Why I am a Scrooge at Christmas

I am a Scrooge at Christmas, I admit it. It frustrates my wife. Exasperated, she asked me the other night why I dislike Christmas so much. I’ve been thinking about how I would answer that since then. As far as I can tell, I think a certain experience, family experience, and theological development play key roles.

That certain experience happened when I was about 10 years old. My family went to the Christmas Eve service at our church. We arrived late enough to find empty space only on the first pew. I was seated on the aisle. As the choir began to process down the aisle to the choir loft past me, I suddenly burst into tears. Sobbing uncontrollably, my parents tried to settle me down without drawing embarrassing attention to my outburst. I could not explain why I was crying. But after I settled down a bit, I realized that the onset of the service sparked a question in my mind that I couldn’t get rid of and it saddened me deeply. “Why did they have to kill him (Jesus)?” was the question. It overwhelmed me and caused my tears. I’ve never been able to celebrate Christmas with the expected “joy” since. The shadow of the cross over the manger has indelibly marked me. I didn’t know it then but at that moment I became a “theologian of the cross.” And the rest of my life has been an attempt to process and understand that.

My family was not close. I never knew my birth father and my adoptive father was emotionally distant and domineering. I never experienced the warm fuzzy kind of Christmas of Hallmark infamy. I would have stayed at college over the Christmas break if I could have. So Christmas does not conjure up the “magic of the season” for me. My own family has been better but it hasn’t erased the falseness and hollowness of the “season” from my family of origin experience.

Theological development has played a role too. In addition to growing in my grasp of a theology of the cross, one implication of that theology in particular has played “devil’s advocate” with the triumphalistic “Christmas” experience our culture promotes (and our economy depends on!). That redoubtable Catholic, J. R. R. Tolkien of The Lord of the Rings fame, expressed my conviction growing out of the theology of cross best.

“I am a Christian,” Tolkien wrote, “and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’—though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”      

I too see history as a long “defeat” because God’s way is winning through losing and dying to bring life. Thus I find the unalloyed “joy” of our culture’s Christmas and the hollowness of our invocation or expectation of the “miracle” of Christmas to resolve our difficulties, not to mention the unbridled consumption expected by both us and businesspeople, deeply unpalatable.

I could stand it if the church focused its observance of Christmas on the twelve days the church calendar designates as the “season” of Christmas (Dec.25-Jan.6). Then we could participate however much or little we wanted to in the Midwinter Festival of Halloween to Dec.25 and not hope or expect it to provide ballast for our faith (which it doesn’t). But we don’t do that. We keep trying to cram the season of Christmas into the Midwinter Festival, losing both Advent and Christmas in the process. That at least is my experience (for some of the reasons stated above and doubtless others I’m not aware of).

So Scrooge is the best I can do to get through it. As C. S. Lewis described Narnia under the White Witch’s control in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as “always winter but never Christmas,” that’s how I experience this season, “always Midwinter Festival but never truly Christmas.”

It was truly Christmas for me that Christmas Eve long ago. And that ruined “Christmas” for me ever since. Thanks be to God.