When Culture Stole Christmas | Too Much Christmas?

Hi, friends.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast,
our season on Advent and Christmas.
Kind of a lighthearted look today at what I think is probably most people’s
favorite parts or some of their favorite parts of Christmas,
the idea of Christmas music, Christmas entertainment,
the ways in which the culture around us has embraced Christmas in
the things that we watch and listen to.
And, you know, I think this is a part where
I’m probably less on the Christmas train than most people, certainly than Michael.
I’m not big into this.
This is a part of Christmas that,
to be honest, I’ve always kind of struggled with.
But I don’t think there are very many people that if you ask them favorite Christmas song and
favorite Christmas movie, they wouldn’t get pretty excited,
have a pretty quick answer.
I think for most people, Michael,
that’s a really important part of Christmas.
A lot of people think
it’s not Christmas until they’ve watched that movie that next time or until they’ve seen that
movie or listened to that song.
And this is woven into our experience of Christmas pretty deeply.
Yeah. And it is also,
you know, let’s just be honest,
that moment where Christmas and culture
blends in probably one of the more seamless ways,
because now for the past 50 years,
we’ve had a substantial amount of commercial interest in making films about Christmas.
Christmas albums are released by pretty much every band at some point if they’ve had any level of success,
because those are generally successful and popular albums.
The music itself is beloved.
So, you know, everybody sort of gets a shot at,
you know, doing their spin of it.
And so, yeah, I think that this is a conversation where there is a lot of blending.
Now,
where we’re going to find a difference,
I think, over and over again in our conversation is what
we do with that as thinking Christians.
What do we seek to do as we engage with these
sort of aspects of culture?
Some of them, and this is what I find so rich and interesting in this intersection, Clint,
some of these media creations are a reflection of the church’s theology.
As older the music is,
it often was produced by the church for the purpose of church work.
As you come into,
you know, later days where we now have songs like,
you know, throughout their white Christmas has nothing to do with the theology of Christmas has everything to do
with a more cultural understanding of Christmas.
As we get farther into sort of a modern celebration,
that becomes far less true.
But the same radio stations play all of it and they play it simultaneously.
And so they blended in this really sort of organic and very honestly,
messy way.
So if you’re looking for what these songs teach us about Christmas,
I think that puts us in a very challenging position because lots of times those messages are not the Christian Christmas.
On the other hand,
these songs have become bundled up with Christians and by that,
I mean Christian people’s celebration of the season.
And what do we do with that?
I think that’s the interesting thread that goes through this conversation today.
Yeah, let’s start with music for a minute.
Christmas music has a fairly long roots,
you know,
16th, 15th, 16th century, you began to have some carols.
Interestingly enough, a lot of them were not songs that started inside the church.
They were used in the church or they became rewritten.
They set them to different words and they became Christmas songs.
Some of our
standard old favorites were not written as Christmas music per se.
But at that time,
Christmas very much belonged to the church.
It wasn’t a kind of cultural moment.
So those do tend to have a theological heritage.
But even so,
we see some of the things that have happened
with them.
And I think when we get to this conversation today, there’s probably no
arena of Christmas as much as media,
music and movies that have that has shaped some of our
preconceived ideas about Christmas.
So what do all the Christmases tell us?
Silent night, you know,
the snow,
cold,
in the bitter midwinter.
Well,
we all carry this idea
that Christmas happens in a Colorado snowstorm.
And this isn’t written into the Scripture.
That’s not biblical.
But because we have experienced it that way in the music,
because we’ve sung it so many times,
we see it that way.
Another good example,
all of the Christmas music,
almost all of the Christmas music has the idea it carries this sense of serenity,
peace,
tranquility,
this idea that the Christmas moment is calm and beautiful and still.
And if you read the Gospel accounts,
nothing seems further from the truth.
And yet, we hold these ideas when we imagine Christmas,
having sung those words so many times,
it colors how we think about the event.
We think of cold, snow,
quiet,
peaceful,
none of which was probably very accurate.
And it’s not that it’s wrong,
it’s that I do think in this
area, we have brought a lot of other ideas in and we’ve added them to our Christmas stories,
we’ve added them to what we learn about Christmas in the Bible in a way that has shaped some of our assumptions.
Right.
So the question that’s inherent in that is,
to what extent does that
transformation affect how we interpret the value of that piece,
right?
So let’s start at some place
a little older, and I think we move someplace a little newer.
A song that comes to mind for me
is a Silent Night.
So this is from the mid 1800s.
I think most of us know this song, Silent Night.
