A very millinerd Christmas podcast

Each year at millinerd I try to get my readers something special.  This year it's the first millinerd podcast.  In it I host special guests T.S. Eliot (author of Journey of the Magi), the Beat poet William Everson (author of The Wise), and the man who long ago realized the fusion of historical criticism and theological interpretation that Bruegemann hopes for, Frederick Dale Bruner (author of a brilliant two volume commentary on Matthew).  Special thanks to Thomas Hibbs for the suggestion to compare Eliot and Everson.

Because all outstanding millinerd issues are resolved in said podcast, I will be miffed if you don't cozy up around the fire and listen with the kids.

On Advent

The millinerd traditions are flagging.  Each advent I rescue troubled parents by linking to the St. Nick site, (also see the 2004 post, or the more substantial 2009 post).  Then there are the old advent music recs, but I hear now Jason Harrod has some Christmas hymns (hat tip Mako). Five bucks!  Not that it's Christmas yet or anything, but it's coming.  And when it does, Billy will be there.

Did I mention that this month millinerd turns seven years old?  What do you get for the blog that has everything?

Christendom's Ghost

It is sad to see the American Santa Claus making more headway in the thick Saint Nicholas country of the Orthodox Mediterranean. As William Bennett explains so nicely, the American figure was spurred by the historical explorations of the famous New Yorker John Pintard, furthered by Washington Irving, crystallized by Hebrew Professor Clement Moore's Night Before Christmas, given visual form by the cartoonist Thomas Nast, and propagated through the avenues of a burgeoning consumer society. It's a relatively thin, late-arriving tradition, and one can understand the desire to protest it completely. But a better recourse is to return to St. Nicholas himself (the St. Nick Center sure helps a lot). The answer is not to Americanize the Orthodox, but to allow the Orthodox tradition to make headway into American life.

One would not suspect a mass market American book to do that, but William Bennett's The True Saint Nicholas does so by nicely distilling an extraordinary amount of historical information. Bennett points out that the very thing so many Protestants worry about in Santa is a result of too cavalier an amendment of centuries of Christian culture by Protestants. Santa Claus, in his various guises, is a revenge on the unfortunate excesses of the Reformation.

Reformers tried to discourage the lighting of candles, exchanging of gifts, and distribution of sweets to children on St. Nicholas Day. By the end of the sixteenth century, Nicholas had been banished from religious life in much of Western Europe. But he could not be driven out of people's hearts and imaginations. He was much too beloved for that to happen. When Saint Nicholas lost his honored place in churches, something extraordinary happened. He moved into homes, where he had legions of fans, especially among children. He became a hero of the hearth.

Bennett also cleverly points out that Americans do not have a corner on consumerism:

Yes, Santa Claus is sometimes overexposed and exploited. But anything good is open to being exploited. In fact, anything good is likely to be exploited. Such is human nature. Saint Nicholas, in his heyday, was arguably just as overused and overexposed as Santa Claus is today. People called upon him to fulfill every conceivable desire, from finding a husband to conquering an enemy. The citizens of Bari went so far as to steal his bones to give their city a boost. For that matter, Saint Nicholas was well connected with commerce and materialism long before Santa Claus came along. Many a ship captain prayed to Nicholas for a profitable voyage, many a merchant invoked his name in sealing a lucrative deal. Trade guilds appropriated him in hopes of selling more buttons, barrels, and boots.

Then there's Bennett's basic cultural intuition which should be so much more common than it is: "Santa Claus is, in a very real sense, the result of a Christ-inspired goodness that has rippled down seventeen centuries, from Nicholas' time to our own. Despite secularization and commercialization, Santa Claus is a manifestation of Nicholas's decision to give to others. The history of Saint Nicholas is a kind of miracle in itself. It is a legacy that resonates with God's love."

Behind Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas, and behind Saint Nicholas is the Christ whom he defended, suffered for, and in whose name he gave gifts. Hermit crab Christians who protest Christian culture should realize they never escape culture. They just get a very bland one.

Better than the Inn

This from a Christmas letter I received:

In his book, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, Kenneth Bailey unpacks some of the cultural nuances of the Christmas narrative. According to Bailey, the setting for Christ's birth was probably not a cold and lonely stable but rather a warm and bustling peasant home.

Bailey theorizes that this misunderstanding may have originated in a Western tendency to associate a "manger" with a barn or stable. He also speculates that Western readers' unfamiliarity with strict Middle Eastern codes of hospitality helped perpetuate the assumption that when Mary and Joseph looked for "a place to stay," they appealed to a local commercial inn and not a private home.

Bailey suggest that the Greek word for "inn" in Luke 2:7 probably more accurately refers to a "guest room." A lack of space in the guest room would have given the family no other choice but to invite Mary and Joseph into the middle of their personal living space - an area adjacent to where the household livestock were kept.

It's a thought: Jesus born not in a lonely stable, but welcomed into the chaotic midst of the most intimate family spaces. If God is not (as too many would have it) splendid isolation, but primordial love itself, the eternally differentiated trinity in whom there "is no inward, unrelated gaze, no stillness prior to relation" (185), he must have felt right at home.

