Lightening the weight of Christmas

Catholic New Times, Dec 19, 2004

Our surfeited culture is groaning these days under the weight of its consumerist, sentimentalized and expensive habits that so depress people in December.

Yet Mary said with great joy and confidence: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God." Hers is Advent's spirit.

Keeping Mary's declaration in mind and with our best spiritual disciplines called into practice-the ones we know well: fasting, (from liquor and fat foods); from buying, (relegating the flyers to the recycle bin and muting the TV ads) and from rushing about half-guiltily in attempts, especially by caring women, to make everybody happy, we can create different conditions for our souls than the ones that oppress us these days: the jingles, the sales, the greed, the falseness, and the cover-up of global pain and anxiety.

In our deep, human, heart of hearts we really want to be able to proclaim the greatness of the coming Lord. We want our proclamation to include the real groans of our world and its people, and to stand up to do something about them.

It is the time for us to say "No" but to utter that "No!" with elan and confidence, because it is the "No" which will make space for the "Yes" of solidarity. "No" to the malls and the plastic splendour, to the overspending on me and mine.

"Yes" to active peacemaking, political involvement, more hours in meditation.

Healthy asceticism is always for the sake of building the kingdom, for liberation and freedom from obsession, for cultural critique as well as critique of my own heart. Asceticism is primarily social.

If I resist my culture's blandishments this December, I will have lots of time: time to mark World AIDS Day on Dec. 1 with a prayer vigil at the Anglican Church written by a Regis College student; time to go to City Hall on

Dec. 10 to hang a Universal Declaration of Human Rights banner or join an Amnesty "Write a- Thon" for a prisoner of conscience; time to look at all my relations and see where reconciliation is needed; time to get on the phone to old friends who have fallen by the wayside of my hurried lives; time to gather with people with whom I have little in common, like the Youth Emergency Shelter residents in my city.

To lighten the load of Christmas as it has been shaped for us by capitalism, we can begin to think of Christmas-tide as five weeks, not one over-hyped Dec. 25. It is five generous weeks. There is lots of time to slow down, pray, boycott, read, to take a toddler to a zoo, to visit a shut-in, to take a senior to a "Messiah" sing-a-long, to find common cause in our cities and towns with those who are busy forging a better world.

A more meditative Christmas can help us discern the authentic values of God's reign among us. Then we act.