And I think you’re exactly right,
Clint, we get in the lyrics this idea,
all’s calm,
all’s bright,
here’s this heavenly infant,
tender, mild.
Of course,
the scriptures aren’t interested in any
of those details, right?
The scripture doesn’t tell us was Jesus a colicky baby?
Was Jesus peaceful
that night?
Was it a quiet night?
Actually, I mean, scripture probably lends us to believe the
opposite, that if Bethlehem is full to capacity,
there’s literally no place to stay in the traveling in,
then likely it’s a noisy place.
And then when you figure you’re surrounded by the animals,
I mean, we love that idea that the animals are there quiet in the manger,
that they’re all docile and happy.
I mean, anyone who’s worked with animals knows they’re either sleeping,
or they’re not happy,
or, you know, they’re somewhere in between.
So realistically,
yes, it presents for us an image of what may have been true that we’re tempted to believe
that we know wasn’t true,
granted,
so point to Reverend Lovell.
I would say, though, that that does not discount the point that the song is trying to make that fundamentally on the night of Christmas,
there is something calm,
there is something transformative,
the idea that in the
midst of a world which has become increasingly harried and busy,
as we carry this song with us,
it may for some be a reminder that at the coming of the Christ,
everything stops that all of the
other things that clamor for your attention,
all of the meaning that the season tries to sort of
in, you know, about consumerism, and even about, you know, family traditions, that these things
fall away in the face of Jesus Christ,
everything becomes dim.
Is that scriptural?
No.
Does it allow us an opportunity, if intentional, to use it in a positive way?
I would say yes.
Maybe.
However,
I think that that takes a measure of intentionality that I
fear most people don’t bring to the conversation.
They love the song,
and the assumption is that if the song is a Christmas song,
it must be okay for Christmas.
It must have something to do with Christmas.
So you get,
“Let’s do the little drummer boy
in church.” Well, there’s nothing,
there’s barely anything Christian.
At the least level,
you could talk about that song being Christian,
but it’s a Christmas song,
so it must be okay,
and we have that kind of,
I think that constant struggle,
and music does that to us because we
often don’t process music mentally.
We don’t process it thoughtfully.
We process it emotionally,
and when we’ve sung those songs,
and we’ve enjoyed them,
and they’ve been a part of our family Christmases,
we don’t particularly worry that they do or don’t teach us the truths about Christmas,
or that they do or don’t reflect the gospel.
We simply like the way they made us feel,
and I want to temper my Scrooge-ness a little bit.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.
I’m saying that you,
when you’re consuming that,
I think you should be aware that you’re consuming it.
I think you should at least be able to say,
“I’m going to enjoy this for what it is,
and I’m not going to try and
make it something that it isn’t.” So this is the dynamic tension of this conversation that you’re
going to have to ride.
It’s like the surfer riding the wave.
I think the way that you glean
positive, constructive help, I think, out of this conversation is going to be to recognize that we’re actually,
as much as it may sound at times that Clint and I disagree,
we actually substantially agree on this.
I mean, that fundamentally,
that there’s nothing in any
piece of art or culture that makes it inherently outside the reach of a Christian being able to
engage with it in a meaningful way.
Now, the key factor in that,
though, is what do we mean by meaningful,
right?
I think that that is where maybe this conversation diverges a little bit.
Let me bring up a newer song.
Talk about Silent Night.
I sort of give a defense of why,
even though that’s not scriptural,
I think it still may be able to have force as we look to it.
What about “Merry Did You Know?” And I want to throw “Merry Did You Know” under the bus,
but there’s really probably not another Christmas song that comes top of mind for me that sounds biblical,
that I think when you really get under the hood and you start thinking about it, you realize,
“Oh, wait.
I’m not sure that I signed up for exactly what I thought I was signing up for,” right?
Because it’s a beautiful song.
It’s very effective.
But as you hear it,
“Merry Did You Know”
all of these lines about the blind will see,
death will hear, dead will live again.
These are biblical images, right?
We’re in that moment putting ourselves into imagining that we were
like Mary holding this baby.
And that is unto itself a sort of beautiful image.
But as it looks ahead in Jesus’ story,
we miss in many ways the gritty,
real reality that Mary wasn’t holding a baby,
wondering these wonderful theological questions.
She was a first-time parent and
anybody who’s been a first-time parent,
and almost none of us who are listening to this podcast did
so in a barn because there was no room for them in an inn where they would have had a baby and not
the hospital, right?
I mean, this reality of what’s happening in this story is covered by the song.
I think we connect with it emotionally,
especially that idea of metaphorically being in the moment in the story.
