always winter, never christmas

"Cause when it's always winter but never Christmas
Sometimes it feels like you're not with us
But deep inside our hearts we know

That you are here and we will not lose hope"

With the above lyrics, Relient K depicts a frigid wintry scene that closely parallels the way we can feel about life in general as it drags and refuses to resolve.  We've had a particularly cold, bitter beginning to winter in North Carolina this year.  And not the cool kind where it snows and everything feels magical but just the steely trudgery of freezing winds and plunging temperatures.  The season hasn't felt unlike what Relient K is alluding to and C.S. Lewis crystallizes in his description of the fictional world of Narnia.  It is upon her first meeting with Mr. Tumnus, a faun ally of Narnia's three child heroes, that Lucy is informed of the evil White Witch who has asserted control over Narnia.

“The White Witch? Who is she?” [asked Lucy.]
“Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It’s she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!”
“How awful!” said Lucy.

Frozen Narnia is a symbol for the world in which we inhabit.  Where dreams sometimes are frustrated and hopes fall flat and dissolve.  The White Witch is a depiction of an enemy that desires our destruction either through obliteration or slow, inevitable monotony and hopelessness.  I know that sometimes I feel the tug of Narnia's gravity at my feet in this world.

The beauty of Narnia, however, is that underlying the harsh conditions there is an obvious but subtle magic.  Like the first snow of the season, just below the untouched crystals, it almost feels like anything is possible there.  So how do we escape the doldrums of winter and look expectantly toward a promised Christmas?

Faith

The story of Christmas is the story of great faith in the face of great adversity.

It's the story of Mary subjecting herself to God's plan despite an uncertain future saying, "Let it be done to me according to your will."  It's the story of Joseph putting faith in God and in his young wife-to-be and choosing to raise Jesus as his own son regardless of his supernatural origins.  It's the story of shepherds and kings and wise men being drawn to a place and a child for unknown reasons and heeding the nagging in the minds and souls.  It's the story of a young family on the run protecting their son and fleeing a tyrant into exile in a strange land. 

In uncertain times and harsh realities, faith isn't just good.  It's essential.  But faith cannot exist on its own.  It must have an anchor, a source.  In the Christmas story, the article of faith is obvious: Christ.  However, faith extends beyond just the birth of a child.  Mary's faith, Joseph's faith, the faith of shepherds and kings and wise men and all the people of Israel was found in a promise.

It was a promise given to David, the King of Israel, many years before that a new king would rise from the ranks of the people and that his dominion over the Earth would forever transform our cold winters with the promise of Christmas.

"When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom.  He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.  I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men, but My lovingkindness shall not depart from him..."

Even in the ancient prophecy that foretells the birth of Christ, we see he is different type of king.  Not only is no White Witch-like tyrant bent on our exploitation and bondage, he is not like David either simply driven by power, glory, honor for his own name's sake.  He is the servant king.  And although he never commits iniquity, he bears the punishment in our place.  Our coldest winter, our sin that separates us from God, is lifted in the Christmas promise that is the faith of Christ that drives Him to a cross so that we can be restored to God and creation.

Christmas is not easy.  But it is certain.

Hope

A promise provides a pathway toward faith but it is hope that lights that path and guides us along the way.  Faith is a choice but hope is an attitude.  It is a belief in the face of contradicting circumstances that deeper realities are at work in the world around me.

As a man subjected to all types of torment and sacrifice and as a man of great faith, the apostle Paul is keenly aware of the dual realities of what we can see right before us and what exists that we do not yet perceive.

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

...and later he sums this up connecting faith and hope simply by saying...

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

Faith is a choice but hope is an attitude.

We face tough times, economic hardships, lost jobs, broken relationships, unreliable families, jilted hearts, and deferred dreams.  We can choose to face these realities with resignation or we can dare to hope.

And hope is the magic of Christmas.  It's the feeling of waking up to snow on Christmas Day.  Hope rewarded and faith proved true are the hallmarks of the Christmas spirit.

Lewis depicts this living hope in the person of Father Christmas.  After all, who is more a symbol for the combination of magic and belief for children than Santa Claus?

He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as holly berries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest.…

Now that the children actually stood looking at him… he was so big, so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.

“I’ve come at last,” said he. “She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The witch’s magic is weakening.”
And Lucy felt that deep shiver of gladness that you only get if you are being solemn and still.

Love

The story of Christmas is a love story.

I don't know if it's the magic of Christmas or the desire for warmth and familiarity that comes with the season or the gathering of families or the amount of time we spend watching couples in airports or what but something about Christmas makes people want to fall in love.  I also think that's part of the reason so many couples get engaged at Christmas.  I think this is the natural tendency of the Christmas story.  At its heart, Christmas is about the love of a groom for his bride.

Christ the groom.  He, in heaven, without want or need at the right hand of his Father with pleasures forevermore.  In perfect community, family with the Father and Holy Spirit.  Riches beyond measure and joy beyond comprehension.  But deep in his heart, there is a love that cannot be extinguished.  It gnaws at his soul begging for release and always desiring the good of his bride.

His bride the church.  The prodigal, disgraced, dirty church.  We with our fallen natures, our sinful choices.  We have run as far away as we can from our groom.  Seeking our own pleasures and own kingdoms, we've not only taken our relationship for granted, we've renounced it altogether. 

And yet, Christ emerges with hope for rekindled love.

