Faith: Christmas tree, indeed

We Christians like to think of ourselves as sharing one baptism, one faith, one mind--and to a large extent, this can be true, for those who are more evangelized by the spirit of God within them than the world around them. Many, however, hold conflicting interpretations of the world, because they hold conflicting notions of humanity--and therefore of the deity. The Bible teaches us that love is inclusive, yet they--who profess more loudly to faithfully observe the Bible's tenets than the rest of us--show little more in their hearts than pettiness, judgment, and fear (in a word, hate). They even show glee when the "godless" (anyone, even fellow Christians who fail to side with their idea of God) suffer misfortune and death.

One minor side venue where this dynamic is evident is this year's brouhaha about how Christmas is under attack. (The hatemongers have a perpetual lust for enemies to vilify in order to aggrandize themselves.) What these bozos don't understand is that the Christmas tree was originally a druid symbol, and Christmas itself was the pagan holiday of Saturnalia. (They deny this vehemently, because in their minds it is anathema for Christ to have anything to do with Belial.) In fact, Christianity first co-opted the pagan holiday of the Sun of Righteousness when they claimed that, if anyone, Christ Jesus was the true Son of God and Sun of Righteousness only vaguely prefigured by the pagan holiday. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis and the Oxford Inklings who aided in his conversion from paganism to Christianity, humanity has always longed for the figure of the resurrected savior--yet Christ is the true historical embodiment of that long-awaited figure.

Authentic believers of any faith see God's truth wherever it may be found, and embrace it; hatemongers pick and choose what they are willing to believe, and shy away from any truth that would challenge their dim and doomed worldview. True believers of any faith are inclusive and creative; fundamentalists of any faith are reductive and destructive. The Christmas tree is a unique symbol of Christmas, and of God's encampment or incarnation (John 1) among humans; yet long before that, the evergreen has been a symbol of God's everlasting gift of life to the earth and to his creation. True believers see this; those of small hearts and very little faith fear this.