But if you get under the surface a little bit and you realize,
no, it’s actually tempting you to move away from the gritty reality of the story to whatever extent it does that.
It will no longer serve, I would argue,
and no longer helps you when inevitably your Christmas celebration
will be gritty and have human reality in it.
Somebody’s going to be hangry,
some kid’s going to not get their nap,
some family member with an age-old dispute is going to pop up again.
Dinner’s not going to be perfect.
Whatever it’s going to be,
Christmas is messy.
And I’m not just
talking about our observance of it.
The Christmas, the coming of Christ, was messy.
So I agree with
you, Clint, to the extent to which even Michael,
who loves Christmas and trusts Christmas music,
has songs that I don’t find as helpful in that canon,
that said,
I also sometimes like to hear
that song because it’s a pretty song.
So I think having an understanding of what has substance and
what maybe has less substance may help you both in your own celebration of Christmas,
but also as you’re trying to teach and lead kids in the middle of all this too,
which I think that’d be an
interesting conversation at the end is to tease out what does it look like as parents to try to
help kids navigate all of these intersections.
Sure. And again,
I think that there’s reason
for caution here because when you evaluate something like Christmas music,
you inevitably run the risk of stepping on people’s toes who absolutely love – somebody out there loves
every Christmas song we could name.
It’s their favorite or their mom’s favorite or etc.
Having said that,
most of those songs have a kind of emotional bent.
They’re not primarily worship
songs.
They’re songs to convey feeling.
They’re songs that were marketed in many cases.
One of the ones I grew up with – and you may have to help me if you know it,
Michael – the sheep with
the curly horn and where all the animals talk to the baby.
I gave him this and I did this for him.
If you read through that song,
it’s a song ostensibly about Jesus that says nothing about
Jesus.
It’s very interesting.
If you really break down some of what we say and sing in the holiday season,
you find that there’s less content there.
There’s less substance there than we might think.
And again,
I’m not arguing that there’s anything wrong with that.
I’m simply saying that isn’t
Christmas for too many people.
The idea that I came to church and I sang “Silent Night,” the
idea that I listened to “Away in the Manger,” so I experienced something of Christmas.
The scriptures are not interested in that kind of peaceful wonderland that we have tried to
create and convey in our Christmas material.
The scripture is interested in telling us that in the
midst of all the human mess,
God landed right in the center of it to make a difference.
And
we just have to be careful that what we want out of it doesn’t become what we put into it.
Yeah, I think that’s a fair point.
Though,
I think there is a larger argument to be had here
about to what effect our worship is effective.
To what extent worship does connect emotionally,
because I think that some religious traditions,
some Christian traditions, do focus more heavily
on the emotive experience of worship than the logical or rational one.
And clearly this podcast is done by two pastors in the Reformed tradition.
So you’re hearing our struggle with
the theological, thoughtful aspect of the celebration of Christmas in this.
But if your advantage to this conversation coming in was a more natural sort of bent towards an emotive experience in worship,
I could see an argument being made that you have to evaluate it not
just by the theological content they’re in,
but you have to evaluate it by the emotional response it gives.
And that’s a tricky theological ground to walk.
That opens a lot of different Pandora’s boxes, I realize.
But I think the point still stands,
Clint, that fundamentally some of these
songs do create, they exist, and they are effective in creating emotion and not effective at
communicating theologically correctly what that story is.
So what do we do with that?
And I think, you know, I mean that.
What do we do with that?
Do we put it in a, you know,
dangerous category?
You put that on a higher shelf?
You know, what does that effectively mean?
Yeah, I think that’s a good question.
And again, I think it comes down,
some of it is knowing our history.
You know, for instance, Joy to the World was written as an Easter song.
Most people,
that’s news to most people.
I think in our tradition,
we’ve been a little cautious
of using emotion as an evaluative tool.
In other words,
we may deeply connect emotionally with a
worship service or with a worship experience.
We may light candles and sing Silent Night and feel
really good about it,
but we have been reluctant to say that my feeling about worship
determines whether it was worshipful or not because we don’t trust fundamentally
the human capacity to make those judgments.
The other thing I think is a little telling, Michael,
and again,
I don’t want to beat up on Christmas music,
but Christmas music within the church is
the only genre that I can think of in which many of our favorites were neither written or sung
by people of faith,
of Christian faith.
In other words,
you know,
there are,
as you mentioned earlier, nearly everyone has done a Christmas album.
Very few of those people proportionately
have come from a place of being inside of the church and offering it to the church as
worship music.
It’s done because they know that people will buy Silent Night and Away in the
Manger and Jingle Bells on another CD for the thousandth time because they love that music.
