You might assume
that I, a Christian minister, grew up celebrating Christmas in traditional
ways, with solemnity and religiosity aplenty.
I did attend my share of Christmas Eve services with my church-going
family. But our family Christmas
celebrations have, over the years, included zanier moments, like the annual
visit from the Christmas Chipmunk.
You’ve not heard of the Christmas
Chipmunk? Then I’ll begin with the
origins of this mythical character.
While I was in my late teens, my father
drove home from work one evening wearing a chipmunk costume. He’d found the full body costume, like the
ones Disney World characters walk around in, which someone discarded at his
office. My father decided it would be funny to arrive home incognito. He knocked on the front door just to see what
kind of reaction he’d get. Since I
answered the door, he received a loud reaction.
Though chipmunks are the most adorable of all rodents, the seven-foot
variety lose some of their charm when they surprise you at the front door. After the giant chipmunk calmed me down, the
rest of the family thought it would be fun to take turns donning the costume. Someone ran to get a camera. Soon we were all excitedly trying on the
chipmunk costume and posing for the camera—realizing only after a whole roll of
film was wasted that all the pictures of the chipmunk looked exactly alike
regardless of who was inside the costume.
This delay of insight should give you a clue about our limited capacity
for maintaining holiday decorum.
Years later, again on a whim, my father
rediscovered the chipmunk costume on the Christmas Eve when his then only
grandchildren, my daughter and my sister’s son, were two years old and visiting
with their parents for the holiday.
Following some grandfatherly impulse to entertain, my father secretly
costumed himself, went outside, and then knocked on the front door. My mother, the only other person in on the
scheme, answered the door and in her grandmotherliest tone announced, “Oh,
goodness, it’s the Christmas Chipmunk!”
She ushered in the visitor, who spoke not a word but waved and smiled
his painted-on smile.
“Georgia. Alex.
Here’s the Christmas Chipmunk!” their grandmother introduced, as if we’d
been expecting him. “Would you like to
come give him a sweet hug? He’s come to see if you’re getting ready for bed so
that Santa can come.”
In an instant, the other adults
understood the mythology being constructed.
This Christmas Chipmunk was to Santa what John the Baptist was to
Jesus: a forerunner, a harbinger of the
real deal. We caught on to the plot and
chimed in with things like, “Thanks for coming to see us, Mr. Chipmunk! You can tell Santa that we’re going to bed
now. See you next year!” Although the chipmunk did not exclaim, as he
waddled out of sight, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” he did
wave, and Georgia and Alex, stunned, waved back.
The chipmunk would visit each Christmas
Eve at bedtime for the next ten years.
And as my sister and her husband and then my brother and his wife added
more children to the extended family, the Chipmunk’s Christmas Eve audience
increased. Every Christmas Eve the
Chipmunk helped our children prepare for Santa’s visit. And the Chipmunk ritual continued until the
costume finally wore out. And by then
the children were past the age of credulity.
But for a few years there, we allowed
our children to live in a bizarre subculture that may have scarred them for
life. For you see, my daughter and her
cousins assumed that, like Santa, the Christmas Chipmunk, whose story we
embellished a bit more each year, was part of everyone’s Christmas. We parents of these deluded children
discovered later that Georgia and cousins would talk with their little friends
about Santa’s helper, the Christmas Chipmunk—and these little friends would
then look askance at the tales of his annual visitations. Kindergartners in Nashville, Montgomery, and
Tampa then brought tales home to their parents of a deviant celebration of
Christmas.
We also exposed our daughter and nephews
and niece to other counter-cultural traditions.
Before our family’s annual Christmas Eve reading of the Christmas story
from the Gospel of Luke, my sister and I staged the family nativity drama. When the children were babies, we’d dress
them up in ridiculous costumes and pose them for a live nativity scene. As they grew older, we’d teach them songs,
creatively choreographed, to perform in my parents’ family room. We’d get our pets in the act, too, putting
antlers on our dogs when we needed reindeer or draping a dog in a nubby white
bath mat when we needed a sheep. As the
children grew even older, they began to produce the pageants themselves,
complete with misspelled playbills and homemade costumes. Georgia one year performed her Christmas
piano recital piece, “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” as cousin Alex
manipulated his family’s puppy, dressed in a tiny tutu, into a lovely ballet of
that Christmas standard. Once my nephew
Patrick, at about age 6, delivered a spot-on Elvis impersonation while singing
“Blue Christmas.” And my sister and I
can still be persuaded to sing in annoying falsetto our impersonation of Alvin
and the Chipmunk’s “Christmas, Christmas Time is Here” after which my father
annually pronounces with heavy sarcasm, “Makes you proud.” Incidentally, as far as we know, Alvin is
unrelated to the Christmas Chipmunk.
