Jesus meets Santa: A mind-bending clash of mythologies.

As I picked up my Post-Dispatch this morning, my skeptic’s heart was gladdened by the inclusion of the Catholic Supply of St. Louis’ eight-page flier packed with a jaw-dropping assortment of religious artifacts, Christmas ornaments, nativity scenes, home decorations and more. The flier represents the tip of the Catholic knick-knack iceberg, the bulk of which can be seen online or at either of the two stores (one at Chippewa and Jamieson, the other at 2953 Highway K in O’Fallon), and includes at least a few products that strain the doctrinal envelope.

My favorite, offered in a variety of iterations, depicts Santa kneeling before the infant Jesus, “a subtle reminder to children,” the website tells us, “that Santa is not the main focus of the season.” Or, as one wag put it, that “the mythology of Jesus who saves us from our sins has not…

photo courtesy buynothingchristmas.org

The first Christmas after we married my husband and I had almost no money at all but still wanted to be able to give each other something special.  We each made a list of ten things that we’d like for Christmas and then exchanged the lists to take the guess work out of shopping.  One might argue that we’d also taken the thought out of the process, but that didn’t occur to us at the time.  And so we took our lists and carried out our “plan” to buy each other a few gifts.  When Christmas morning came - surprise!  It turned out that my husband had purchased everything on my list, and I had purchased everything on his.  But how, when we had no money?  Credit, of course!

I look back on that first Christmas as a demented consumerist version of “The Gift of the Magi”.  That was…

I was talking with a Baptist friend of mine the other day and we were good-naturedly bemoaning the fact that every time a church makes it into the news for some ridiculous reason, it usually has “Baptist” in its name, even if it doesn’t remotely resemble a typical Baptist church with typical Baptist beliefs (See: Westboro Baptist Church and Amazing Grace Baptist Church).

I mentioned that it would be really nice to write a positive story about an organization with “Baptist” in the title, and he reminded me of the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home in Bridgeton, Missouri.

Lowe-Frillman Campus in Bridgeton, Missouri

Missouri Baptist Children’s Home (MBCH) has been around since 1886 and is very good at what it does, providing such crucial services as emergency and transitional shelter, case management, foster and adoptive services, counseling and vocational training.

Every year around this time, a Christmas wish list gets published on the MBCH website, along with…

Merry Christmas to all!

Brigham Young University’s College of Fine Arts and Communication has produced a free online video with an original musical score. The message “expresses the hope that everyone feels love, peace and joy this Christmas”.

The classic of Holiday classics It’s a Wonderful Life is ubiquitous this time of year. Like the Christmas Day marathon of A Christmas Story that TBS has made into a new Holiday tradition, it will be hard to miss, if you have your TV on for even a few hours.

Even the St. Louis Rep got into the act this year, with their one-man stage adaptation, This Wonderful Life.

Perhaps appropriate to this Christmas season, though, some are recalling the darker side of George Bailey. The side of him that, as one writer puts it,

is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your…

Image courtesy of the New York Daily News

I will admit a little sheepishly that although I dislike shopping I love receiving presents. Certain creature comforts can momentarily delight–a soft new sweater, a sip of really good bourbon, or an exquisite chocolate will all leave me swearing “I’m in heaven.” At moments I feel more like Madonna than the Madonna: a material girl living in a material world.

I know none of this makes me sound like a very religious person, but religion doesn’t always entail an outright rejection of worldly things. I fervently believe that God gave us bodies and a physical, tangible world in which to live for a reason, and that He wants us to experience and be grateful for their goodness. That being said, there is the truth of the phrase “too much of a good thing.” We have been living in a culture of excess for a…

“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”

Early illustration by John Leech, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

What sort of Scrooge could say such a thing, you ask? Why, Charles Dickens’ Scrooge, of course, the original meanie himself. If you haven’t read A Christmas Carol recently, you should go back to give it a try. I did, and I was surprised by the colloquial vigor of much of the language and the power of the familiar story to move me.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stage or screen version of it that has really touched me all that much, but reading it straight through the other night I was astonished to find myself with big tears dripping down my cheeks as I turned the last page.…

It’s Christmastime–whether or not you’re a Christian, it’s clearly the Christmas season in America.  I’m curious if there are other non-Christians out there who celebrate Christmas, and how you celebrate, and how you feel about it.  I grew up as a non-practicing Christian, and although my entire family now identifies as Ethical Humanists (who says we can’t make converts?), we still love Christmas.  And let’s face it, as many Christians bemoan, the vast majority of what we think of as “Christmas-y” is pagan and/or commercial.  Lighted trees, wreaths, yule logs, the holly and the ivy and the mistletoe, special meals and gift-giving, Santa and Scrooge and Jack Frost–they’re all adapted winter solstice traditions or more recently created to support Christmas, not Christianity.

So what’s a humanist to do?  Some humanists celebrate the Winter Solstice or HumanLight, embracing greenery and lights and general festivity, but shying away from nativity scenes and Santa…

Advent, a Christian liturgical season of waiting and longing,  begins Sunday,

credit: fullhomelydivinity.org

November 30 and lasts until the day of Christ’s birth, Christmas.

Children make out their Christmas lists, remake them, pour through catalogues, turn down page corners, circle gift choices and change their minds. And change their minds again. They wait and wait and wait for Christmas Day.

But it’s not just their presents for which they wait.

First, they await those mysterious and joyful changes that takes place in their homes and their churches.

Homes start to look, sound and smell different: the Advent Calendar is put in a prominent spot, Christmas cards arrive and are displayed,  decorations are added, sometimes to nearly every room, a Jesse Tree might be in sight, soon the Christmas tree is brought in, put up, secured and adorned. Music is played and sung, first Advent songs, then Christmas carols. Cooking is unlike the rest of the year, nostalgic kitchen aromas…

Wally Bronner, 81, died this past week.

Who’s Wally Bronner? If you’ve ever been to that little slice of Bavaria called Frankenmuth, Michigan, you’ve probably visited his life’s work, Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. The man basically took what was a sign-painting business and turned it into the “world’s largest” year-round Christmas store. I don’t know if it’s still there, but if you’ve driven I-55 north from Cape Girardeau to St. Louis, there’s been a billboard for the Wonderland along the interstate for years.

I happened to visit the store a few years ago. Part religious shrine, part multimedia spectacle, part commercial entrepreneurship, with just enough kitsch to make it cool, it was quite the experience in Americana. But before you dismiss it as just one more example of the over-commercialization of something sacred, permit me to get a little philosophical.

We tend to think of “public religion” in terms of religion and politics, all…