And again, it is this weird path where some of our music has become some of the world’s music
and it’s difficult to know the difference.
Now, again, is that a fundamental problem?
Not necessarily, but when we sing those songs,
it makes it easy for us not to remember that
we are singing praise music,
we are singing worship music,
and not all of it is fit to necessarily
live in that category.
I don’t know if this is disagreement for a second.
I think the greater danger,
if I’m going to be honest,
is not that our music as Christians became secular music,
but rather the reverse,
that the secular music became canonized for Christians and we never
really knew it, that it sort of snuck in the back door.
I think there’s this whole market
and creation.
Though I love most things Christmas,
there are some things Christmas that I love less.
Hallmark TV is going to be one of those and I’m just going to say lots of people here like that and that’s great.
But for me,
there’s a kind of like movie mill sort of thing that’s happening there,
where you get four or five different themes and you get different actors and different
scripts, but they’re all essentially just telling the same story with a different guard.
That bugs me.
I think the reason it bugs me is because, I mean,
number one,
it doesn’t have the kind of
creative depth that other stories have that you can sort of latch into.
I think another though is
that that is a thing that is wholly other that’s just sort of been mass adopted as a form of entertainment.
Well,
we bring that with us as real people.
These things sort of come together and
they make this holistic story of Christmas for us.
Christmas is, in other words,
going to church,
singing worship music together in a gathered fellowship of Christian believers and it’s going
home and watching the Hallmark Channel.
One of those things is religious in a Christian sense
and one is religious in a secular sense and I mean religious.
It has its own set of values,
its own sort of core teachings that are on offer.
So we have to be wise, but that said,
I think part of the role of being a Christian,
not just at Christmas,
but literally in the modern
world, is to recognize that we are surrounded by those forces everywhere we look.
I mean, I’m not saying that there’s a cultural appropriation of all things Christian,
but we’re surrounded in the world.
We’re on our phone.
We’re passing by hundreds and thousands of
different expressions of the world’s values every day.
Some of those we like and some of those we
don’t.
We have to become people capable and willing to discern between what is helpful to
the faith and what is not.
So maybe Christmas, that’s writ large.
Maybe there’s more opportunities
and it’s more dangerous because of some of the appropriations we’ve allowed,
but I think fundamentally the task itself is not fundamentally different from that core task of discerning what
in this is going to help me in my observance of the birth of Christ and what isn’t.
Yeah, that’s fair.
So let’s just make it practical for a minute,
Michael.
What is your favorite
Christmas song?
Do you have a favorite or are there any that stand out as favorites?
I listen to a pretty broad selection of Christmas music.
So is there a favorite Christmas song?
Probably my favorite classic cultural song would be White Christmas.
I like that a lot.
Honestly,
probably my favorite sort of Christmas song that’s actually been in the hymnal at some
point is Go Tell it on the Mountain.
I would agree.
That is not a Christmas song,
per se.
I mean, it’s not describing the Christmas scene in any way.
So you take that as you want.
I would call Go Tell it on the Mountain a Christmas song and I would echo that it’s among my favorites.
I think it is for me a fascinating question when
a person who is not a person of faith or not a person of our faith,
the Christian faith,
sings something like, “O Holy Night.”
What is that?
What do we make of that?
On one hand,
that’s a performer doing
our song really well in a way that could be inspiring and touching for us.
On the other hand,
one could only call that performance.
That’s not worship in the sense that
that person singing it resonates with the words,
the lyrics, and the truth of it.
And I think Christmas presents us more of those moments than anything else I can think.
I mean, yeah, do you do Easter eggs?
Do you do the bunny?
Okay,
maybe.
But Christmas has
thousands and thousands of those questions,
which I think is both what makes it so fascinating
and what makes it so challenging.
I think Christmas is a season where Christians find a rare level of cultural synchronicity.
For all of the conversations that happen about the war on Christmas and Christmas is under siege,
there is no other Christian holiday I’m aware of that is also a federal holiday.
There’s a sense in which it’s been enshrined in our public life.
And so because of that,
maybe even in spite of that,
I think that there is this constant sort of walking of the journey.
And you mentioned in your previous sermon,
it would be two weeks ago,
Clint, when you were talking about how some Christians,
especially the more evangelical focused Christians,
are talking about how we need Advent this year.
Well, fundamentally,
I assume that that’s my
starting position is that we need Advent.
And so because of that position,
I feel more comfortable
talking about some of the cultural appropriations of Christmas in our home.
I mean, so we put up the
Christmas lights and the Christmas tree and we put our kids ornaments on the tree.
