Bring us some figgy pudding!
It’s time to end the Puritan war on Christmas.
A Facebook friend and “philosophical and musical brother from another mother,” a retired Unitarian Universalist minister, shared this monstrous, racist, and gloating tirade.
When Croesus tells you he got rich through hard work, ask him: “Whose?”
As told by folk singer Utah Phillips, hobo poet Frypan Jack spelled this out more clearly in his poem “the two bums.”
the bum on the rods is hunted down as an enemy of mankind the other is driven around to his club, is feted, wined, and dined and they who curse the bum on the rods as the essence of all that's bad will greet the other with a winning smile and extend the hand so glad the bum on the rods is a social flea who gets an occasional bite the bum on the plush is a social leech, bloodsucking day and night the bum on the rods is a load so light that his weight we scarcely feel but it takes the labor of dozens of folks to furnish the other a meal as long as we sanction the bum on the plush, the other will always be there but rid ourselves of the bum on the plush, and the other will disappear and make an intelligent, organized kick: get rid of the wasted crush don't worry about the bum on the rods—get rid of the bum on the plush
At the very least the oligarch’s rant is completely at odds with the pagan and medieval origins of Christmas.
One of the distinctive features of a traditional English Christmas was very conspicuous begging or asking for food by people lower on the social ladder toward people who were better positioned, including something that might look a little bit like Halloween. You’d knock on a door, you would demand food or drink, usually alcoholic drink. If the host did not provide what you had asked for then there was a cultural expectation that you would cause some mischief for the host.
Sometimes this spiraled out of control into actual moments of violence or conflict. Christmas became associated with sexual licentiousness, the loosening of normal social mores.
On the first day of Christmas — we partied like it was 1499 — Harvard Gazette
While I depart from the theology and soteriology (ideas about liberation), of my religious upbringing, I bring forth its enduring value, especially in observance of Christmas. I revel in its stories and images. I think then, of the Magnificat, in the Gospel of Luke, the context of which is the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will bear the Promised One, the Liberator.
He has used the power of his arm, he has routed the arrogant of heart. He has pulled down princes from their thrones and raised high the lowly. He has filled the starving with good things, sent the rich away empty. — Luke, 1:51-53 (transl. New Jerusalem Bible)
Despots have deemed this “fierce feminine” statement to be “too close to liberation theology.” So be it.
Rapacious capitalists may have opulence to shove in our faces, along with their racist and hyperindividualist justifications, but we know the deeper way of the origins of the observance of this feast. As the mystic Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) said of Christian community,
Christ has no body but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, Yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours, Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
There is no peace without justice. Upend injustice, then, for the peace of Christmas. Begin with its appropriation by forces contrary to its spirit of generosity, the divine filling of the hungry with every good thing, heralded and led by the fierce feminine.