Fireplace Stand-Ins

On the seventh day of Christmas millinerd gave to me: Two more beer recommendations. Gritty McDuff's Christmas Ale from Maine, and the intimidatingly good Gouden Carolus Nöel from Deutschland. Gritty tops Celebration Ale, providing further evidence for East Coast rivaling West Coast breweries, but both coasts have a long way to go before they rival Germany.

None of this Christmas is over stuff please. Five days to go. Stretch it out.

Merry Christmas millinerd readers

Winter Birds
Originally uploaded by millinerd

Thank you all for reading and commenting through yet another year (the fifth). Under the tree you'll find two gifts: First, to make up for a campaign season of MSNBC vs. FOX soundbites, I give you bloggingheads.tv (in case you haven't yet discovered it). Intelligent liberals and intelligent conservatives (lots of them) in extended conversation. The posts may be long, but they're podcastable, and we don't have a dishwasher. The second gift is meaningoflife.tv where one can find a whole lot of people to disagree with.

I'm almost as enthusiastic about bloggingheads as I was about recommending the teaching company, the post that got this whole thing started. Though back then we looked more like this (courtesy of the waybackmachine).

As to the photo, I took it a few steps outside my front door this weekend and thought it was kind of Christmassy. Those who went to Wheaton may catch the reference to a strange holiday e-card alums received that involved a stiltedly-animated cardinal flying around campus.

Merry Christmas millinerd readers!

The first is the vision of the three Magi, the deep significance of which Rowan Williams would understand better, and Emergent would stop confusing with matters essential, if they would just read my stuff. I'm almost certain they won't.

The second is a picture from flickr, which can now be properly interpreted not as reckless parenting, but homage to Rogier van der Weyden.

update: While too late for Tony, that's much better, Archbishop.

Advent #5

It's our fifth advent here at millinerd.com, and adventine customs are piling up like unread issues of National Geographic. Tradition compels me to link to ol' St. Nick's site, also to the music recommendations to which I would now, if you can stand the quirk, add Sufjan . And, if you can stand some geek (in the best sense of the word), consider Rick Steves' compilation of top traditions from that continent that just can't shake the faith.

This year's advent addition, however, is different. John Walford, professor of art history at Wheaton College, has long been in the habit of encouraging artists of faith (who, if you're up on my current article in First Things, are not allowed to exist). Lately Walford has been putting his money where his mouth is, not just encouraging artists, but being one himself. He had a show this fall in Italy, and pictures such as the one above and this one are currently decorating churches in anticipation of Christmas which, of course, is not yet here, and won't be for some time (at which point there will be twelve days of it).

Advent

It's our fourth Advent here at millinerd.com, and it's become a tradition to link to this site as well as some music recommendations.

The Mrs. and I have been tempted this year to go for Sufjan's Christmas album, but five CD's (it's a box set) is a lot of Sufjan. I can however unhesitatingly recommend Rick's free Euro-Christmas video-podcast. I'm quite serious (and clearly getting soft in my old age).

For posts of adventine substance, I temporarily defer to last year's meditations.

Christmas War(s)

We've all heard a lot about the "pagan" origins of Christmas. This is of course not as much scandalous as it is true. But I think it fair to say that Christmas was the result of a strategic appropriation by Christians (for which Bede gives us a clear record) rather than hostile infiltration by pagans. Pre-Christian cults such as that of Isis and Bacchus didn't just roll over and play dead. They had to be intelligently subverted, in the same way that other forces try to intelligently subvert what remains of Christian culture today (see below).

But when it comes to really understanding current Christmas traditions, the key may not be as much the ancient pagan past than the recent Victorian one. It seems the War on Christmas didn't start with the ACLU but with Reformed Protestants, who nixed it because it smacked not of paganism, but popery. In England Puritans outlawed it under Cromwell, a prohibition which continued in Boston, where from 1659-81 one could be fined for its celebration. Thanks to England's Oxford Movement however there was the nineteenth century Victorian reappropriation, which these United States (now sufficiently individuated from the motherland) were prepared to pick up on.

Perhaps America's cozying up to Christmas may also have had something to do with the literal war on Christmas of 1776. German Lutherans were of course much less priggish than the Reformed about things smacking of popery, and more than one historian has surmised that the Teutonic tradition of robust Christmas celebration may have led to Hessian mercenaries being easily overcome after Washington's crossing. Should this be true, then our country is the happy result of Christmas hangovers.

Aroma

Thanks to the amusing network of friends surrounding tomtastic, I found myself browsing through Chuck Norris facts, and came across a few with an Advent theme:

"Chuck Norris was the fourth Wiseman. He brought baby Jesus the gift of 'beard'. Jesus wore it proudly... The other Wise men, jealous of Jesus' obvious gift favoritism, used their combined influence to have Chuck omitted from the Bible. Shortly after all three died of roundhouse kick related deaths."

Actually that was more of an Epiphany-theme. The Advent one is

"Chuck Norris doesn't sleep. He waits."