We have a few
religious ornaments, but as we decorate our home,
we don’t go out of our way to make sure that
everything has theological spiritual meaning.
Some of that is because I hope that in the
practicing of our faith and in the naming of that faith in our household,
that the rest of this sort
of gets to live in the fringes.
It gets to be a part of the celebration that does.
Honestly, it does create an effective feeling.
I mean, it inspires a kind of beauty,
a kind of aesthetic
pleasingness, a kind of feeling of togetherness that I find pleasant and enjoyable.
But my hope is that I haven’t got the cart and the horse mixed,
but that rather the one is driving the other.
Now, is that possible in a theologically, logically consistent way?
No, I mean, I think we’re always
going to be in the danger of the cart driving the horse.
But the reality is,
I think, that part of the task of being Christian in a place where our celebration of Christmas has been curtailed by,
you know, really, as we name this episode,
you know, culture stealing Christmas,
I think some of it is making sure that we know what was stolen.
And if you know that,
then I think that has a way of informing everything that follows.
You know, that’s interesting, Michael.
And
maybe there is a sense that we could back off of that a little bit and say that rather than
the idea that the world stole Christmas from us,
I wonder what it would look like to have
a conversation,
what it would sound like to have a conversation about the world stealing advent
from us.
Because fundamentally,
the themes of Advent,
and maybe that’s my frustration with some
of Christmas as we do it,
is how quickly we get to it.
In other words,
how do you practice waiting
and longing and patience when you decorate the house and start listening to Christmas music
a month before the day?
I mean,
we really don’t wait for Christmas except in the sense that it isn’t here yet.
I mean,
only chronologically do we wait.
We rush ahead toward Christmas in movies, music,
food, parties, and really every other way socially.
How do we talk about that biblical idea of awaiting,
of longing,
of yearning,
of struggling and wrestling,
of patience and long suffering?
Maybe that’s the piece that we lose the most.
We’re so excited to run on to peace and joy
and celebration that I think it makes it incredibly difficult for us to hear some of those
harder themes that live under the surface of Christmas.
And maybe,
I have to think that
through, but maybe fundamentally that is my frustration with some of the cultural trappings of Christmas.
I may have to report back on that.
Well, so I think there’s a few layers I hear you
cascading down there in that thought,
Clint.
So first of all is the broader culture that
surrounds us.
Christians should not have an expectation of theological nuance on any level,
that we don’t share the same starting point.
So it’s not a surprise to anyone who’s being
thoughtful that the culture does not share the fundamental values of that patience and that
waiting and that struggle,
that really they’re in it for Christmas,
for the lights, for the Santa Claus, for the tree, for the presents, for the consumerist nature of what that holiday has become.
When that comes to the Christian though,
and this is my point,
is that when it comes to the Christian,
I think it’s messy in that it’s all in how we live out the faith.
Because if we’re honest,
we’ll be tempted as residents in a broader culture to do the same,
to lift out the themes that we like
and to leave behind the themes that we don’t.
But I would also argue,
though we see that really
on steroids at Christmas,
that’s a reality of Christian life,
is that we’re always living in
that tension of trying to keep the faith bundled together.
And by the way,
for all of the good news,
there’s also struggle.
For all of the divinity,
there’s humanity.
I mean, this is the core of
the gospel that we’ve been given.
We often have a track record in the church,
you know, we’re going to take a moment of honesty.
We have a track record of making it syrupy and happy.
That’s been the church’s temptation at lots of different times.
We flatten the gospel to these really
positive sayings, and it gets taken out into the world.
And people say, “Oh, I like that part of
the church,” and that’s the part that sticks.
The reality is,
the scriptures are earthy.
They reflect a God who’s willing to get into the muck and mire of humanity to bring salvation from within.
So if we’re living in a true Advent spirit,
if Christmas is lived out,
if you’re playing white Christmas music,
but at the same time,
you’re worshiping and you’re devotionally reading,
and you’re engaging with the themes of Advent,
I think these things can be held in tension.
If you take these things and you put those really simplistic versions of Christmas,
you put those on the mantelpiece of your heart,
then as you give it precedence,
as you make it
the center of the season,
then now this larger cultural frame is the dominant image instead of
that image that’s supposed to drive the conversation.
And that is tricky.
I mean, I’m going to be the
first to admit that I’m not sure that anyone walks that out perfectly,
but as with other things,
humans are always tempted to put idols at the center.
So what we have in Christmas is a really shiny,
really popular sort of thing that could serve as a temptation to be an idol.
And the question is,
can we navigate and discern that rightly?
