"What do you want for Christmas?" A Lament.

"O Lord God of my salvation, by day have I cried and by night before Thee. Let my prayer come before Thee, bow down Thine ear unto my supplication, For filled with evils is my soul, and my life unto Hades hath drawn nigh. I am counted with them that go down into the pit; I am become as a man without help, free among the dead, Like the bodies of the slain that sleep in the grave, whom Thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from Thy hand. They laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness and in the shadow of death." -- Psalm 88

Hurried, hampered, and hollow the rituals of our Decembers, filled with the busyness of person, we march as a great herd of migration to the ATM's of our hope; seduced by the sirens of self-satisfaction, clamoring for the latest bargain and newest fad, feasting on the sparse rations of commercialism, while demonstrating to our children the DNA of our desires, we hurdle headlong into the eternal vacuum of our own wants. Seditious is the thought, entangling our conscience and consuming our imaginations. What do you want for Christmas?

Make a list. I always tell my kids to make a list. I remember when the lists were short and sweet. One year a B-B gun and a hat with a flower on it captured their imaginations. One year a copy of the Little Mermaid and a Ghost Buster photon pack. My best memory ... the purple lip stick and a rub on tattoo.

Make a list. What do you want for Christmas? Time has bigger pockets each year. Before they learned brand names, it was easy. Every package wrapped under the tree stood as a mysterious personality, waiting to be discovered and explored. Now the expectation is that the list should be the definer of each surprise, so that the surprise is not what's in the package, but what is not. Or what was ignored or sold out or not available or somehow, over looked. Or, like many, we just ran out of money.

Make a list. What do you want for Christmas? I am guilty of thinking of me and mine, and mine for me, too much. I hurry past the annoying ding-a-ling-a-ling at the store entrance, maybe tossing in the scrap change from my lunch, and want to complete my mercenary mission as quickly as possible so I can enjoy my holiday. Get in. Get out. Get done.

What do you want for Christmas? Haunting is the thought that this sentence did not exist two thousand years ago. Oh, maybe a frightened young virgin, about to deliver, thought some clean straw would be nice. Or perhaps a confused young semi-father-to-be wished for better light and a warmer corner. The wanting was base, stark, desperate in many respects. Unspoken, of course, the want to be healthy and whole in the delivery.

How loud does the pain have to shout at us, in our back-lit comfort and heat pump luxury? While we indulge our wanting, the bulk of the globe cries out in misery or hunger, tramps through the rubble of war and fear, or cowers amongst the shadows as human rats named victim.

So many are weeping aloud their list: "Stop the pain." "End the hatred." "Silence the guns." "Remove the explosive devices." "Dry up the booze." "Flush all the drugs." "Draw back his fist." "Bring my daddy home." "Make mommy stop."

Plaintive the cries: "I am tired." "I am afraid." "I am hungry." "I am alone." "Bow down Thine ear unto my supplication, for filled with evils is my soul, and my life unto Hades hath drawn nigh." 


Laced with sarcasm, the lament of wanting for Christmas comes across for so many as an unimagined, unattainable reality other than the feeling that they are lost in the bowels of the forgotten. "Down in the pit ... in the shadow of death," the only real sense of feeling and the truth they know.

Make a list. What do you want for Christmas?

"O Lord God of my salvation, by day have I cried and by night before Thee."

And should it be that for me, and maybe for you, the list this year begins like this: that seen is the reality that the salvation for which this season stands is only, ultimately mine when your salvation is as important to me as mine is to me. That my plenty is but scorn to those who have none, that my safety is false when they are not safe, that my joy is shallow if their sadness is not touched, and that my hope will not be met unless I am willing to somehow be one who answers your hope. Amen.

 

Comments

[LintLass]

03:11 PM on 12/20/2010

If I can say so from the point of view of a Pagan raised among Christians, I think that the all/nothing shame/virtue thing attached to the modern form of your Christmas holiday *is* Christians' ritual of dealing (or not dealing) with 'want.'

With 'things' and with affections and with theological fears and desires, you greet the season as all *about* want and expectation, and whether you have a lot or not, whether you're selfish or free, whether you get what you want or get something else or get the coal, so to speak, or profit off selling Norman Rockwell images of it not being about profit, you, among the rest of the mainstream culture, really, either show and or work through, the problems of your desire for 'more,' whether that's 'more stuff,' 'more religion,' or 'more of what either is supposed to bring.'

You argue about these desires, try to banish or enforce them or live between the battle lines you draw about em. Want, need, give, get, hope, love, divide, hate, what....

What if it's not actually *meant* to be a correctness or a 'war?' What if it's how you actually in some way try to work out through a ritual of sorts, exactly what you bring to the end of every year?

[de-meme-ing]

02:49 PM on 12/20/2010

"What do you want for Christmas? Haunting is the thought that this sentence did not exist two thousand years ago. Oh, maybe a frightened young virgin, about to deliver, thought some clean straw would be nice. Or perhaps a confused young semi-father-to-be wished for better light and a warmer corner. The wanting was base, stark, desperate in many respects. Unspoken, of course, the want to be healthy and whole in the delivery."


First, a beautiful essay. Stirring. The beauty of a good essay, it that it stirs your soul.

That said, on the contrary, I think the question, "What do you want for Christmas" was asked and answered two thousands years ago, or it couldn't be asked today.

The question becomes, what did Mary want for Christmas, for what did her heart long? Why was Joseph initially taken aback, frightened, bewildered, confused? Why did he come around? What was the fullness of his dream? Were they a match?

I think everybody answers that question for themselves, and from there knows what they want for Christmas.


"Unspoken, of course, the want to be healthy and whole in the delivery."

I think that sums it up for most of us, or at least it did for me. Or, as Hillel said, "All the rest is Torah (more percisely, what is written depending upon your persuasion), go and learn."

[LintLass]

03:24 PM on 12/20/2010

I think what some people want 'for Christmas' is a 'war.' Maybe a lot of Christians' problems with conflict, religion, and their own darn 'sinful commercialism' aren't over what they're ostensibly over. And maybe that's why all the 'fighting.'

Take it from someone who knows from "Gods of War."

I realize that if you have only 'one God' 'All God' is a God of War. This is a poor excuse for one, and it's colonized too many heads.

Buy a thing, get a thing, give a thing, maybe find out what you 'want.' What it's really worth. Even if what you 'want' is 'More Righteousness.'

But I don't think it's supposed to be a Godsforsaken 'war.'

[de-meme-ing]

11:30 PM on 12/20/2010

I have not a clue what you are talking about, literally not a clue.