian nation and as such the nativity scene is just a matter of public record, a historical monument like the statue of Robert E. Lee. Of course it belongs on the lawn. Ned Goldstein, who owns the jewelry store, stands up and says as a Jew he thinks it is wrong to impose one religion on the whole town. Pastor Brimstone snaps back something about the Jews wanting to kill Jesus again. And Ned says, “No, you can keep the nativity scene. After all, Jesus was a Jew. But I would like for the city to have a nice big menorah as well to honor Hannukah.” Well, that brings a half hour debate on what a menorah is and what Hannukah is and if it’s in the Bible doesn’t that make it a Christian holiday and so on. Hosiah Smote, the Church of Christ pastor, finally defines the moment saying that as long as it’s in the Bible he can go along with it. And that brings enough agreement to go on.
Then the Pagan Council from Tumbleweed says any public display of the season should be inclusive of the Earth Centered traditions and include all the Pagan images, namely just about everything held sacred about Christmas, like Christmas trees, Santa, elves, reindeer, holly, lights, stars, shepherds, mangers, virgins giving birth to saviors, magi, gifts, Yule logs, wassail, Christmas carols, the whole shebang. Well this is met with stunned silence and then an eruption of outrage that the pagans are claiming Jesus. “Why it’s as if Satan himself stole Christmas,” one says. And I say, “Satan, Santa, same difference. It’s just creeping materialism.” And that doesn’t help. Ruthie calms everyone down and then the pastor from the African Methodist Episcopal church, Kenny Karenga, stands up and says he wants to see a nice Kwanzaa display on the courthouse lawn along with all the pagan stuff.
The Baptists then say they are going to withdraw their nativity scene if it has to be surrounded by all the pagan stuff, and Ruthie says that if they don’t sponsor the nativity scene, the Christians at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship will sponsor it. This really confuses matters since it’s obvious that the Unitarians are heathens, and how could they be sponsoring the town’s Christian tradition!
So Mayor Blauhardt, in an effort to restore reason and civility, offers to host a council of interested parties to design the decorations for the following year, this year. And he asks Ruthie Carpenter to head it up, since she was the instigator all along. And she agrees. And since none of the other churches want to be left out, since the courthouse is, after all, the identity of Bodacia, its central focus, they agree to be part of the task force.
So this year, in January, they began what Ruth Ellen called a study to prepare them for the later Christmas decoration planning. Ruthie held a series of town meetings where anybody could come and offer opinions, agree to help, debate what she called the two choices: the separation of church and state or the inclusion of all religions. She invited some outside speakers, a rabbi from Amarillo and a professor from Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, to come and speak on the issues, and after seven monthly meetings, she just wore out the town. She just kept bringing them back to what she said was most important to her: answering the question, “What would Jesus do?” And she kept bringing up the embarrassing fact that he wasn’t a Christian after all, and that he would probably just have a menorah on his front lawn if it was up to him, but bein’ as how he loved the little children how he surely would also have Santa Claus and a Christmas tree and presents for everybody.
Well, if there is one thing that sways the people of Bodacia, it is the children. And coupled with tradition, the traditions of Christmas with all the decorations and pageants and Grinches and Rudolphs and all the other historical figures, nobody was going to take all that away.
Anyway, I just gotta tell you how it all came out this year. On the lawn of the courthouse, right in the center, was a nativity scene. The Hispanic Catholic church ended up doing it this year with all Latino figures and a brown faced Jesus for the first time. On the corner was a gigantic plastic menorah with blue electric bulbs and a huge sign with the logo of the high school football team saying, “The Fighting Brahmas, Underdogs Win in the End.”
On the other corner was a thatched hut that looks like an African village, with a red, black and green Black Nationalist Liberation flag, and some banners and food offerings and another large candelabra with electric lights in red and green. The chamber of commerce sponsored a Santa and reindeer display with a sleigh filled with presents, and in the town square with the gazebo is the Christmas tree filled with angels that were made by children in an “everybody-wins” competition for the best angels.