Yeah, and I think one of the possible illustrations of how difficult that is,
Michael, you brought up a week ago when you mentioned this idea of Blue Christmas,
that within the last
couple decades, there are churches that have sort of intentionally recognized the idea
that Christmas is a place where some people feel left out,
that if you’ve lost someone,
or if you’ve gone through a relational change or struggles,
that if you are not in a
happy place during Christmas,
it is often a very painful season.
And that is certainly something
the church should be aware of.
And yet,
it is, I think, evidence of what you’re saying.
That’s inherent in Easter,
right?
Easter, we can say Christ was crucified and Christ
rose again to address the deepest hurts of our heart.
But Christmas, we’ve adopted this idea
that it is peaceful and serene and wonderful and beautiful with angels singing and shepherds kneeling.
And if your experience isn’t that,
there’s not really a place for you at the manger
when the biblical story of Christmas is the exact opposite of that.
It is completely reversed
from where we started.
And yet, we have bought into this idea that really Christmas is only a time
for happy people who are feeling blessed.
Now, if you’re a happy person who’s feeling blessed,
amen, be thankful for that and give praise for Christmas.
But the very fact that we’ve had to
try and go back and say,
“We should carve out a niche for people who aren’t there,”
is evidence that maybe we overdid it in the first place.
Yeah, I would argue that there should be some conversation about who are we
in that conversation.
I think that there are traditions that are far more in danger of that
than necessarily the Reformed one.
But I would say,
Clint,
realistically,
that yes,
to whatever extent people have begun to attach the trappings of Christmas as the central focus of Christmas,
I mean, that is always a danger that’s going to lead us to the point of,
like you’re saying, I mean, ultimately leaving out a whole part of the story,
and therefore, in doing so, leaving out all of those who might really stand to hear something in that story.
What I find interesting,
and maybe to turn the conversation a little bit,
we’ve talked about music,
I think we see in films
another sort of example of that.
Because we have this whole genre of Christmas film,
there’s at least one that comes out every year,
you know, perfectly timed to sort of maximize
that holiday movie theater rush when that was a thing.
And, you know,
these films represent some
basic version of this thing that we all get too worked up about Christmas,
that we need to slow
down and recognize Christmas is about the family and the people and doing good in the world around us.
You know, themes that reach all the way back to Charles Dickens’
Christmas story, right?
But the reality is,
if we are reflective about that,
these themes, while, yes,
important, and they make sense in a harried world,
that’s clearly not the point of the Christmas story,
that the Christmas story is about God’s intervention in a much larger,
troubled history of humanity to
bring salvation from within.
And in doing so,
we see in Philippians that God
literally humbles God’s self,
that God takes on human flesh,
which is not only a lowering
from that heavenly perfection,
but an entering into the very sinful nature of humans’ problem.
And so,
obviously,
those films are not representing in that mass cultural sort of way that truth.
That said,
I think that there are moments in those films when we can be reminded that some
of the trappings of Christmas do have ways of pointing us to things that matter.
So,
you know, I’m willing to live with that dichotomy in a way that I suspect you may be less so.
So, I’ve been pretty good up to this point,
Michael, but here’s where it probably – here’s
probably where it gets off the rails.
I think we see less diversity with movies than we do music.
In other words,
music has those long roots,
and there is sacred music scattered throughout
the secular music of Christmas.
When it comes to movies,
I cannot think of a single Christmas movie
that has anything to do with Christmas.
I can think of movies that are about Christmas.
They’re stories of Christmas,
but they’re not the story of Christmas.
And I think if there was
a genre of Christmas stuff that I could most easily just walk away from and do without,
it would 100% be Christmas movies.
Now, sorry, folks,
I suspect that’s not a very popular opinion,
but I find Christmas movies somewhere between inane and pointless all the way to
stupid and offensive.
That’s my spectrum.
I’m earning my Grinch.
I am earning my Grinch stripes
here in this moment.
I am clearly living into that role.
Two things.
One,
go to the comments and put in a movie that you would like Reverend Lovell to
either watch or to respond to.
We should not do Pastor Lovell’s Christmas movie critique any time soon.
So go to the comments,
let us know what movie Clint should be thinking of.
No, but second,
I would say,
Clint,
that’s actually a reflection of how small the biblical narrative
is.
I mean, fundamentally,
you can’t make an hour and a half film about the scriptural account,
and nor should you.
I mean, I think in reality,
there’s not enough detail in that story to tell the story.
And I think that is instructive.
I won’t make that clear.
I think it’s instructive
that the biblical witness clearly have two books include the biblical stories.
