Away with the manger

From The Age

Taking the pressure to be popular off the Christmas story offers a chance for a whole new meaning.

In the town where I grew up, the Christmas pageant was the highlight of the year. We'd arrive early and thrust our way past the adults to sit at the blue line. We'd watch, enthralled, as marching bands, exotic floats, dancing ballerinas and clowns went past. We especially loved it when it came time for the nativity scene. The baby was cute but, more to the point, it meant that the very next float was Santa's. And while he would go on to set up shop in Myer, the nativity would be carefully wrapped up and put into the storage shed.

Ownership rights for Christmas have long been a tricky subject. We've become used to the tug-of-war between what we've designated as the sacred and the secular at Christmas, but over the past couple of years the ground has shifted even more. Christianity is no longer fighting for its share of centre stage - it's discovering that it can no longer assume that it has a place on the stage at all.

You can predict the letters that will fill our papers this Christmas as easily as I can. "We need to get back to the real meaning of Christmas," they'll proclaim, as though there can only be one, and as though Christianity holds its copyright.

For hundreds of years, Christianity has assumed a privileged position as the meaning-maker within Western society. But in the last few generations, Christianity has become like the favourite great aunt who sits in the corner of the room at Christmas - we play along with her for the day, listen nostalgically to her old stories, and with bemusement to her folk wisdom. "We must try to see more of her during the year," we say as we leave, knowing we won't.

At the risk of overworking the analogy, for many people, their great aunt has long died and been buried. Many people in our community whose heritage was Christian have decided firmly against it.

To say that Christianity is under threat, however, is more than a little melodramatic. Christianity has a resilience and tenacity that's enabled it to survive horrific persecution and oppression, from its earliest days in the Roman Empire, until now in communist China. The decision by a local council in Melbourne to not have a nativity float in a Christmas pageant won't kill off Christianity. Thinking that having a nativity float is a sign of a Christian society is a far greater threat.

It's ironic that Christmas has become the season over which this battle for making meaning is fought. The origin of the festival left the way open for the argument to continue forever. It wasn't until about 400 years after the birth of Jesus that anyone felt it necessary to mark the day.

Historians largely agree that the celebration of Christmas came about just after Constantine had made Christianity a recognised and privileged religion within the Roman Empire. Religious leaders were looking for a way to make Christianity more widely accepted among the populace, so they adopted an existing mid-winter festival and layered it with Christian meanings.

Many of our Christmas traditions came from the pre-existing festival: preparing great feasts of meat and ale to use up all the stores before they went off. While people would celebrate surviving the darkest time of year and the promise of light to come by dancing and singing naked in the streets, we've translated that tradition into a much more tasteful version, with the fully clothed Salvos singing Christmas carols from the back of a truck.

So much for those of us who thought that Jesus was actually born on December 25, and that we were joining in some world-wide birthday party that's been thrown ever since in his honour.

The relationship between what's been defined as sacred and secular has always been murky. Our tendency has been to define some traditions and behaviours as sacred, without recognising that they are - at best - just carriers of something sacred.

Perhaps the great mistake of the Christian church since the festival of Christmas began is that it has compromised itself so deeply in order to be palatable to everyone. It doesn't recognise that it has lost hold of much that is sacred. Which means we no longer recognise the irony of playing Christmas carols in a shopping centre.

Taking nativity floats out of the Christmas pageant and not insisting that Silent Night gets sung next to Jingle Bells may give Christianity the best chance it has had in years to offer something deeply sacred to the world. It gives back the freedom to not be attractive, to not have to be enticing. It lets Christianity stand on its own. It gives us the chance to distinguish between the truly sacred and the purely religious or nostalgic. Please, God, it gives us the chance to never hear Away in a Manger again.

Best of all, if the Christian Christmas story is released from the pressure to be popular it means we can take the nativity from its place in the corner of the sparkly shopping centre, where the star at its top gets lost among the glitter and glitz of the decorations.

We can put it unashamedly next to the dumpster out the back, where there are no other stars to light the dark.

Cheryl Lawrie
November 25, 2007
Cheryl Lawrie is a Melbourne writer.