There are times when I do wonder if our
silliness is irreligious. At times I
wish my family and I would spend as much time reflecting together on the
“serious” message of Christmas as we do planning a punch line.
Then again, maybe it’s best that we not
strain at tradition, that we not calculate customs, that they evolve from who
we are and what we enjoy and need and how we express love in wide-ranging ways
to one another over time. Maybe
traditions need not be so, well, traditional.
Besides—and I hope I’m not simply
justifying my own penchant for silliness—playfulness can be holy and
healing. But let me be clear. I’m not
recommending humor that is insensitive to others or feeds an attention-starved
ego or helps us mask our true self.
Jokes can’t produce Advent joy. Good humor can be truly good only when
it’s not at someone else’s expense. The
deepest joy rarely gets expressed in a belly laugh. Sacred gladness does not gloss over grief or
deny depression. Yet there is a holy
joyfulness to the life of faith that helps us be authentic and requires us to
become vulnerable, and these are important spiritual dispositions.
I believe there is something freeing
about being willing to look foolish.
Think how spiritually daring it is to cast aside any pretense of dignity
when you are with the ones you love.
Consider what a gift we give to be extravagantly un-sober in order to
prompt a smile. It is profoundly
generous and trusting to fling aside one’s pride to delight another. I’m stretching the analogy here, I realize,
but isn’t loss of dignity what the Christ-child experienced, being disreputably
birthed in a stable among a rude audience of sheep and shepherds, who in effect
applauded at his abdication of nobility?
Wasn’t it Jesus’s rejection of decorum and tradition that brought him to
the manger and then to the cross?
Let us now return to today’s Gospel
reading—where the ridiculous prompts the rejoicing. Elizabeth, well past childbearing age, is
pregnant with her first son, and that improbable child in her womb improbably
leaps with joy as Mary approaches—Mary, the preposterous virgin mother. How wild is that? Maybe this is what Madeleine L’Engle had in
mind as she invites the God of Advent to “Come speak in joy untamed
and wild.”
Mary responds to her cousin
Elizabeth’s exclamation of joy with her own song of joy we now call the
Magnificat. What a lot we can learn from
Mary’s joyful outburst. First, Mary’s
own good fortune is not the chief cause for her happiness. Though she describes herself as blessed, Mary
is celebrating good news for her people.
Those who’ve been hungry will have good things to eat; those who are
lowly will be raised up, and the powerful will be brought low. Mary is ecstatic for the good fortune of
others. That capacity to be happy for others is a mark of Gospel joy.
Notice also that Mary’s joy is
subversive. Often humor in the Bible,
written for people under political oppression, comes from the idea of turning
the tables on those in power. Mary is delighted that the unexpected can happen.
The God of the Bible does the unexpected and makes the wise look foolish. Mary smiles at the preposterous thought that
God has favored her—and her child will save a desperate people.
One writer claims that the Bible
is basically a comedy rather a tragedy because comedy works through surprise
and ends with celebration. Comedy is
hopeful. Mary’s song belongs in a
musical comedy, you might argue. Maybe a
family Christmas pageant performed by children in bathrobes—and the family dogs
in sheep’s clothing—is not so far off the mark.
If you’re able to attend the Christmas
Eve service here tomorrow night, you’ll find it a sweet and solemn
service. But listen for the note of
joy. During the reading of the Christmas
story, you might imagine the angels in that celestial pageant singing, with
halos slightly askew, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come! So have a good laugh! Be not afraid, shepherds. Loosen up!
And do not take yourselves too seriously, you stuffy Magi!” Author Annie Dillard, who espouses living
exultantly with “unseemly joy,” contends that she has “not seen a great deal
accomplished in the name of dignity.” I
agree.
Still, I wonder how close hilarity is to
heresy.
Well, it’s too late now for my
family. You’ll have to find that line
for yourselves.
This evening the final Advent candle
shines in the name of joy. In my family,
joy looks a lot like hilarity. I hope
that is close enough.
PRAYER God, help us get good at the spiritual art of joy. For our sake.
For the sake of this ol’ world.
Amen
