I've been blogging since 2007, and over the years I've written many Advent and Christmas reflections. Three of these have been particularly popular, and I want to share them with new readers, and again with longtime readers who would like to revisit some memories and old favorites:
Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV
Perhaps my most viral Christmas post, a playful meditation using the Christmas TV classics How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas to sneak up on "the true meaning of Christmas."
A bit from that post reflecting on the misfit themes in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer:
At this point in the show all the misfit themes are coming to a climax. We see misfits seeking community, we see empathy as one misfit identifies with another, and, finally, we see one misfit seeking to act as savior. A misfit to save the misfits. A misfit Messiah.
But the theology of Rudolph takes its most radical, surprising, and extreme turn when the personification of evil, The Abominable Snowman, comes back from death in a quirky resurrection event--Bumble's Bounce!--as a peaceable creature who is also in need of loving community. Apparently, this "evil" creature is also a misfit. And the hint is that he's "abominable" because he's been marginalized and without community.
So, summarizing all this, I learned from Rudolph this important lesson about Christmas: Something about Christmas means misfits have a place, a community, a home. Or, rephrased, Christmas means that there are no more misfits.
Christmas Carols as Resistance Literature
Christmas carols as subversive? In this post I talk about two Christmas carols--O Holy Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear--to highlight the political commentary in the lyrics. Beyond being shared a lot on social media, this post has been used by churches for sermons and Bible classes during the Advent season. Some from that post:
Christmas carols as subversive? In this post I talk about two Christmas carols--O Holy Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear--to highlight the political commentary in the lyrics. Beyond being shared a lot on social media, this post has been used by churches for sermons and Bible classes during the Advent season. Some from that post:
Recall that the song and the French poem O Holy Night were written in 1847. The English version was written in 1855, six years before the American Civil War and eight years before the Emancipation Proclamation. O Holy Night, it turns out, was a song of political resistance and protest. Imagine Americans singing in the years leading up to the Civil War the lyrics "Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; And in His name all oppression shall cease."
O Holy Night as political protest. A Christmas carol as resistance literature.
Piss Christ in Prison: An Unlikely Advent Meditation
As you can tell from the title, an edgy post from my prison Bible study. Leaning on my book Unclean, I use Andres Serrano's controversial artwork Piss Christ to recover the shock of the Incarnation in its message of scandalous, unbelievable grace. Some from that post:
As you can tell from the title, an edgy post from my prison Bible study. Leaning on my book Unclean, I use Andres Serrano's controversial artwork Piss Christ to recover the shock of the Incarnation in its message of scandalous, unbelievable grace. Some from that post:
[The shock and offense we experience from Andres Serrano's photo Piss Christ] is an example of the attribution called negativity dominance in judgments of contamination. That is, when the pure comes in contact with the contaminant the pure becomes polluted. The negative dominates over the positive. The power is not with the pure but sits with the pollutant.
This is why the Pharisees see Jesus becoming defiled when he eats with tax collectors and sinners. The pollutant--the tax collectors and sinners--defiles Jesus, the pure. The negative dominates over the positive. The pollutant is the stronger force. Thus it never occurs to the Pharisees, because it is psychologically counter-intuitive, that Jesus's presence might sanctify or purify those sinners he is eating with. Because pollution doesn't work that way.
Thus, in the contact between urine and Jesus in Piss Christ we instinctively judge the negative to be stronger than the positive. Thus the shock. Thus the blasphemy.
But the real blasphemy just might be this: That we think urine is stronger than Christ. That we instinctively--and blasphemously--believe that the defilement of our lives is the strongest force in the universe. Stronger even than the grace of God.
