Garrison Keillor is not known for his deep love of Unitarians. His consistent and funny critiques on A Prairie Home Companion only lightly mask an actual dislike, if not contempt, for this creedless liberal faith. We tend to be big fans of Garrison, and we laugh heartily at ourselves when he makes jokes at our expense…and most of the time, while I laugh, too, I wince a little. His critiques are often spot-on.
Now, Mr. Keillor is taking on our tendency to try to celebrate Christmas without any Christ. His recent critique is, while a bit scathing at times, perhaps deserved. Why do we feel we have the right to rewrite sacred songs and carols that belong to the Christian tradition just because we don’t agree with all the words in some literal sense? Why should we be the enlightened ones, who are smug enough to tell a 2000 year old tradition that we’ll take some of the ritual, but not all of it, thank you very much? I’m not at all convinced that we aren’t guilty of precisely the kind of elitism that Mr. Keillor is pointing to.
Each year, I groan when we get to the Christmas season, and we sing Christian songs with no Christianity left in them. Why not sing something else? Or, if we as a movement are really that averse to Jesus and to the Christmas myths (and I deeply, deeply hope that is not the case), then why do we have any business celebrating Christmas in our churches at all?
The beauty of stories and myths and legends is that we are invited into them. We are invited to become part of the story, to learn what it might teach us, to walk for a while along a path that millions of others have walked, too, and to ponder the mystery of what that might mean. They need not be literally, historically true in order to be True in some deep, human sense.
So, Unitarians, let’s cast off our intellectualism and our compelling need to change the words all the time. Let’s give ourselves permission to enter into a great, old, beautiful story, and see what it might hold. And if we cannot, then let us give up the pretense to Christmas as something real and living in our own lives. No one said that religion was always easy, or comfortable. But shutting the door makes sure that you never discover a way through that discomfort.
And as for me and my congregation…we will be singing the traditional words to Silent Night on Christmas Eve, as we stand together in the glow of candlelight, and ponder mysteries in our hearts.