As I've been learning UU history, one of the surprises has been how much Unitarians contributed to the traditions of Christmas in America. Unitarians wrote "Jingle Bells" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear". A Unitarian brought the decorated-Christmas-tree tradition to New England. And then there's Charles Dickens, who was so impressed with Channing and Emerson during his American tour that he went home and joined a Unitarian church there.
My December online column for UU World promotes the view that this is more than just a collection of did-you-know items. Christmas got substantially re-imagined in the 19th century, and Unitarians were right in the middle of it. What had been a sectarian birthday-of-the-Christian-savior (with some pagan holdover traditions) became a holiday about universal values like peace, compassion, and renewing the connection to family and friends. And not until then did Christmas really take off as a holiday, surpassing Easter to become "the most wonderful time of the year."
Dickens' A Christmas Carol is an obvious big factor here, but also look at Edmund Sears' "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear". The interesting question is: What came upon a midnight clear? Not the birth of Jesus, but the song of the angels: "Peace on the Earth, good will to men." That's a universal message, not a sectarian Christian message.
The lesson I draw from all this is that UUs shouldn't be shy about celebrating Christmas. It's our holiday as much as anybody else's; we did a lot to make it what it is.
I wanted to put these ideas across in some cute, non-preachy package, so I wrote the column as a tongue-in-cheek present-day Christmas Carol, where a UU learns the true meaning of a Unitarian Christmas. (My favorite character in this is Marley, a humanist who is clearly embarrassed to be a ghost. In Dickens it's Scrooge who is in denial about Marley's ghostliness, but in my version it's Marley.)
Anyway, UU World's site doesn't have a comment feature, so feel free to leave comments here.
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3 comments:
I loved it! And I forwarded it to a friend who is a cradle UU like myself, who loved it too. In her family they have a tradition of each person around the table reading a reflection over Christmas Eve dinner, and your Christmas Carol will be hers this year!
And I just found out yesterday, thanks to our UU blogging colleage serenityhome, that "Do You Hear What I Hear?" was written by UUs as well.
I LOVED it. LOVED IT! I'm a Religious Educator, and I posted a link to your piece on the blog I write for the families in my congregation.
(http://westseattlereligiouseducation.blogspot.com/2008/12/gotta-read-this-one-ghosts-of-unitarian.html)
The families loved it too.
My "birthright" UU children loved it. And, my dear anti-religion husband loved it. That's a big deal.
It's a great way to teach us all about hour history.
loved it
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