Homeless-Refugee Baby is Coming to Town…. aka my winter holiday of choice…

I would like to thank B. Z and the Advent Conspiracy for their inspiration for this entry.

Once upon a time there was a church in a village somewhere in the middle of no where. The church was a wonderful community and every Dec they came together and they celebrated the coming of the God as a homeless refugee. They worshiped and they cared for those who like their savior had needs. But one year the church was short on funds. Tithing was down, morale was low, the roof was leaking, maybe there were lots of homeless people due to a bad storm or refugees from a war torn country or widows or orphans and the church had to make do somehow. It had lots of programs to run, lots of mouths to feed, lots of bibles to print, lots of missionaries to send and not enough money to do it all.

A nice well dressed man came into the pastor’s office and said I have the solution to your funds problem. I give you a X large sum of money in that little village and you sell me the rights to Christmas. Its a small thing really, I mean we don’t even celebrate it on the right day. The pastor and the elders of the church gathered together and pondered this proposition, I mean there were mouths to feed, a roof to fix and missionaries to send and with X sum they could do it all. It was just Christmas, a single day, not a particularly holy one, just a day set aside for the celebration of a God becoming a baby.They could celebrate it any old time.

So the pastor went to the nice dressed man and said, we’ll do it. We’ll sell you the rights. The nice dressed man with a twinkle in his eye smiled and said I knew we would come to an agreement. And the pastor signed the papers. The nice dressed man disappeared and the church fixed their roof, fed the homeless and bought some new bibles. The years passed and slowly, very slowly the little church started to notice a increasing number of signs with blinking lights that reminded them of the light of the world! And pictures of a man in a red suit whose jolly, giving nature surely reminded them of God’s love and the service of saint or two. Surely these things were good the little church said.

The years went on and before they knew it the lights got brighter and the jolly man got fatter and then the Ads began….Make this Christmas count, GIVE ME! And then the sales, oh the sales, they got bigger and earlier and more popular till people were camping out for the SALES and signs that said BUY ME. Then the gadgets OH THE GADGETS: toys, big people toys, games, puzzles, things that fly, things that float, things that go underwater, things that sing, things that dance, things that light up and things that do ALL OF THE ABOVE. There were signs that said ITS NOT CHRISTMAS TILL YOU HAVE ME!

And before the church knew it the day that they had known was no longer about anticipating the homeless-refugee baby that was born in a barn to a 14 yr old mom who got pregnant out of wedlock by all appearances. Nor were the paying attention to the homeless, the refugees, the teenage mothers or others in need. They were too busy buying gifts for themselves to give gifts to the birthday boy. In fact there were too busy to even celebrate CHRISTmas…it was simply X-mas. The sales, the gadgets, the gimmicks, the lights, the jolly man in the red suit with a small fleet of caribou had taken over without a single protest.

A single elder in the church came to the pastor and said, What has happened to Christmas? And the pastor said I don’t know. The elder asked whatever happened to the nice young man who gave that donation those years back. The pastor opened his address book and found the number and called the man. The phone rung and a recording was heard, press 1 for more sales, press 2 for more gadgets you have to have, we do not take calls if your gadget has broken but all other calls press 0. The pastor pressed 0 and after a long paper trail of secetaries and customer assistants he was put through to his old business partner. And he said, What has happened to Christmas? Christmas, the well dressed man said “We don’t celebrate that holiday any more.” “I know!” said the pastor, “its awful.” The well dressed man, said “Tough luck, I own the rights.” And the pastor said “but you have it all wrong, where is the child that this day is all about?” And the man said, “OH him…we phased him out years ago… he is not very marketable.” “What???!” said the pastor…”NOT MARKETABLE…its the greatest story ever told.” The man said, “well maybe. But I can’t make money off the coming of a homeless-refugee, I mean no one wants to dwell on that sort of unhappiness or depersation. No one wants to buy 45 different CD rendentions of Homeless-Refugee Baby is coming to town, that would just be depressing. No one wants to buy candied refugee babies or donkey poop, that would be gross. In fact when people think about a homeless-refugee baby they don’t want to buy at all, they want to give what they have to spend away” “YES!! said the pastor, “That’s precisely the point.” “Yeah, see that never really worked for us.” said the man. “So we decided to simply X all that out. The whole homeless refugee baby part. It also broadens our customer base without the whole religion thing we can now promote the GIVE! BUY! MUST HAVE! campaign to everyone. Profits have skyrocketed like you wouldn’t believe. And we are currently negotiating the rights to Hanukkah, thinking about hitting up Ramadan because its closer to X-mas next year! ” The pastor asked, “We want to buy it back! We want to buy back the rights to Christmas.” :Sorry!” said the man, “but thats one thing we aren’t selling.”

Its that time of year again where all celebrate our Winter Holiday of Choice. There are a myriad of options of holidays to choose from. There are usual players: Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. And this year Eid happens this week so thats another option. Then there is New Year’s and the Winter Soliastice. Lots of options and lots of people willing to sell you whichever one you want as long as you buy, buy, buy stuff you and your loved ones don’t need.

We interviewed the children of my church this past week on video and asked them what the winter holidays are about. We got a variety of answers with the honesty and truth that only children have. We open presents, Jesus was born, Santa comes, we get new stuff, we buy a lot of stuff. I read recently in the Advent Conspiracy of a similar practice in a church in OR one child said this: “It’s Jesus’ birthday but we get presents…I’m not sure why we get his presents.”

From the mouths of babes, from the mouths of babes. Because the more I look at my typical winter holiday of choice the more confused I become.The more I am thinking about just wanting to give up Christmas all together and invent a new holiday. I can’t buy it back but I can start telling the story again, the story hasn’t changed, we just stopped listening. Incarnation Day. That’s my winter holiday of choice.

so Happy Incarnation Day. Its like your unbirthday it happens every day anew and its amazing and remarkable. And as I sleep tonight I am anxiously awaiting again for a homeless-refugee baby to be born to a teenage mother. A most compelling, most radical plan to take over the world for love.