But the best thing, I think, was the display of lights on the courthouse roof. This was arranged as a surprise by the Interfaith Council. When they lit the tree last week, they asked Ruthie to give a little speech about the decorations. So she got up on the gazebo, all twinkling with lights and this is what she said:
I took on this job of organizing Bodacia’s Christmas display because nobody else seemed willing to take it on. And it promised to be a divisive, abusive, battle. But as we talked it over and listened to each other, as we heard the stories of Pastor Kerenga and Ned Goldstein and Father Alejandro and Alice and Betty Waterfall, and Bimal and Sundri, our resident Sikhs, we heard stories of fear, of hope, of the desire to be part of a family instead of outcasts. We listened to each other and heard the heartfelt confessions of some wanting to save others from perdition, others wanting to save everyone from narrow-mindedness and fear, others who were just sick of the bickering and just wanted to have Christmas the way it always was, and still others who gave impassioned pleas to open our hearts to the spirit of this little child who was born poorer than any of us, and died trying to bring the rule of love into our world.
I know that there is no way to satisfy everyone, but this is America, and we are not promised that we will always get our way. We are promised that we will get our say, however, and we have accomplished this. And I believe we have come to a place where we can say that our individual wills are not as important as the greater will of goodness and understanding and compassion and generosity that has been reborn this holiday season in Bodacia.
This tree with its many angels made by our children represents the lost innocence that we once had, and the hope that we all should still have. It represents not only the invisible forces of goodness and community that are at the heart of this little town of Bodacia, but also the possibility that lies beyond all our creeds and beliefs, beyond our racial or ethnic identities, the possibility of one world united by love, the way I believe Jesus would want it. And whether you are a Christian or a Jew or a Sikh or a pagan or whatever, if you are willing to come to worship that which is beyond our divisions, that which gives us life, then we will be living out the promise that I believe Jesus had in mind when he taught us to love our enemies and to take the splinter out of our own eye first before we judge our neighbors.
You have done this by your willingness to be a community, even though I promise you we will never be in complete agreement over anything. Some of you will still believe that those who don’t agree with you are going to hell, but there’s not much we can do about that except try to convince you that God would never let go of a lost lamb. We all have to live together and you have accomplished a great thing this year. We have come to this day and still love one another and you should be proud. We have lit our tree. Now let us light our court house roof. Pastor Brimstone?
Here the crowd turned away from the tree and toward the courthouse. A switch was flipped and there in all its glory, emblazoned across the roof in blinking, frolicking, chasing multicolored lights,
“Happy Hannu-Christma-Kwansaa-Kah, Bodacia”
“God bless us everyone.”
Well, Preacher Boy, that’s the news from Bodacia. Where the minds are small, the hearts are big and the horizon goes on forever.
Yours truly, Sherman Lumley I love getting news from Bodacia. It may be hard to find on a map, but if you look closely, it can be found anywhere on the face of the earth: in India, in Israel, in Minnesota, or here in my town of Carrollton, Texas.
P.S. Ruthie says she saw the “Hannu-Christma-Kwansaa-Kah” in a commercial on TV and thought it was a great idea.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
The middle of December. I know what it’s like. I know what goes on. The time has come. You bundle up, start the car and drive in the drizzle over to The Mall. You can’t find a parking place. Finally you spot somebody—a fellow walking to his car—and slowly, you follow him as he wanders around the parking lot, drifting from aisle to aisle, lane to lane, until he finally finds his car, fumbles with his packages and car keys, gets in, smokes a cigarette, and vacates the parking space. Why are you in single-minded pursuit of this space? You need this parking space because 2000 years ago, a baby was born in a stable.
The store is crowded. It’s 30% off, plus the 10% off coupon you hope you really did put in your pocket on your way out the door. You purchase the percolator for your mother-in-law even though as it turns out, the 30% off does not apply to “small appliances” and the coupon wasn’t in your pocket after all. You harvest a number of Christmas presents, a baby doll — “Baby Wiggles and Giggles” to be precise — an electronic dart board, a large bottle of rum, a gingerbread house with M&Ms on it, a chain saw, an oversized tin can of caramel and cheese flavored popcorn, and some gift bags with illustrations of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on them. Oh. And an inexpensive Grinch wristwatch for yourself, and a red sweater, too, for those parties coming up.
Why are you buying the reindeer bags and the chain saw and the gingerbread house? You spend your money and your time on percolators and popcorn because—well because once upon a time, it is told, a wrinkled little baby was born to a mother named Mary.
