Fah Who Foraze, Dah Who Doraze 

There’s going to be five characters that will appear on the screen, think to yourself what they might all have in common: 

The common thread to these characters is that all of them have something against Christmas. The Grinch as you saw does not like all the toys, and decorations, and especially all the “noise, noise, noise” that Christmas brings.

Charlie Brown is against the commercialism of Christmas and is disappointed when everyone, including his friends, his little sister, and even his dog buy into this spirit of commercialism.

Ebenezer Scrooge also is not a fan of Christmas but his reasoning is kind of opposite to Charlie Brown’s. He doesn’t like it because the holiday dampers economic productivity and he feels everyone uses it as an excuse to ask for charitable donations which he does not appreciate.

I just finished a course at UW called Paul: Life and Letters so I’ve been thinking a lot about Saul-who-becomes-Paul recently and even though he obviously knew nothing of Christmas since he was a contemporary of Jesus, I see a lot of parallels in his way of thinking and criticism of the blasphemous followers of Jesus before his road to Damascus experience with some of these other characters’ criticisms of Christmas.

Then there’s me. My beef with Christmas needs a bit more explaining although it includes aspects of a number of these characters’ disdainful opinions.

Don't get me wrong I don't hate Christmas, I really enjoyed spending time with family this week and many of the various Christmas festivities in the month of December as I have other years but there are just certain things about the holiday that have always kind of bugged me.

​For one thing there’s so much arbitrariness about it. If you lived in a place where Christmas wasn’t commonly celebrated and you had just been exposed to Christianity and read the story of Jesus’ birth in Luke and Matthew, would it seem natural to you to celebrate this story in all the ways we do now?

To cut down trees and cover them with lights and other random decorations in our living rooms?

To sit around with our biological families, eating turkey, and taking turns unwrapping store-bought gifts?

To tell our kids that these gifts aren’t actually store-bought but were created by elves in the North Pole and delivered by some old man who stops in at every house in the world in one night which he’s only able to do because he has magical flying caribou?

And why December 25 of all days? Why do we complain about snow at all other times of the year but then we call December “the most wonderful time of the year” and we hope and pray for a “White Christmas?” 

If Jesus flipped the tables of merchants scamming people in front of the temple in Jerusalem as described in Mark 11 then if he were around today do you not think he would use the term “den of robbers” to describe all the businesses and online stores that use his name for their own profit as well?

I think if Jesus was here in the flesh right now you would see many flipped over merchandise tables at local shopping malls and many online servers would suddenly crash.

But, wait a minute, here’s where I think you need to stop listening to my crusade against Christmas. 

As some of my family and friends can attest to I often get riled up and can go on long rants about things like this or public transit or the education system but I’ve been coming to realize that all this negativity doesn’t do anyone any good, including myself.

Even though in cases such as these, I truly believe that what I’m saying is in everyone’s best interest because I feel that I have taken many people’s perspectives into account and have done a lot of thinking about these things, and it feels good to state my opinion forcefully and authoritatively and have my views validated by others, I am actually still just stating my personal opinions that come from my own feelings and life experiences.

Also every time I do something like write a letter to The Record, or post my views on social media, or even say things like I just said in a sermon, it creates a lot of anxiety because I know there’s a lot of people who don’t see things the same way as me and I may be offending people or leading people astray.

So there’s no good reason for me to be stating definitively what’s right or wrong or providing answers to “what would Jesus do” questions here. I compared myself to the Grinch at the start of this sermon afterall!

My anger, my judgement is never righteous, but Jesus is God in human form, he can judge what’s truly good and what isn’t because he’s always judging out of love, out of truth.

And I think it's possible, quite likely even that Jesus would see things differently than I do in this case and in many situations. 

In response to his disciple John’s concern that someone was imitating his healing powers as Mark 9 recounts, Jesus tells him that this isn’t actually a problem.

He states: “whoever is not against us is for us.”

So even though I don’t like to admit it, I'm not quite sure that Jesus would actually be angry about the story of Santa Claus or people buying presents for each other to celebrate his birth. 

In John 14 when the disciple Thomas asked Jesus how it’s possible to know the way to where Jesus is going if we don’t know what exactly he's leading us towards, Jesus responded “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

He didn’t say “I am the truth, and secondly I am the way,” he said “I am the way and the truth.” 

“The medium is the message” as the famous phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan goes.

If Christmas and Santa Claus are about joy, and love, and togetherness, then they actually are working towards God’s will, the purposes of Jesus.

