The Galilean has been too great for our our small hearts.
--H.G. Wells
"Outline of History" (1926)
My 2-year-son has begun calling his parents "drone-ups." I supposed it was a simple mispronunciation, but at Christmas, one of the most sacred days of the Christian calendar, I am beginning to wonder if the small boy is not already engaged in an important bit of parental character analysis, or perhaps a subtle kind of moral philosophizing.
Our adult lives -- the ones we wish so fervently as children to inherit as soon as possible -- do often drone on monotonous, predictable, made of the same pragmatic stuff from day to day. )) This is one of the major reasons we need holidays, and holydays: to convince ourselves that our lives are not running down, unconnected to anything or anyone, like an eight-day clock left in a deserted house. We don't tell our children that this is the real purpose of Christmas -- to break the monotony of self-interest in its many guises. We keep this secret from them until it is too late and they have tasted of the fruit of adulthood, and thus been duly banished from the garden.
My elder son, an 8-year-old, has been eyeing the fruit of the tree of knowledge for most of this holiday season, but he has not yet decided to take a bite. He tells his parents he still believes in Santa Claus, searching our eyes for clues to something most of )) his classmates no longer see as a mystery.
The older boy still understands that Christmas requires his assent to the proposition that there exists a jolly stranger, a preposterous-looking old man in a red shirt and black go-go boots, who loves him almost as much as his parents do. And so, despite several discussions he has had with friends about the thermodynamics and space-time dimensions of portly men and narrow chimneys, and regardless of the clearly visible bar-codes on all his toys, the boy appears safe from the ravages of adulthood for at least another year.
Most Christian adults enjoy Christmas because it is the only day of the year we can again act as children. On Christmas, charity flares up like a hot coal, but it burns out just as quickly. For too many adults, Christmas is made of equal parts of metaphysics and a peculiar variety of self-interest that, if not examined too closely, might pass for altruism.
Last month, homeless shelters and soup kitchens urged novice volunteers not to descend on them on Thanksgiving morning. It seems there is always a charitable log-jam on that day, as there is on Christmas morning. But most of us sleep in the following morning, and everything goes back to normal, or at least as normal as it can be for those who live on the street. It is, of course, a curious fact about the English language that "alms" has no singular form. It is as if a singular act of charity a few days a year doesn't deserve the name.
Rabindranath Tagore in "Stray Birds" suggests that the birth of every child brings with it a message that God is not yet fed up with the human race. It is a brilliant way for God to remind us what real charity is like: sending his only son. The purpose of children is to enlarge our hearts, to make us unselfish in ways we did not think possible. On Christmas, Christians are given a divine child, and in turn, this mysterious and defenseless infant gives our hearts a higher aim.
More than anything else, what Christmas does for Christian adults is to remind us, at least for the day, what Jesus meant
Christianity to be: a resting place for the weary heart, a kind word for the wounded ear, a destination for unsure feet, and some good work to be finished by every hand.
The same God who is the foundation of hope, the object of love and the subject of faith sends us this small child, and, at least for the day, it is hard to find a drone-up anywhere. It is a little known fact that it was not until the mid-4th century that the Christian church decided, rather arbitrarily, to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25. Judging by the ancient Patristic records, it could just as easily have been any other day of the year. Perhaps this is why Jesus appears to have approached every day as if it were Christmas. It's hard to act like a drone-up when you take his view.
Stephen Vicchio teaches philosophy at the College of Notre Dame.