Back in the car, you’re off to buy your Christmas tree. The lot is full of trees. Short trees, tall trees, medium trees. For the life of you, suddenly you just can’t picture the height of your own living room ceiling. You take a guess, drag the tree over to the register and pay for it, and only then wonder how in the world you’ll get the darn thing home. Should have thought of that before. So you borrow some twine, drive the tree home on the roof of the car, wrestle it into the stand, untangle all those lights, exclaim at how many are burned out, and begin the desperate annual training maneuvers for your cat and dog, who never remember the Christmas tree rules from year to year.
Why did you bring a full-fledged spruce into your living room and wind a couple of strings of electric light bulbs around it? You put a tree in your house with lights on it because, you see, 2000 years ago, there was this baby born in a desert town far, far away. And you are celebrating.
Whew. You’re tired. But you keep on going. You roll out the dough, nicely chilled by now, and you cut it into cookie shapes. A bell. A camel. A star. A bow. A snowman. A round Santa Claus. Another camel. Another bell. Over and over again until the dough is warm and sticky and small, even what with all that flour.
At last you sit at the kitchen table and have a drink of eggnog. The holiday music is on: “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow,” and a snappy little medley that includes something about three ships, holly and ivy, bells that jingle, and bringing a torch. Why are you baking snowman cookies to further tunes of drumming boys and midnights clear? You are singing and baking because along about 2000 years ago, that baby was born as the animals watched, and this is how you recognize that. Not you literally—you yourself may stay away from malls, Rudolph, and cookie dough. You may celebrate different holidays altogether—but plenty of people do celebrate this way in December.
Do you ever wonder what happened to the good old days, when the connection to Jesus at Christmas was strong, where the horse drew the sleigh, and the tree was trimmed with cranberries and popcorn and simple homemade ornaments? Where you gave an orange as a present, or a hair ribbon? Where you sat by the fire surrounded by a large and loving family, ate your Christmas pudding, and sang “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”? Have you ever wanted to replicate the days gone by when the spiritual meaning of Christmas was first and foremost, and economic indicators were completely unheard of?
I hope not, because those days never existed. When we wax nostalgic about the uncomplicated days when the spiritual aspects of Christmas prevailed, those days before Christmas went commercial, those temperate days when Christmas was religious and pure—we are dreaming—making it all up.
Christmas didn’t really get going in the United States until the mid-eighteen hundreds, and at that point Americans created their own holiday. From the beginning, Christmas celebrations were about merriment and presents and food and songs and cards and getting together and making money and buying frivolous decorations. From the very beginning Americans put together whatever they felt like putting together, and we’ve called that hodgepodge “Christmas.”
So what we have is some people making strudel in celebration of Christmas, and some ordering poinsettias, and some creating a nativity scene in the front yard, and others building a doll house for a grandchild. A few folks send a heap of Christmas cards; some drive around and look at lights, others sing Christmas carols up and down the street. Some eat the cookies that the other people bake—somebody’s got to do it—others take children to visit Santa.
It may be just as important to mention that nobody does everything. I am certain that some among us do not shop for or receive presents. Others don’t bother with cards. I know that there are people who have a terrible sinking feeling that they might get roped into going to the Nutcracker again this year, but usually they get out of it. Many have never ever baked a Christmas cookie. Lots don’t socialize with family—maybe with anybody at all. Plenty of people give up on the Christmas tree, and are quite content to take or leave any number of Christmas customs, or, quite frankly, the whole ball of wax. But still, Christmas is out there, there’s no denying that.
I’m pretty sure that ministers are supposed to be able to observe all the Christmas commotion, to look at popular culture in December—the elves and the manger and the figgy pudding—and discern the true meaning of Christmas. It’s probably in my contract. And nobody thinks that ministers should be allowed to proclaim that the true meaning of Christmas has to do with shopping and partying and decorating and eating. But the horrible truth is, historically speaking, I think that might be it. Reveling, not religious piety, may be our heritage.
Let’s go way back. In the 4th Century, the Roman Church had a problem. Officially, the Church wanted to say that Jesus was God. But a sizable minority, our own direct theological ancestors, the ancient Arians, believed that Jesus was entirely human. The Church was beginning to promote the idea of the Trinity, and we did not go along with it.
The Arians—we—did eventually lose that battle, but along the way we were enough of a threat that the official church felt it politic to throw us a bone, and that bone was to admit that Jesus had at least been born just as a human being is born.