Christmas and Santa Claus might not seem like the truth, they might not seem like they are giving the right message but if delivered in the right way, if the medium, the way is acts of joy, peace, and love than these things are delivering the right message, they can be considered truth.

Dr. Seuss, the author of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and many other children’s books often made up words that sounded like gibberish such as the title of this sermon, they often didn’t have meaning in themselves, but were given meaning in the way they were used.

One online commentator describes Seuss' vocabulary as “meaningful meaninglessness” and I think that’s a good way to describe many of the traditions of Christmas actually.

So I’d say it is a good thing that so many people get into the “Christmas spirit” because the true essence and purpose of the “Christmas spirit” is being united in a common celebration.

One sports blogger compared the celebration of Christmas with the celebration of a city when one of their sports teams wins a championship (like Toronto or even Canada as a whole with the Raptors this past year): “there aren’t too many times in life you can celebrate something with complete strangers and feel an emotional connection with your community as a whole," he claims. "That’s why Christmas songs make everyone happy. When they play in public all December, [...] we’re all in holiday mode together.”

The following rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town from the modern Christmas movie classic Elf, demonstrates this idea well: 

Even for a grinch like me it’s hard to be critical of this song, or this scene in the movie since everyone is brought together in song, everyone is happy, even the corporate, no-funny-business father breaks out of his shell and starts singing.

That being said this still doesn’t get me overly excited about Christmas or Santa Claus. It all just feels too phony, too good to be true (which it is I guess since its a fictional story). 

This just doesn’t do it for me.

Would spontaneously singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town out on the streets get everyone in a jolly, touchy-feely mood anytime of the year? February 28? July 16? September 7?

Would everyone walking down the street instantly connect with the sentiment of this song? 

I don’t think so.

I think this is actually a key point in understanding the source of all the criticism and dissent towards Christmas that comes from people like myself, or the Grinch, or Scrooge, or Charlie Brown: the expectations of good cheer are too time-constrained and exclusive.

It puts too much pressure and causes too much stress on everyone to be expected to be merry and joyful on one specific day of the year or at least in one season of the year and it's always a big letdown when it's all over, the decorations are taken down, everyone goes their separate ways, and it's time to return to work or school.

It also makes those who are lonely feel even more lonely when they aren’t included in these celebrations or because they simply don’t feel the same way as everyone else supposedly does.

If you’re feeling depressed around Christmas time then all the songs, decorations, turkey-dinners and presents probably won’t help, and they can actually make you feel worse because you’re not enjoying it like you’re expected to.

So I think the real source of grinchy, anti-joy, anti-Christmas sentiments actually stems from feelings of loneliness, feelings of being misunderstood and excluded, feelings of pain and when you’re experiencing those feelings, it's much easier and less scary to take it out on others and to blame it on external factors like Santa Claus or consumerism, than to take a hard look at yourself and work through the pain or guilt from past experiences or your own flaws, hypocrisies, and insecurities.

But if we remember what Christmas is truly about, what Jesus is truly about, Christmas and the weeks to follow don't have to be depressing and it actually becomes possible to work through these feelings and get past them so we can live with hope and joy all year round.

I find this song from the Veggietales parody of A Christmas Carol, called An Easter Carol a good reminder of these things: 

The hope of Easter is the same as the hope of Christmas and it’s the same hope we can live with all 365 or 366 days of the year: God is with us here and now!

Jesus’ birth through the conception of Mary and the human life that followed allows us to realize that God’s spirit can live in a human being.

This shows us that God’s love is as intimate and personal as the love human beings are able to give each other.

His willingness to sacrifice his earthly life and his non-resistance to being hung on a cross shows us how unconditional and inclusive God's love is.

Jesus’ resurrection from death allows us to realize that God, our creator, the source of life, the source of everything, is always with us and loves us.

God will never leave us, and in fact God’s spirit, the spirit of Jesus, the Holy Spirit lives within each one of us, within our own human bodies as Jesus makes clear to me in John 14:15-21.

Jesus’ resurrection from death shows that death and separation from God is no more. We do not have to be enslaved by feelings of fear or sorrow or anger or guilt or anxiety or loneliness or any other feelings that ultimately come from and lead to separation from God's spirit, to the horrible state of aloneness and nothingness we often fear we will experience when our current physical bodies die.

This doesn't mean we won't ever experience these kinds of feelings, Jesus did himself, but because his spirit lives within us we always have a light to guide us back to a free life of joy, hope, peace, love, relationship and community!

This is what makes us sing! This is what makes our hearts grow 2 sizes, even 3!