The Two Faces of Christmas
Really, we can joyously celebrate it both ways
How does one reconcile the secular and religious aspects of Christmas? Legions of angels have been singing about reconciling God and sinners for two millennia. You start to wonder if we should even try.
Tim Burton’s commercial and critical success, The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), seizes upon the conflicting natures of Halloween and Christmas. Audiences are enthralled as Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King who presides over Halloween Town, stumbles upon Christmas Town and determines that the Christmas holiday is due for a makeover.
In a way, the tale’s ingredients make it a wannabe myth, the kind of transcendental story we tell ourselves about the nature of things. Who knows whether the film will ever work its way into our crazy-quilt New World mythology, but it’ll be interesting to check 500 years from now when Birmingham, Alabama, is a coastal community.
Until then, come Christmastime, who doesn’t face the North Pole like a compass and find himself caught between two Yuletide fires: the Secular and the Religious? It’s a bit like having a jolly-old-elf of a devil on one shoulder and a pious hark-the-herald, star-crowned angel on the other, whispering in opposite ears, to the point of driving one to distraction.
The Secular yule log will have been lighted since mid-July, starting when TV begins to interlard its schedule with quasi-subliminal sugar-plum signals — snow and family and Red Ryder BB guns — against the background of a blazing hearth, all while it’s a stifling 95 degrees outside. And, if stocking/candy dramas aren’t your bag, there’s always the naughty office party, replete with spiked punch bowls and co-workers locked in a passionate embrace.
On the side of the Religious, our culture’s dilatory angels collar and sermonize us on the true meaning of Christmas, breaking down the word by syllable to impress upon us the day’s significance.
No sooner does one angel warn us of the seductive enticements of materialism than another — not always the angel of Tolerance — impugns pagan rituals like the glorified Canadian spruce, lit up in the living room.
Xavier Remington’s Mystic Investigations website is a great place to get the scoop on things supernatural. Remington is a paranormal investigator in Woodland Springs, Colorado, and writes Amazon-touted books like The Night Jesus Met Santa Claus. On that subject, Remington, in his collected writings about Saint Nick, later known as Santa Claus, notes the little-known biographical fact that Nick was genetically a “demi-angel.”
According to Remington, St. Nick, at the age of 16, discovered that he possessed the power of chronokinesis, that is, the ability to time travel. Living a good 300 years after the time of Jesus, Nick was, back then, a Christian bishop and felt compelled to use his special ability to hit the chrono-road, witness sacred moments like the Nativity and actually meet Jesus while dressed exotically in his traditional, red sledding togs. So there, Hosanna! It is the Secular reconciled to the Religious!
In hindsight, maybe it would have been easier not to even ponder the reconciliation conundrum. But, considering the Cornish adage “None so queer as folk,” maybe the adrenaline rush that comes with simultaneously surviving two Yuletide Fires is worth it. So, what the heck, God bless us every one!
