Anna Perkins, Contributor
IT IS impossible to miss the ostentation, the increased and oftentimes crass commercial activity and the downright selfishness associated with the Christmas season. Everywhere we turn there is a frenetic energy; people are responding like robots to messages telling us to 'indulge', 'spend', 'buy', 'shop now and pay later' (these are just a few of the key words taken from ads in The Sunday Gleaner). The focus on consumption and gratification always results in soul searching about the real reason for the season.
Some of this soul-searching was on display in last Sunday's Gleaner with Kevin O'Brien Chang, Tanya Batson-Savage and Orville Taylor all ruminating about Christmas and its meaning. Dr. Taylor in his usual tongue-in-cheek, provocative style echoes a number of concerns that exercise many Jamaicans - Christians and non-Christians alike. Indeed "it nuh c(h)ris without Christ"!
Dr. Taylor also raised some questions that I would like to respond to directly.
CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS
To begin, Christmas celebrations in Jamaica (as elsewhere) have always gone beyond the "church services as solemn celebrations of Jesus' birth" to include many specifically cultural activities like Grand Market, preparing special foods like ham and gungo peas, giving and receiving presents, jonkonoo, Christmas trees, the works! The intrusion of such secular festivities into what is perceived as a sacred time as well as the lack of biblical warrants for such celebrations are among the reasons given by some Christian communities for rejecting Christmas as nothing but a neo-pagan celebration!
HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES
Without making excuses for the excesses in our Christmas celebrations, there is a value to giving expression to our own cultural and historical circumstances in our welcoming of the Christ child. At the same time, there has always been extensive borrowing between cultures and so it is by no means strange that other elements would creep in, for good and for ill. The Euro-American tradition of Santa is one of those borrowings that many critical persons find most objectionable, and with good reason. As Dr. Taylor rightly laments, many of these "secular" celebrations/rituals have little, if anything, to do with the real meaning of Christmas and in fact serve to undermine it.
The argument that Santa has eclipsed Christ (Xed out) expresses the deeper concern that Dr. Taylor has with these activities having locked Christ out of his own birthday celebrations! Recognising this is reason enough to remain vigilant and constantly recall the core of what Christmas is all about; a core that may have been covered over by centuries of misunderstanding and neglect. Christ is the reason for the season! Christians believe that in Christ the world has received the best gift ever. If we really believe this, then this should fuel our desire to give to others, especially those who do not have enough but only at Christmas. In this regard, the words of the murdered Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, continue to have deep meaning today: "We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed tonight without eating, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in the doorway."
THE MISSING JESUS
At the same time that Dr. Taylor establishes that Christ is missing from Christmas he also claims that Jesus is missing from the Scriptures. He mentions the so-called 'missing years' in Jesus' life between the age of 12 and 30 when Christ began his public ministry. It is important to note that the Scriptures were not written as biographies intending to tell the whole story of Jesus' life. Rather, they were written to proclaim the good news about who Jesus was; they are documents of faith from local contexts in many ways very different from our own today. Not every document about Jesus or the life of the early church was included in the New Testament. Rather, the early church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit selected from among the various writings available those that most effectively and accurately reflected the faith of the Christian community.
GNOSTIC GOSPELS
Dr. Taylor tried to fill these years in with material from the so-called Gnostic Gospels which were written very late in the second-century after Jesus' death and often contained highly imaginative stories and expansions on the canonical gospels, i.e., the gospels included in the Bible. Some of these Gnostic gospels were attempts to fill in the gaps in the information on Jesus' life that could be gained from the canonical gospels, e.g., what was he like as a child, what other things did he say or what else he did after his resurrection. Information from these gospels has fuelled both popular piety and art; the very popular and entertaining suspense novel, The Da Vinci Code, bases a lot of its ideas on the Gnostic Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) which is supposed to report a secret conversation between Jesus and Mary after he rose from the dead. It contains some obscure passages that speak of Jesus kissing Mary with the kisses of his lips and having a closer relationship with her than with the other apostles (who naturally were jealous!).
CELIBACY
Dr. Taylor raises a concern about the celibacy of Jesus and his relationship to Mary Magdalene. It is evident that Jesus had a special care for women and that there were several women who supported his ministry (Luke. 23.49, 55). Mary Magdalene who has been mistakenly branded a prostitute by the Christian (talk about misreading the Bible!) was no exception. It is clear that she had a special place among Jesus' followers and she was the first person to whom he appeared after his resurrection. For this reason she is called the Apostle to the Apostles as she was sent to tell them that she had seen the Risen Lord.
However, there is no evidence that Jesus was married to Mary or anyone else, although that would certainly have been the normal practice for a Jewish man of his time. Jesus' celibacy was an expression of his total dedication to his mission, and priestly celibacy in the church is modelled on that dedication.
Anna Kasafi Perkins, PhD, is Dean of Studies at St. Michael's Theological College (an institute of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Kingston and an affiliated institution of the University of the West Indies.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Dawn Ritch is on vacation.
