A Christmas Tapestry1

Christmas in America has something for virtually everyone—even the Scrooges, and particularly the Bob Cratchits. Ancient customs (Christian and non-Christian) and diverse modern traditions have become so mingled, it is difficult to know what it all means—if anything. Christmas in the marketplace now begins before Thanksgiving and ends sometime after the beginning of the New Year (or whenever you take down your Christmas tree). Merchants capitalize on every trapping of Christmas from Rudolph to the crèche, and music, serenading your shopping, ranges from “Jingle Bells” to “Away in a Manger.” Christmas Marketing is highly successful, and at this time of year we are in a mood to be separated from our money—whether giving gifts or responding to some obscure charity making its appeal after our second trip to the wassail bowl. Commercialism is not all bad, however. In many ways, what is good for the marketplace is good for the country, and what is good for the country generally translates into chickens in our Christmas pots.

            The season has religious roots as well—a lot of different roots, it seems. Naturally we are reminded of the baby born in Bethlehem. But before Christians started celebrating the birth of Jesus in late December (begun in the middle of the fourth century) the Roman empire celebrated Saturnalia, a Roman agricultural festival incorporating many of the same customs we still observe today at Christmas. Saturn was a venerable deity in Italy fabled to have reigned during a period of peace and happiness. The twenty-fifth of December (then reckoned as the winter solstice) was celebrated both as the birth of the Invincible Sun and Mithras, the Persian deity of light. The ancient Jewish Feast of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, which commemorates the rededication of the Jewish Temple and Jewish political Independence also falls in December. Kwanzaa, an African American celebration, based on African harvest traditions, has been celebrated in America since 1966. The customs and symbols of these non-Christian festivals have merged with the Christian and continue to be celebrated in the American winter solstice: lights, candles, gift-giving, feasting, family gatherings, shopping, evergreen trees, garnishes of holly and mistletoe, and black-eyed peas and collard greens. Somehow, it all seems to make sense even to narrowly Christian America. There is something distinctly egalitarian and democratic about our winter solstice. The “huddled masses” brought their winter customs with them, and we later generations have woven them all together (menorah, piñata, wassail bowl, parties, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, midnight masses, Yule logs, and candles) into a textured winter-solstice tapestry.

            I like the diversity—even its commercialism. It all enriches the texture of the tapestry. But it is difficult to know how it all fits together. What does it all mean? We celebrate both the religious and the secular aspects of Christmas. We are nostalgic when Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas,” and enjoy the cycles of parties and receptions with their tinsel, lights, food stuffs, and spirits (hopefully in moderation). On the other hand, the sobering thought that some two thousand years ago the secular was uniquely invaded by the holy, as Christian faith affirms it, still encourages hope in even the most skeptical Scrooge.

            Making sense of the collage of diverse symbols and customs in its entirety and finding some significant reason for the season as we now celebrate it, however, is a challenge. Of course, some people have all the answers and dismiss everything different with a “Bah! Humbug! I prefer to embrace it all. In my more reflective moments, I see the American winter solstice symbolizing a search for stability and happiness. In the confusion and uncertainty seemingly dominating the world around us, these mingled traditions, which we hold onto, serve as anchors for the soul. We return to them annually because they are familiar and comforting. They nourish a deep-seated hope in Western culture, best expressed for me by the ancient Jewish longing for the advent of an ideal ruler, whose eternal reign is characterized by peace, justice, and righteousness (Isaiah 9:6-7). This is a hope shared by all people of good will and well worth celebrating.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹This essay was originally published as a newspaper opinion piece in the Springfield, MO, News-Leader and later, edited for publication in Charles Hedrick, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest? American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Eugene OR: Cascade: 2009), 70-71 (the book has a glossary).

A Faustian Bargain: Evangelicalism and Trumpism

What happened in Washington on January 6 was a clash between two idealisms. On the one hand, Evangelical Christianity¹ formed an unholy alliance with a self-aggrandizing presidential candidate in hopes, among other considerations, he would appoint conservative judges who would favor evangelical agendas, such as repealing Roe v. Wade. As an ideal, Evangelical Christianity believes that all of life should be brought under the “Banner of the Cross,” and reflect Christian values and ideals, as evangelicals understand them. On the other hand, American Democracy has a different vision, calling for a diverse and pluralistic society:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"²

In other words, America from its beginning has been comprised of different races and religions all of which are considered equal under the U. S Constitution. Each foreign group, as naturalized citizens, can pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in their own way, worship their own Gods, and raise their children, as they choose, under the law. One goal of democracy is to allow every citizen as much freedom and accommodation to as many of their values and mores as is possible under the law. It is a grand ideal that regularly has been stressed and battered, especially in recent years.

