Save the date
Getting Christmas right
By Donald Heinz C
hristmas is the celebration of God’s spinning of divinity into material form. Its legacy is a treasure trove of theology, worship and the arts, of every imag- inable form of lived religion. But where is the treasure today? Are we down to shopping, a winter holiday and good family times? Today it’s easier to imagine Christ- mas without religion than Christmas without shopping. Consumerism elbows out religion to be first in line at the manger scene. The American Christmas is a sacrament of material consumption and everyone wants a piece of it. In a hostile takeover bid, this new and improved Christmas is like a computer virus colonizing every inbox, including our own, and sending out rival messages. What can Christians do to redeem our great festival? The crisis of Christmas is also one of Christianity as a stage for God’s presence in the modern world. Saving Christmas requires authentic public perfor- mances by believable Christians before a world audience. To reform Christianity in the 16th
century, Martin Luther went back to its beginnings. Can we get there from here? Early Christianity gave the world Christmas as the birth announcement of a turning point in human history. The divine-human play in which Christians enacted what they were believing was
Heinz is an ELCA pastor and was professor of religious studies and dean of humanities and fine arts at California State University, Chico. This article is based on his book Christmas: Festival of Incarnation (Fortress Press, 2010), available at
www.fortresspress.com or www.
amazon.com.
16 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org
MICHAEL D. WATSON
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