Tonight I am going to try to use that as a semi-amusing Youth Group Lock-In talk segue to what Advent is really all about. It's a rhetorical hook that I figure has a 25% chance of succeeding.

Advent is of course about Christ's coming in the flesh, but also about his less popular future coming in glory. Hard to believe? Perhaps. But I've felt less and less crazy about believing that Jesus actually will show up one day upon realizing that the common objections are dealt with not by theologians "accommodating the delay of the Parousia" centuries after Christ didn't come as many expected, but right there within Scripture itself. But the real kicker is that whether or not Christ appears in our lifetime (for which the chances are relatively slim), we will all experience what is effectively the Second Coming of Christ for each of us personally on the day that we die (for which the chances are relatively high).

I don't think our culture has quite forgotten this. Somewhere deep in the tomes of Karl Barth's Dogmatics I remember him referencing a debate about the secularization of Europe in which the vestiges of Christianity were referred to as "an aroma in an empty bottle," the empty bottle being a de-Christianized Europe, and the aroma being whatever vague hints of the Christian past remained. Heavyweight theologian Carl Braaten recently used the language as well to describe the American scene:

"Our pastors and laity are being deceived by a lot of pietistic aroma, but the bottle is empty."

One can smell this aroma quite distinctly in, for example, The Christmas Carol which Denise and I got to see at McCarter thanks to the generosity of friends. Though I can imagine someone arguing it isn't, Dickens' serial/book/play/movie is impossible without Christianity. At one point in the play (at least as performed at McCarter) Scrooge actually prays out loud to "the Spirit of Christmas" to help him change. In another era that was called repentance. [Theological digression: It seems Scrooge is a Modalist: The generic "Spirit of Christmas" lurks behind its three manifestations: The Spirits of Christmas past, present and future.]

But when judgment becomes the threats of "Spirit of Christmas future" to let Tiny Tim go turkeyless, and when the Holy Spirit becomes the "Spirit of Christmas" who can help us all change by infusing the blessed sacrament of jolly good cheer, then what we have is the "aroma in an empty bottle." I couldn't help thinking I had heard a very similar story before. Except the ending isn't so happy - as the ending very well may not be for many of us.

And what about Santa Claus? I am sure most of the kids in my Youth Group don't believe in Santa Claus, but I will attempt to persuade them to believe that there actually is someone who is making a list and checking it twice and will one day reward us, or not. Though that aroma tells us of a mere lump of coal, the real thing tells us of a lake of fire. Thought the aroma tells of a few cool toys, the real thing tells of an eternal crown of glory. Though in the minds of most kids Santa will go, Christ endures as the deep red Chianti that can survive one's intellectual maturation without evaporating.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for Dickens and Santa (and for that matter, Chuck Norris). They can serve as great preparations for the truth a la Narnia - and knowing the truth behind them makes them all the richer. War on Christmas? It's hard to get too worried about it when what is being warred against is often just a whiff.

Sick of Bing yet?

Behold the top two millinerd Christmas albums:

1. Bruce Cockburn's (pronounced koeburn for those not in the know)Christmas album could perhaps best be described as "ethnic Canadian" music, for among other things its inclusion of the first Canadian hymn by Jean de Brebeuf. Bruce remarkably sings it in the Huron language (as Brebeuf intended). Incidentally, if ever there was an example of a deeply indigenous missionary that spreads the Gospel without the requisite culture-smothering... Brebeuf would be it. There are many more (St. Patrick, Matteo Ricci, etc., etc.).

2. Over the Rhine's almost spooky The Darkest Night of the Year is an assortment of reinterpretations (not all of them in my opinion successful) of the classic tunes. The new interpretations are "eerie" enough to remind that what we're dealing with is indeed the Mystery of the Incarnation, with which one can never be completely familiar.

Both B.C. and O.T.R. are Christians, but don't, shall we say, advertise the fact. As I've mentioned before, one certainly doesn't have to be a good person, let alone a Christian to be a phenomenal musician or artist... but especially when writing a Christmas album, it certainly helps.

Being still within the 12 days of Christmas (the eighth today, formally referred to as the "Christmas octave"), I am busy pondering the ultimate questions which are spurred by my mediatation on the Incarnation. Questions like: "Whutdyaget?"

I got fantastic gifts from some astonoshingly generous people in my life... but a decision had to be made, and the results of the give-a-Christmas-gift-to-millinerd competion are finally in (Thank you to all who participated). The winner gave me this. (Remember... millinerd). If you are bitter that you did not win, submit more entries immediately. Multiple entries will not be penalized.

Don't get ripped-off! Enjoy all twelve days! Merry Christmas season everybody!
Scroll down on the page a bit to discover the secret origins of the 12 days of Christmas Song.

UPDATE: In a related item to the 12 days decoder, check out the secret card code, with a priceless soundtrack... But for the real info on the card deck you'll have to go here.

This is how we know it's Christmas at the "millinerds." We actually have one. No we do not have children. Perhaps you're beginning to see why we call this site what we do.