Beyond Glitter

Beyond Glitter

"We give thanks for those who have blessed us in this life through the spirit they have revealed to us in the midst of their sufferings and trials.  As the Giver of every good gift, you continue to bring your best gifts to us in the most unanticipated ways and often through the most unlikely people in our eyes to leave us enduring legacies of faith and hope... and perseverance in faithfulness.   We pause to remember them with thanks."

            My great uncle Blunner was not known in the community as an active Christian. My great grandfather's brother, farmer, he had lost his large farm, nice home during the Great Depression, still bitter from the loss. He coached the local baseball team, loved young people. Always, my entire life, was Santa Clause at our church. At the end of the Sunday school program, there would be a banging at the front door of the church and here would come uncle Blunner in that well-worn Santa Clause outfit, large bag of fruit and candy, handing it out to everyone, to their great delight.  Usually, oranges and tangerines because many of the poor children from the community, corralled by the Sunday school which often changed their lives for the better, had never seen an orange or tangerine. I well remember my own Daddy showing children how to peel the fruit.

            This was 80 years ago, the poverty of Eastern North Carolina. No power lines (electricity), only one phone line going to my cousins country store and only a few people in the whole world with inside water facilities.

            We were poor, poverty stricken by today's standards, although my mother and father's families were land owners. Our country church had gas lights (carbide, gas from a large tank in the church yard), I so remember those beautiful gas lights, my cousin Relmen standing on pews as he would light them. Most church houses, even the school house, used kerosene lamps, I so wish I had one of those gas lights. I know they would have given me one because years later I gave electric chandeliers to the church.  I so remember my parents taking their children 50 miles to Raleigh to see real Christmas decorations...colored lights, decorations strung across streets, large Christmas trees with electric lights.

            Later, eight years of university, studying evangelical-fundamentalist doctrines involving God's word, I became disenchanted about using Christmas trees-secular decorations in God's house of worship. "For the customs of the people [are] vain: for [one] cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. They [are] upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also [is it] in them to do good" (Jeremiah 10:2-5).

            Oh, how I have changed my mind. Perhaps, there are things that should not be in God's house but, the joy of Christmas to those poor children, those old people burying the marks of sweat and toil. A time of homemade dolls, trucks, balls. Other than a Sears Christmas catalogue, they knew little about the commercialized Christmas. They never saw enough of the Sunday school nativity program. Older children in bathrobes (shepherds and wise men), the magic that younger children's mothers could do with crepe paper,  with the depths of the Great Depression, scarce food, empty pockets, some joy into their lives. WHAT MORE WOULD OUR BLESSED LORD DESIRE?

            There has always been a remarkable therapy in laughter. The people of the Great Depression did not have much to smile about, laugh about. Even their funerals were a ritual of relief. The most laughter I saw, Mr. Zeb, who never had anything to say at the church, only sang bass, never expected a gift but a male friend had put a brightly packaged gift on the tree which was brought to him. He seemed so excited as he began to tare into the package. Out of the box, jumped a rabbit, running all over the church, to the absolute thrill-delight of the children and the oldsters who were there.

            Nowhere in scripture are his followers-believers told to celebrate his birth, only at his table, to remember his atonement. This writer, older, now knowing the callousness of the world, we know that our joy awaits us. Last breath here, leaving behind the trials of living, first breathe there, eternal joy. But, celebrate with laughter, giving whatever personifies the Christian joy and thankfulness for salvation while here. What better time than the colors, sounds, giving of a season set aside to remember the birth date of Jesus, the greatest event in the history of the world. If your Christmas has become commercialized, more intent on spending and spree-ing than remembering, it is your fault. When all the world, including Christians, become so involved with glitter that they forget the bitter or the better, then Christmas will truly be just one more extravagant holiday.

            I spent one Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, 1960. It was so cold, the sky so bright, in my imagination I know that God really put on a show for those shepherds, he spared no expense, after all he was celebrating his only sons birth. Perhaps millions of the heavenly host singing to the amazed-scared shepherds.

            When will some Hollywood producer, wanting an academy award picture show, produce a story of an early American Christmas- before commercialization? Plain-sane people amazed by and grateful for the greatest gift the world has ever known.

            Grandson of Abraham, twin son of Isaac, Esau, could not discern the spiritual heritage available to him. He traded his birth right for a bold suit. In this pressure cooker world of profane-unconcerned people, don't get into that broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:14). Beyond the glitter, gladness.