So Jesus got to have a birthday. The actual date, of course, slipped all over the calendar for awhile, until another bone needed to be thrown—this time to the pagans. The pagan celebrations had persisted in spite of the best efforts of the Church, so the Church decided to set the date of Jesus’ birthday celebration during Saturnalia and the winter solstice, when Romans were feasting and reveling anyway. Right at that point, in the early 300s, is when the sacred first tried to interject itself into the annual celebration. But mostly, it didn’t work out. The people wanted to party.
We can follow the Christmas festivities over the centuries up into Scandinavia by the 6th Century, where they fused with the pagan Norse feast season known as Yule; by the 11th Century the celebrating had traveled into England. By the 17th Century, the English were dancing, sporting, card playing, gambling, and feasting on Christmas, and they provided one another with elaborate pageants for further entertainment. To be sure, the Church continued its fervent hope that Christian piety would overtake the profane customs of Christmas. Nonetheless, the true meaning of Christmas persisted, and that true meaning can be summed up in the phrase: “eat, drink, and be merry.”
Now. Enter the Puritan reformers in England, who condemned the Christmas revelers as “hel hounds” in a “Deville’s daunce” of merriment. One Puritan writer asks, “Into what a stupendous height of more than pagan impiety...have we not now degenerated!” He believed that Christmas ought to be “rather a day of mourning than rejoicing,” not a time spent in “amorous mixt, voluptuous, unchristian, that I say not pagan, dancing, to God’s, to Christ’s dishonour, religion’s scandal, chastities’ shipwracke and sinne’s advantage.”
Before we know it, the Puritans crossed the ocean and ruled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and sure enough, in 1659, Christmas was outlawed. Cotton Mather said, “Can you in your consciences think that our holy saviour is honored by mirth, by long eating, by hard drinking, by lewd gaming, by rude revelling ...? Shall it be said that at the birth of our Saviour...we take the time to please the hellish legions and to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?” In the U.S., the Christmas celebrations got off to a slow start.
Time goes by. People from all over Europe show up in America with their Christmas customs. The picture isn’t pretty, though, the way it plays out. On Christmas, young rowdies took to the streets and went “wassailing,” that is to say they laid siege to the homes of the well-off, demanding free drink and food in a menacing game of trick or treat. In Boston, first the Universalists, then the Unitarians, opened their church doors on Christmas in the hope of calming things down, but that experiment failed.
In the mid-eighteen hundreds, American culture changed. We had roads and railroads, a national mail system, magazines, and city life. People longed for the simple life, they were impatient with the street reveling on Christmas, so they inadvertently invented a new kind of Christmas: “innovative nostalgia,” one scholar calls it. Christmas trees—not that you cut down in the woods, but that you bought in town. Christmas dinner. Stores opened ‘til midnight for shopping. Store-bought Christmas cards with the message printed right on them. Carols, hot off the press, that sounded traditional. Store-bought Christmas tree ornaments. Santa Claus gets invented. Magazines publish articles on how to prepare a so-called “traditional Christmas.” Churches begin to want a piece of the action—even they begin to decorate for Christmas.
Unitarians got into the act: Charles Dickens, a Unitarian in England, wrote A Christmas Carol. Unitarian minister Edmund Hamilton Sears wrote the carol, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” the first carol with a social-ethical message, unheard of at the time. “Peace on earth and good will,” people said, “just the sort of thing you would expect from a Unitarian.”
The list of Unitarian contributions goes on and on: John Bowring wrote “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night,” and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Charles Follen, the minister in East Lexington, Massachusetts, introduced the Christmas tree to New England, and James Pierpont wrote “Jingle Bells.”
The point is, all along, people have invented their Christmas. We have established what we need to establish to get through the winter. There’s no way for any of us to do Christmas “right.” We don’t have to do all of Christmas. We don’t have to worry that by enjoying our friends and families, or by decorating and buying and baking, we’re missing out on the true meaning of Christmas. We don’t have to worry that somehow we’ve lost the spiritual essence of Christmas, because Christmas never had a pre-packaged spiritual essence in the first place—we develop that ourselves.
For each one of us, the Christmas we have is the Christmas we choose: the quiet holiday alone with the candle and the passage from Luke, the crazy bustle where you travel a lot of miles and enter the chaos of feasting with family or friends, the Christmas volunteering at a shelter, the Christmas with little children, the Christmas ignored—or so decked out that even the dog wears a big red bow. We keep the customs; we create the heritage.