And I think the
fact that they give the details they give tips us to the point that we have miss weighted Christmas.
I completely grant that on the flip side, though, Clint.
Realistically,
I think the very fact that you’re pointing out,
you make this scale from inane to offensive,
I think that very scale tips the reality to say that most people know what they’re consuming.
I think with music less so than movies,
I think music that blend happens.
And I think the radio station that was playing, you know,
sexualized pop anthems is now playing Christmas music.
You suddenly hear,
oh, wait,
you know, go tell it on the mountain.
And then the next song is like, you know,
my adult Christmas list or whatever.
And ultimately, in the midst of that
exchange, I think there’s a slippage when you turn on Christmas vacation.
Okay.
At that point, you have left the bounds of thinking about the Christmas story.
And I think there’s a sense in
which there’s an honesty to that.
That’s my point.
Yeah, there are certainly Christmas movies
that really don’t purport to be about Christmas.
And, you know, I’m probably more okay with those movies, generally speaking.
I think in many cases,
we have accepted these other themes of,
you know,
being kind, being nice, being gracious.
Those are all great.
But we kind of rubber stamp
them with Christmas.
And if we say that’s what the movie’s sort of about,
I think there have been,
there’s a lot of not very good theology that has snuck into our homes through a lot of Christmas movies.
And again,
if you love Christmas movies,
by all means, watch them.
I’m not trying to attack
them.
I’m simply saying I find them to be a place where the standards of Christian thought
often don’t apply,
and we often accept a kind of watered-down version of something else.
And I understand that.
I mean,
clearly, we shouldn’t just remake the Christmas story over and over
again.
But I also can’t think of a Christmas movie that is about a real-life encounter
with Jesus Christ.
There are people who learn that Christmas matters.
There’s always the person
who finds “Christmas.” But that itself,
in those movies, has nothing to do with Jesus.
And I think once you make that separation,
it’s worth asking the question,
“What am I learning from this?”
The best you can say is that I’m not going to let it lead me astray.
I’m going to enjoy it,
but not pay much attention to it.
Yeah.
So this is a point in the conversation where I’ve been
waiting to sort of pull this out on you a little bit.
And that is what your relationship to
nostalgia is.
And my experience of you is you have a very low tolerance of using nostalgia as an argument point.
If you’re climbing a mountain,
you’re not going to offer much weight on that
climbing point.
I would say,
for many people,
I think the power of Christmas,
emotionally,
lives in its physical,
sensual, you know, eyes, touch, smell,
and its remembered connection to what was.
Now,
I’ll make this very clear.
I also think that’s why a lot of people dislike Christmas,
is for the same exact reason.
Because if that is the foothold that you put on Christmas,
some people have had life-changing,
horrible experiences that will always shape their
understanding of what Christmas is at a time when they were told it’s supposed to be joyful,
it’s supposed to be filled with peace and goodwill, right?
And people have had horrible
things happen in hospital rooms or jailhouses or whatever it is.
And I think that there’s a right
caution in evaluating the moment at which we are using nostalgia alone as an evaluative tool for
our celebration of Christmas.
Does it remind me of the time when I was with my grandma and my
family and it was a good year and the family gathering and the celebration was positive as a child?
Absolutely.
I mean, I have a Christmas that sticks out in my mind for that very fact.
That said,
I don’t think that’s inherently bad.
I mean, I think nostalgia can in many ways,
especially if used rightly,
point us to some of the things in life that matter most.
What happens in the cultural celebration of Christmas is I believe so much of its celebration
is weighted in individual nostalgia and as an extension of cultural nostalgia.
I mean, I think of most of the songs that I like,
Clint,
come from a very, sorry,
Christmas songs I like,
come from a very particular timeframe,
like 50s,
60s music.
Why is that?
Well, I thought to myself,
because if I’m being honest,
there’s something about that season that for me is a reflection
of peace and goodwill and I get to live in that time.
So it’s easy for me to reflect on that.
Books I’ve read and people who did live tell me,
no, it was way more complicated and messy and
there was a lot of problems in the world.
That wasn’t my experience.
And so it lets me live in
a moment that somewhat feels like what I feel like the world should be.
And so there’s a danger in
that.
I fully confess that danger.
But if you’re willing to entertain that there is not inherent evil in nostalgia,
then I think it might bring you to a softened position on Christmas.
Yeah, that certainly could be an issue.
I am not,
I think by nature nostalgic,
though I don’t think
it bothers me in others.
I think if I were going to pin it down,
my fundamental concern, Michael,
I think I would label it as shallow.
