Christmas: Orgy or Gift?
December 20, 2004
Here is a perfect tale of Christmas as it is fully realized in late liberal capitalism: a perfect melding of blue and red state loves, where economic and sexual libertinism become one. Not only does this pervert the Christmas season, it is a perversion of even pagan fertility and gifting rites in which Christian festivals surely have their roots. Those ancient rituals were fundamentally religious. They partook of the transcendent mystery of life as it comes from the Beyond; their telos was located somewhere outside of the egophanic drive–the Enlightenment epiphany of self by which the God of the cradle is killed. This is the modern gospel, the incarnate logos that orders all human activity, preached by bishops to the right and left: Consume consume consume.
In contrast, the Holy Father reminds us that Christmas and its symbols represent an “ancient custom that exalts the value of life. The evergreen tree is a sign of the life that does not end which is adorned and laid about with gifts. And this becomes an eloquent symbol in the Christian sense: it brings to mind the ‘tree of life,’ the figure of Christ, God’s supreme gift to humanity.” (my rough translation)
During this season, may we all receive the inspiration that “On this day, in the City of David, a child is born, and he is Christ the Lord” with wonderment, which is to say, not as consumers experiencing an epiphany of Self, but as those who experience all of life as a epiphany of the Beyond–a divine gift and blessing.
Buone Feste Natalizie!
This is Christmas: Orgy or Gift? in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Stegall on the Airwaves | Next: Not Your Grandma’s Testimony | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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