Why do we buy the gigantic can of caramel popcorn and the percolator and “Baby Wiggles and Giggles”? Because coffee and popcorn and baby dolls could make a loved one happy. And love can be a part of Christmas.
Why do we install a Christmas tree in an apartment that’s already too small, decorated with this and that and lights all around? Because it’s pretty and fun and the tree lights the darkness. And lighting the darkness can be a part of Christmas.
Why do we knock ourselves out baking cookies in the shapes of stars and singing carols that highlight new baby life and peace and joy? Because we love to hope, and hope can be a part of Christmas.
Love, light, and hope. A fine Christmas indeed.
The Church of the Larger Fellowship regularly adds a variety of books and CDs to its library. To browse and order from the CLF library go to www.clfuu.org/library, or contact library@clfuu.org or (617) 948-6150 for more information. A few recent highlights:
Singing the Living Tradition (CD) Bonnie Ettinger, Pianist Piano accompaniment, including introductions and all verses, for selected Unitarian Universalist hymns.
Notable American Unitarians, 1936-1961 Herbert F. Vetter, 2007 Biographies of American Unitarians who contributed greatly to civilization.
Amethyst Beach: Meditations Barbara Merritt, Skinner House, 2007 The 2007 UUA Meditation Manual, this collection of essays connects the everyday with the divine.
Did I Say That Out Loud? Musings from a Questioning Soul Meg Barnhouse, Skinner House, 2006 Nearly forty essays filled with humor, sharp wit, optimism and wisdom.
Beacon Press and the Pentagon Papers Allison Trzop, Beacon Press, 2006 Publication of the Pentagon Papers, exposing White House secret cables and official lies, is a textbook case of the penalties that follow secret government. Trzop examines the risks and consequences of UU publisher Beacon Press’s choice to publish these secret documents.
Coming of Age Collected by Edward Searl Skinner House, 2006 A treasury of poems, quotations and readings on growing up.
Evensong: An Eight-Week Series of Gatherings for Families Barbara Hamilton-Holway Skinner House, 2006 This addition to the popular Evensong series offers weekly covenant group sessions for families.
How to Bury a Goldfish And other ceremonies and celebrations for everyday life Virginia Lang and Louise Nayer Skinner House, 2007 Offers more than 100 new traditions and rituals to commemorate and honor significant moments and milestones.
Unitarian Universalism: A Narrative History David E. Bumbaugh Meadville/Lombard Press, 2000 This succinct history spends equal time on the European roots and American development of our two liberal traditions.
The Courage to be Liberal How do we face the challenge of being a liberal in an age where conservatism is considered the keeper of values, morality, and common sense?
Taught by Dr. Peg Shaffer, a lifelong UU and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Educational Studies at Ball State University in Indiana, this course begins January 4th and runs four weeks.
Raising Ethical Children The foundation of ethical practices and a concern for justice starts with what children learn from a very early age. This course is designed both to help parents apply their own sense of ethics to their childrearing practices, and to assist parents in finding ways to develop a sense of ethics and responsibility in their children.
Taught by the Rev. Ken Reeves, a UU minister and clinical psychologist, this course begins February 18th and runs four weeks. To enroll, or to find out more about these and other online classes from the CLF, go to www.clfuu.org/learn. Classes carry a $40 enrollment fee.n
Shopping for Holiday Gifts? Don’t forget that the CLF shop offers chalice jewelry, note cards, luggage straps, posters, the gift of a subscription to Quest and more for your favorite UU. Shop online at www.clfuu.org/catalog or call (617) 948-6150.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
People tend to refer to December as “the holiday season,” meaning that we have festivities for Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa and more at this time of year. But the oldest holiday of this season, and the one that many December holidays hark back to, is the Winter Solstice, sometimes called Yule. The Winter Solstice is really a scientific holiday, since it is based not on any particular story or belief system, but rather on honoring the point in the year when we have the shortest day and the longest night. You can find out more details about the solstice here. Or you might want to make up your own story, the way Josephina Mouse did…
The Longest Night of the Year Josephina Mouse had been noticing, and she didn’t like what she’d been seeing. In all of her short life when she woke up in the morning the sun was shining, and it went on shining until well after she was tired out with the day’s scurrying and searching and nibbling. But for days and days, too many to count, the morning light had seemed to get more and more dim, as if the sun were tired, and in the evening the sun seemed to be going to bed earlier and earlier, as if it weren’t feeling very well.