I think that I have an inherent fear that we have this
moment in the church’s life where we celebrate the literal incarnation of God,
the one who came to save us,
the Savior Jesus Christ,
who entered in the world through these very strange and messy
circumstances to save messy people.
And we took that and literally kind of wrapped bows on it and
put music to it.
And the culture then sells it back to us as something that isn’t that,
that some as something that lacks that depth and is far more about these kind of
happy feelings that don’t really have roots,
that don’t really have depth.
And I think my fear is
that too many Christians are tempted to exchange the real thing for this counterfeit thing.
And if I’m going to be honest,
I think there’s probably maybe some jealousy,
maybe there’s some just unhappiness that I feel like the world bait and switch that Christmas is a church thing that
no longer belongs to the church and that people are more interested in Santa Claus than in Jesus.
And there’s probably some chip on my shoulder about some of those things.
But I think fundamentally
it’s the fear that we take something rich and complex and messy and we try to make it just
the opposite or we accept it when someone else made it just the opposite.
I think a question for future conversations going to be in light of how we even began with our last
conversation, how Christmas is in many ways baptizing other cultural influences.
I think a question to ask is,
is it possible for our incarnation,
cultural incarnation of Christmas,
can it be baptized in a new way?
But before we end this conversation,
I want to ask you,
because I think there may be some parents who listening who say,
“My kids are watching movies
about Santa Claus and they go to school and they read this book about the Elf on the Shelf.”
And there are all of these cultural things that our kids experience as Christmas.
I’ve heard over and over again, certainly a conversation in our house.
How do we describe to kids,
we spent 40 minutes, 40 plus minutes talking as we would with adults,
but how do we help Christian kids navigate this?
What would you say?
Yeah, that’s a really interesting question and I’m no expert.
I don’t have any great answers,
but I would say if your child has read Nestor the Long-eared Donkey 50
times and the Gospel of Luke one time,
that’s just math.
If you’ve watched Christmas vacation,
as in my case,
500 times, and I’ve read the Gospel story 30 minutes during Christmas,
I think some of it is just we are in this current of Christmas.
And I think that means that we have
to be far more intentional about finding those off-ramps where we can spend time with the actual heart of it.
And I would say,
I don’t think the answer is tell your kids they can’t go to the
Christmas party and don’t do Santa Claus and don’t have an elf on.
I don’t think that’s it at all.
I think to understand that those things as wonderful as they can be are extensions of the
even more wonderful gift we’ve been given in Jesus Christ.
They’re not separate from Jesus,
and they’re not in competition with Jesus.
That Christ is Christmas and that the other things
all hopefully point back to that rather than the other way.
And I think that’s not easy to do.
That very much is swimming upstream in our culture.
But I think that some of that is just
where you put your focus and where you put your attention.
Yeah, and maybe I think I hear this in what you’re saying.
I do think there’s an importance
in the real practices that you have.
So does your family bake cookies?
Does your family
have a certain thing that you do with your decorations?
I think it’s helpful if you can
attach words and meaning to some of the trappings that you intentionally point back to Christ.
So in other words, if you don’t know anything about how Christmas trees come into the picture about
the idea of bringing light into your home,
maybe that’s the thing that you want to do a little reading on.
And that’s a conversation you get to have with the kids as you put on the lights
with them or as you in that moment do this thing together.
I think our kids see us for who we are,
not for who we hope to be.
That’s the problem of being of parents.
And so I think some of this is
have you for yourself come to see these things,
some that are cultural appropriations of Christmas,
but also have deeper meaning.
Have you come to see the deeper meaning?
If you do, then you will naturally find ways that you can share that with your kids.
So I think it goes
back to your central point.
How do we show our kids the central thing that lives at the center?
The question is,
I think,
can you look at the practices?
Kids are so practice-centered.
They’re so in the world that they live.
And can you use those as teaching elements to point them back
to the center?
Yeah, there’s a little bit of a false distinction here,
Michael, because clearly music and movies make their way into our home.
But our next conversation is going to
have more to do with the things that we do for Christmas,
the things we control,
the decorations,
the food, the kind of personal ways in which we celebrate our Christmas.
We may watch the movie,
but we didn’t make it.
And I think next week may lend itself to a little more conscious conversation
about when we do those things,
do we understand some of why there are things in the first place?
And have we ever thought about why we do them the way that we do?
And do they in some way,
conscious or subconscious,
point toward that bigger truth of Jesus Christ?
And can we make
that more conscious than subconscious for ourselves and our families?
I think that will
be a good place to dig in in next week’s conversation.
All right.
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