Wednesday, December 15, 2010
"The Fear of Christmas"
This essay, "On the Fear of Christmas", by Fr. James Schall, S.J., appears at The Catholic Thing and is, I think, worth a read. Here's a bit:
If Christmas is just a myth, we can let it alone. But what if it is a history, an event, an account of what happened in the time of Caesar Augustus, “when the whole world was at peace?” We do everything possible to prevent ourselves from considering the implications of this fact.
Christopher Dawson once remarked that, on the morning after the Nativity, the leading papers of Jerusalem, Rome, or Athens – had there been such – would not have announced it. It was not important. From the beginning, the Nativity was only known by a few. It is an event that is “too good to be true.” But that is precisely what it is not. It is true. Its good is something we should know and want to know. Indeed, within the Christian corpus is the sometimes upsetting mandate to make this event and its consequences known to “all nations.” Even if they do not want to hear of it? It seems so.
The fear of Christmas is something even more basic, or perhaps more sinister. Why is that? It is one thing simply not to know something because we have never encountered it or thought about it. It is another thing when, having heard of it, we refuse to allow it to be known. We organize our polity in such a way that every obstacle is put in the way of knowing it. . . .
Christmas is a dangerous feast. We fear it. We do not allow ourselves to consider it. Yet, somehow, we still envy those who know this feast of domesticity. “Unto us a Child is born.” “What Child is this?” If this Child is indeed “Christ the Lord,” what happens to us who make every effort to prevent its truth from being known.
I'm not sure why, but I was reminded, after reading the essay, of Mr. Tumnus's observation, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that Aslan is "not a tame lion."
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/12/the-fear-of-christmas.html
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A timely reminder. I am always amazed by the bizarre myths about Christianity that secularists indulge in. Their excuse for secularism is almost always some version of "If there was no god, we mortals would have to invent him," meaning of course that since there is no god, we did in fact invent him.
I find that head-in-the-sand attitude particularly contradictory for those who style themselves as "scientific." They seem to have squared scientism with a smug refusal to consider the evidence! I would have thought that was anti-scientism. The mere fact that Jesus refuses to let us define him has seemingly deranged many of our colleagues. We are indeed like children in the central park with a few coins given them by their parents, who complain to Jesus that they paid the musician to play a song for him but he refused to dance to their song.
In the end, the man who painted his portrait on the Sudarium of Oviedo and the Shroud of Turin knows who he is and wants us to know who he is. He has done most of the work, we need only open our eyes.