That night, snug in their burrow, Josephina asked her mother, “Mama, what’s wrong with the sun? It doesn’t shine as long as it used to, and when it does shine it isn’t nearly as warm. Is the sun sick? Is it old?”
“Oh, Silly Little Twitch-Whiskers, the sun is old, older than me, or Grandma, or old Mr. ‘Possum who’s lived in this forest longer than anyone can remember, but it isn’t tired or sick. This is just what the sun does this time of year. It’s called winter.”
"But why? Why does the sun do this?”
“Oh, Miss Nosiest of Little Pink Noses, that’s just what it does.”
“Why?”
Josephina’s mother stopped and thought for a moment. “Perhaps the great Winter Mouse up in the sky nibbles away at the sun, so that there’s less and less to shine. Don’t worry, soon the Mouse will go to sleep, and the sun will start to grow back.”
“But I don’t see nibble marks,” said Josephina Mouse. “I’m sure the moon gets nibbled away bit by bit, then grows back to a circle again. But there’s no piece missing on the sun.”
“Oh, Miss Bright Eyes, you’re a clever one. Perhaps the sun gets dusty through all of its long journeys and can’t shine so bright. Don’t worry. The great Winter Raccoon up in the sky will come and wash the sun, scrubbing with her clever paws day after day until the sun shines bright again.”
“But Raccoon washes her food before she eats it. Will the Winter Raccoon eat up the sun? What will we do then?”
“Oh, Miss Worry Paws, you can stop rubbing your hands that way. There’s really no such thing as the Winter Raccoon. Winter comes because the great Winter Raven in the sky spreads his wings out over the earth to go flying. His black wings are so wide that they cover the whole sky. If you look up at night you can see the bright stars he hides in his feathers. You know how Raven loves anything shiny. Don’t worry, eventually he gets tired, and takes shorter and shorter flights. When he’s sleeping his wings don’t block the sun, and it gets warm again.”
“But where does such a big bird find a place to roost? Where is the tree that goes all the way up into the sky?”
“Oh, Miss Wide Ears, does anyone listen as carefully as you? Since you’re such a clever one, why don’t you tell me what happens so that the light is less.”
Now it was Josephina’s turn to stop. She hid her eyes behind her paws for a moment as she tried to imagine. “Maybe,” she said, “maybe the whole world is a great acorn rolling through the sky. Maybe where we live is up by the cap, and other animals, in a forest far, far away, live down by the pointy tip. Maybe the acorn rolls in such a way that for a time the cap comes closer to the sun, and we see it longer and feel it brighter. And then, later in the year, maybe the pointy tip rolls closer to the sun, and the animals down there get warm while here it gets cold and dark. Don’t worry. Soon the acorn will roll back, and everyone who lives on the cap will have warmth and light, and the flowers will bloom, and we’ll all go searching for seeds and nuts.”
“Yes, oh Miss Tail So Long it Tells Tales of Its Own, I’m sure that must be how it is. But for now there are seeds in the burrow, and it’s time for sleep.”
Josephina Mouse curled up close against her mother’s warm, soft side, and as she drifted into sleep her dreams began with the bright, cold stars shining down on the longest night of the year.
Almost everybody in the Christmas story was amazed. Joseph, we know, had been confused for some time since learning of the manner in which his beloved had come to be with child. The wise men and shepherds hadn’t a clue to what was really happening. Only Mary understood that the spirit can work wonders.
But then, that is the whole point of the story, isn’t it? That the gracious gifts in our lives come when they are least expected, when the barn is most crowded and the air most stuffy.
In the midst of all that yawning chaos a miracle has occurred. Somehow surprise has broken through the dull thread of frustration to disclose a new beginning. Somehow hope has shattered busyness in the interests of the gracious, and the old world has earned a second chance.
It is not always easy to believe this in July when the holidays are six months behind us. Sometimes it is even harder to believe it in December when they are right upon us! But there is a point to all the chaos, just as there was that night so long ago—that surprise must follow consternation to be saving, and that the gift of grace can show its face, with or without good planning.
by the Rev. William Schulz, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Asssociation, excerpted from the president’s column in the November, 1986 issue of the UU World
Last updated November 17, 2007
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