Tragically, an attempt to displace American Democracy, as we know it, occurred in Washington, DC on January 6. Security at the Capitol Building was breached while congress was in session, which led to a temporary occupation of the Capitol, the concealment of the members of congress, the death of a police officer³ and several insurgents, while several representatives and two United States Senators⁴ were attempting to interrupt the Electoral College process by challenging the certified results of the 2020 presidential election.

Just before the assault, at a rally in Washington, Mr. Trump turned his supporters into insurgents by verbally inciting their march on, and takeover of, the Capitol. Among the zealous supporters in Mr. Trump’s political base are Evangelical Christians⁵ and paramilitary groups, such as the Proud Boys,⁶ strange bedfellows and a marriage that, to say the least, was not made in heaven. Most of us recall Mr. Trump commenting on his popularity with his base by saying that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters. On January 13, however, Mr. Trump did suffer consequences for sparking the insurrection when the U. S. House of Representatives impeached him a second time; he is the only American president to have ever been impeached twice. The impeachment was the direct result of Mr. Trump’s incentivizing the mob to storm the Capitol Building—so I assume he now knows that he cannot stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot anyone with impunity!

What troubles me about this whole debacle has been the role of Evangelical Christianity in facilitating Mr. Trump’s rise to the highest office in the land. One would have imagined that evangelical leaders could have read the signals in Mr. Trump’s generally unacceptable behavior and consider that things might not end well. Their persistent support for Mr. Trump’s policies, however, blinded them to these signals as they considered the quid pro quo they hoped to receive.

Christianity has always been a “big tent” religion even from the earliest time as is attested by the early sources.⁷ Hence, it is not unusual to find Christian groups involved, however tangentially, in violent acts; for in its long history Christianity has been stained with violence in the name of God (the obvious examples are the crusades and the inquisition but there are many others). The last four years appear to have witnessed another one of those instances. Without the support of evangelical Christianity Mr. Trump would have been hard pressed to put together the coalition that led inevitably to the insurrection on January 6. Hence, evangelical Christians share the responsibility for enabling the insurrection. Some self-proclaimed evangelical Christians were even part of the mob that stormed the Capitol Building on Jan 6.

Through history there have been many versions of what it means to be Christian. It is embarrassing to the Christian brand that any one group should think of itself as the gold standard for religious faith to the extent that it would undemocratically aim to impose its self-understanding on others in a democratic and pluralistic society by bending the political system to its will.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Evangelicalism is a worldwide trans-denominational movement within protestant Christianity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelicalism

²Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, Nov 2, 1883.

³U. S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.

⁴The two are Josh Hawley (Missouri) and Ted Cruz (Texas). On Hawley see Katherine Stewart, “The Roots of Josh Hawley’s Rage,” The New York Times, Jan 11, 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/josh-hawley-religion-democracy.html?smid=em-share

⁵Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham. “How White Evangelical Christians Fused with Trump Extremism,” The New York Times, Jan 11, 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/how-white-evangelical-christians-fused-with-trump-extremism.html

⁶Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Boys

⁷There are several distinct types of “Christianity” in the first 400 years of our era: for example, Synoptic, Johannine, Pauline, Gnostic, early Orthodoxy, creedal Christianity.

Mr. Trump's Wall

               This essay appeared on the Opinion Page of the Springfield News-Leader on February 8, 2019.

This essay appeared in the  Burlington Free Press on February 7, 2019.

I seldom stray into politics but it seems clear to me that walls have held a fascination for some recent poets and presidents—or perhaps it was simply the situation in which each found himself that raised an interest in walls. Everyone of a certain age will recall the Berlin Wall that separated East Berlin from West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Berlin was in what was then East Germany controlled by Russia after WWII. The Russians built the wall to isolate the French, British, and American sectors of West Berlin. The wall made it an island of Western culture and democracy in the midst of Eastern totalitarianism. The allies supplied the citizens of West Berlin through an airlift running around the clock. The Russian purpose in building the wall was to force the allies out of Berlin, but it also stopped the free exchange of ideas and passage between East and West Berlin. In 1987 a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, delivered a speech at the Brandenburg Gate near Checkpoint Charlie in the American Sector; it contained this famous line: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Mr. Reagan, apparently, saw the Berlin wall as highly effective, but ideologically negative. Two years later the citizens of Berlin, both East and West, tore it down. In this case, to quote a line from Robert Frost: “Good Fences did not make good neighbors”—which begs the question do good fences ever make good neighbors?

            Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” begins this way:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it

And spills the upper boulders in the sun,

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.*

The poet, at that time, was a farmer in New England and every spring he and his neighbor walked the stone wall separating their properties in order to mend it. Frost doesn’t see a need to have a wall because his neighbor’s land is “all pine” and his is “apple orchard” and he opines “My apple trees will never get across/and eat the cones under his pines,” but his neighbor rather stodgily replies “good fences make good neighbors.” Frost, exasperated, wants to get his neighbor to think about the function of the wall: “Why do [walls] make good neighbors? Isn’t it/Where there are cows? But here there are no cows./Before I built a wall I’d like to know/What I was walling in or walling out,/And to whom I was like to give offense.” But his neighbor woodenly says it again: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Mr. Frost, apparently, regarded his shared wall as unnecessary, while his neighbor regarded it as an ideological necessity.

What about Mr. Trump’s wall? He regards it as absolutely necessary for he finds an immigration crisis on our admittedly porous southern border, which is aggravated by illegal drugs pouring in from Mexican cartels. In his view only a wall can effectively resolve the crisis. There is no denying the problems on our southern border, but closing off the border with Mexico with a wall will send an inflammatory symbolical signal to the world exactly opposite to that of the Statue of Liberty on our eastern shore. The Liberty statue once symbolized new beginnings for white Europeans in the 1800s and later. On its base one finds these words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…” The signal that Mr. Trump’s southern border wall will project to the world is otherwise, however. It will say: Stay away we don’t want you brown-skinned people here. Over time his wall will come to symbolize intolerance, bigotry, and racism. Eventually it will take its place among some of the darkest moments in the history of our democratic republic: the internment of Japanese-American citizens and Alaska natives during WWII, and the internment of American Indians during the 1800s. Ms. Pelosi may not be far wrong when she calls Mr. Trump’s wall “immoral.” At least it must be admitted that Mr. Trump’s wall does not seem inspired by the better angels of our nature.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

*Edward C. Latham, ed., The Poetry of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1967), 33-34.

Charlottesville

This essay appeared on September 3, 2017 on page I12 of the Springfield News-Leader under the News-leader’s title “A New Narrative is needed on Confederate Statues."

The recent racist demonstrations in Charlottesville and the ensuing riots are a graphic reminder that all Americans do not share the same values, or the same national story. There are many narratives that Americans have adopted to explain themselves—two conflicting views were in evidence at Charlottesville, revealed by the images streaming from our television sets. Elements of the Alt Right, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Neo-Nazis held a demonstration around Civil War Monuments in Charlottesville celebrating White Power and vilifying African Americans, Jews, and any others they held to be different from themselves. As a result there has been a backlash against civil war monuments. Some have been torn down and others removed. There have been cries to put them all in museums—"get rid of them" seems to be the sentiment of a vocal part of our countrymen.

 

            I am a son of the post-reconstruction South, born in Louisiana, reared and educated in the segregated public school system of Greenville, Mississippi (1940-52). I do not recall ever having seen a civil war monument during my early youth, although I must have seen a few. At least I can say for certain that in my education the War of Rebellion and its leaders were never extolled or held up for special honor. The "stars and bars" as the confederate battle flag is called was, and still is ubiquitous throughout the south, but in Greenville it was never displayed in public buildings or functions. Online I discovered that Greenville has one civil war monument at the Washington County Courthouse, erected in 1909 by the Private Taylor Rucks Chapter Daughters of the Confederacy "To Commemorate the Valor and Patriotism of the Confederate Soldiers of Washington County 1861-1865." The statue itself presents a single common soldier of the line. On the four faces at the base are statements by Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Randolph H. M'Kim, and Charles B. Galloway. Except for the statement by Jefferson Davis (who mentions "the sacred cause of states' rights"), the others do not specifically relate to the war, and in themselves might be judged inspiring.

 

A 2017 study reported that at least 1503 symbols of the confederacy can be found in public spaces across the United States. These memorials include monuments and statues; flags; holidays and other observances; and the names of schools, roads, parks, bridges, counties, cities, lakes, dams, military bases, and other public works.¹

 

We cannot ease or erase our national shame for having accepted and tolerated slavery as a convenient solution to economic problems (even as early as our colonial period) by eradicating vestiges of the War of Rebellion. Such symbols are part of our history as a people, whatever the reason they were erected. What is needed is a new narrative that puts these symbols into national, rather than regional perspective, so that there is a more compelling narrative that completely disallows racist rhetoric and ideology. These surviving vestiges of the civil war are like the "stones" the Israelites erected after crossing over the Jordan. The stones were to remain a memorial so that "when your children ask in time to come 'What do these stones mean to you?' You shall tell them…"  (Joshua 4:1-24). In my view, the monuments should remain in place and not be hidden away, but rather officially placed in perspective as symbols of a flawed cause, misplaced loyalties, and the enslavement of human beings. We must not be allowed to forget.

 

            Any cause that calls one to bigotry, racial hatred, the disparagement and inhumane treatment of others, and/or aims to romanticize or otherwise misstate the national significance of the War of Rebellion by appealing to these vestiges of the war deserves to be condemned.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America