The confessions of love found in all the sappy, romantic Christmas movies ever made can never compare to Christ's love for his bride.

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich."

Without fear of consequence or regard for his own fate, he puts himself on the line for his bride.  Beat that, Love Actually.

But what Christ offers is not an earthly love that will lead to its own winters but an eternal acceptance that can never be tainted or corrupted.  His love melts our perpetual winters and makes way for a new springlike reality.  His acceptance is the promise of Christmas.

So at Christmas, we wait.  We have faith.  We hope.  We love.

my funny valentine or why valentine's day is corporate and that's ok

This is a defense of love.

Or maybe more appropriately "Eros." I will refer to it as such for the rest of this essay for simplicity's sake and also because this is how C.S. Lewis dubs it in his book The Four Loves, which forms the basis of my writing.

Every year as the calendar days begin to fall precipitously and dangerously toward February 14, Eros begins to take fire from all sides.

"Valentine's Day is so corporate and commercialized."  "It's nothing but a capitalist conspiracy among the greeting card companies to prop up a make-believe holiday to boost a slow month in sales."  (What?  So you're telling me I can't get a Black History Month card with a sweet picture of George Washington Carver recounting the numerous and glorious uses of the peanut?  And why is this the only thing I can remember from countless public school history classes taught during the month of February?)

So people declare their independence of the evil capitalist machinery, defy the man, and declare their own holidays.  Anti-Valentine's Day.  Ferris Wheel Day.  National Singlehood Awareness Day.  And on and on.  Mostly this is done out of the bitterness that one does not have an appointed valentine to celebrate the day with.  In my opinion though, the lady (or man) doth protest too much.  If anyone declares their worship for Eros, it is the unValentines.  There is no opt-out for love.  We will all love something.  The question is what.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Now I could devote several hundred words to debunking the myth that the evil corporate behemoths of Hallmark and Godiva have manipulated our emotions by forcing their black holiday on us all.  But that's what Wikipedia is for.  And a quick reading of the Valentine's Day entry will show you that the name originates with early Christian martyrs and draws its romantic roots from the days of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales.

But skip that and let's use a little rhetorical device we lawyers refer to as "assuming arguendo."  So I grant your point: Valentine's Day is a corporate sellout of a holiday foisted upon us as a cruel hoax to convince us to buy copious amounts of greeting cards and chocolates.  My response: So what?

Have you ever noticed that corporations always co-opt stuff that is awesome?  Like Christmas and love and puppies.  We just sat a Super Bowl last week that half the people in the audience were watching solely for the purpose of being sold products through ingenious advertising.  Thousands of people tuned in via the internet for the Steve Jobs to unleash his brilliant move forward in technology for a supersize iPod touch.  When is the last time you saw a corporation spending $2.5 million for a commercial advocating the many desirable qualities of strained peas?  Corporations don't make us want things.  They find things we already want and find ways to make money off selling it to us.

One thing we definitely want, have always wanted, and will always want for as long as the human race subsists is Eros.

So what defines our love/hate relationship with Eros?  Fear.  We are afraid.  And, on the one hand, we have good reason to fear.  Eros is a fearful and brutal master of our emotions, our physical and spiritual well-being.  Never do we feel closer to the truly divine, the unconditional state of love reserved for God Himself then when we declare of our beloved, "anything for you."  We have a healthy distrust of such heavenly, eternal feelings expressed on the drab, mortal earth.  As Lewis writes, "When natural things look most divine, the demoniac is just round the corner."

Yet Eros, fickle Eros, the subject of countless songs and limitless reveries, of all the types of love is the most transitory.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  For no reason but with much protestation.  As easily as one can fall in love without realizing the event is even taking place, the sudden realization of being out of love may come as the even greater surprise to the afflicted party.  This is our second fear and is both unwise and unvirtuous.  While the first was prudent for protecting our right relationship and allegiance with Love Himself, the second fear is a betrayal of that relationship and turning away from the spirit-discerning fire that God presents in the form of Eros.  Again, Lewis explains it much better than I could ever hope.

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as 'Careful! This might lead you to suffering.' ... When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ.  If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.  I doubt whether there is anything in me that pleases Him less.

When I took my first job out of law school, I found myself for the first time with a 401k to manage and sitting in front of a financial adviser asking me the foreign yet primary philosophical question of my existence, "Would you like a low, moderate, or high risk of investment?"  You see, in life, there will be risk.  The only question is how much we will risk, how brave we will be.  There are more grievous sins in this life than cowardice.  Like foolishness.  The foolishness of believing that we can have one attitude toward Eros and our fellow human beings without having that attitude affect our relationship with God.  How can we ever lead ourselves to believe that we could take some safe route, low-risk strategy toward love in this life while expecting to be united to Love Himself in the next?

If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not.  We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour.  If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it. 

A survey of the biblical narrative leaves one thoroughly convinced that the story of human existence is the Love Story, the one of which all the Dear Johns and Valentine's Days of the world are but faint and imperfect shadows.  The mystery to which Saint Paul referred to as the fated marriage of Christ and his bride, the Church.  Love did not pursue us carefully but recklessly from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane, from Mount Sinai to Mount Calvary.

We should not turn our backs on Saint Valentine's Day.  It is truly a holy day.  And in this world of hate, we could use a few more days to celebrate Love.

(This installment is a second excerpt from my future book, How to Date an Unattainable Woman and Other Things I Don't Know.  Previously excerpted here.)