A Few Holiday Stories For These Tough Times

What follows is my holiday sermon for 2008. I wish all of you had been there when I looked at the word ‘Druid’ and my brain told me to say ‘droid.’ The ancient droids is now a running joke at UUCC. Funny stuff. May your holiday be happy and healthy.

Times like these. That’s really all I need to say, and you probably know what I’m talking about. Times like these, when we’re reminded that the greed of a few of us can affect all of us. When our belief in the systems which support us is shaken to its core. Times when, strangely perhaps, we now gather to celebrate. Of all things, to celebrate. When a half-million people have lost jobs this year, when personal budgets are tightening with no bailout in sight, when wall street tycoons and car company CEOs are reduced to groveling for a chunk of our money, what have we to celebrate?

Plenty, I think. But to answer the question more specifically, I want to tell three stories which, I hope, will remind us of the good things still present in these hard times. It’s hard to separate fact from fiction in these stories. But we needn’t worry about that today.

The first tale is the story of a young boy who grew up to be something great, but not in the way everyone thought he would[1]. He was born to a family with great palaces and horses and gold. Everyone expected this child to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe a powerful politician. But wealthy people get sick just like everyone else, and when our hero was still very young, his parents died from the plague. Now, this orphaned young boy happened to be a Christian, and as a teenager he read the words of Jesus: “Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor. Then come, follow me.” The boy took those words to heart. He spent his entire inheritance on the sick and the needy and spent the rest of his life trying to behave as he thought Jesus might behave.

His dedication led the church leaders to elect him Bishop of Myra, though he was still young and wasn’t a clergyperson. Bishop Nicholas came to be known for his generosity, his love for children, and his concern for the sailors who spent so much time in danger at sea. He was a beloved figure in his hometown, and for a bishop that’s saying something. Even during his lifetime, the sailors claimed Saint Nicholas as their patron saint and spread stories of his life up and down the coasts they sailed.

During the lifetime of St. Nicholas, his country fell on hard economic times. Many people lost fortunes in the fourth-century version of the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, in St. Nick’s own town lived a man who lost all his money in the recession. This man had three daughters. In the fourth century, a father provided his daughters with a dowry to attract a good husband. A large dowry might draw a doctor or a lawyer. A small dowry would probably lead to a woman being forced to marry a minister. When St. Nicholas learned of the family’s problems, he knew just what he would do.

Late one night, Nicholas took some of the gold he had inherited from his parents, tied it up in a bag, and headed toward the home of the destitute family. He tossed it through an open window, and it landed in a stocking hanging to dry by the fireplace. When the father awoke the next morning, he found the gold and used it as a dowry for his oldest daughter. Over the next two nights, St. Nick performed this anonymous act of kindness every night until all three women had dowries.

I’m reminded by this story that our systems fail us. Economies and politicians and stock markets all let us down from time to time. And in almost every case, the cure comes not from those in charge, but from someone who has means and the kindness to do what is right.

The second story takes place around 175 BCE, a time of great political and economic turmoil. Antiochus Epiphanes ruled the Seleucid Empire, which had taken control of Israel, including Israel’s religious center, Jerusalem. And that might not have been so bad. This tiny country, Israel, was occupied for most of its ancient history. But the way in which Epiphanes occupied was distressing, to say the least.

He took into no account the heritage of the country he was occupying. And so, without regard for the fierce religious nature of many of the Jewish people, he built a gymnasium in Israel, a Greek symbol for fitness and philosophical learning. And worst of all, he took all the gold out of the temple. The place where the Jews believed God’s presence literally rested. He set an image of Zeus, a Greek god, on Israel’s altar.

Now, we may not share their religious beliefs, but surely a church full of Unitarian Universalists can appreciate the Jews’ desire to worship whom they pleased rather than being forced to worship the god the people around them worshiped. And we can understand, perhaps, why, a small band of Israeli fighters decided they would resist. This was the ultimate underdog battle. A few thousand people with rudimentary weapons against elephants and hundreds of thousands of soldiers and one of the largest economies of the time.

For three years the battle waged. Three years of fighting against an enemy that seemed undefeatable. A few times, the Jews thought they had defeated the Syrians, only to be attacked again. But some smart political moves (an alliance with Rome didn’t hurt) and some fierce fighting helped the Jewish fighters rid their land of the oppressive Greeks.

At the end of the fighting, the Jews rededicated their temple and its altar to their own god, Yahweh. And it was decided that every year, for eight days, the Jewish people would celebrate Hanukkah, the rededication of the temple. And beginning this very night, all over the world people will light small lights and give gifts and eat ceremonial meals for eight days, remembering that sometimes the underdog wins. Sometimes what looks to be inevitable isn’t if only we’ll band together, raggedy and tattered though we may be.

I love this story. In part, I love it because it’s such a human story. The more you dig, the more you see that there were a million little things that happened to help the Maccabees in their fight. And it seems to me that’s how life goes. Life goes on, but not always in the ways we expect. But I also love this story because I’ve felt like the underdog. Maybe you have, too. Maybe you do now. But we don’t fight the battle alone. There are just enough of us, even here this morning, that we’ll get through whatever it is we face. If we’re honest and open with each other, the human spirit will prevail, even over senators and CEOs.

 We’ve heard about a rich kid who turned bad luck into great fortune for the poor, and a ragtag band of fighters who kicked the big army out of their country. For my final story, I pulled some information from a book entitled “Fertility Goddesses, Groundhog Bellies and the Coca-Cola Company: The Origins of Modern Holidays” by Gabriella Kalapos. This last one is a story about my living room. Yours, too, maybe.

In my living room stands a pine tree. A real one. Now, in years past, we’ve put up an artificial tree. And to be honest, some of our artificial trees somehow looked more real than this real one does. But this year, we decided to go down to the old IGA and buy a real, live tree from the Optimists. A great name for a group that sells Christmas trees, I think.

Our tree provides a nice contrast to what I see when I look out the sliding glass door in our kitchen. Bare brown trees that a few months ago were green with leaves. Those leaves, now dark brown and decaying in the browning grass. It’s like looking out on nature’s graveyard.

That’s probably why people started bringing trees inside in the first place. Trees were considered holy by some ancient groups. Kalapos writes, “At the dawn of history, most of Europe – from northern England to the coasts of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, all the way to the Black Sea – was covered with immense primeval forests. Of these, only a few square miles in Poland still exist today. The temples of the Norse, the Teutons, and the Druids, to name but a few, were not located within trees that were cut down to build temples and churches but rather in the sacred living groves themselves. The divine in all its myriad forms was sung, danced, prophesized, and celebrated in these sacred places. The trees were regarded as full of spirit… (Kalapos, 245).”

But during the winter, it seemed to the eye that all divinity had gone. Everything green died, shed its leaves and became barren. That is, almost everything. Evergreen trees, in defiance of the death that seemed to surround them, stayed green. And some ancient peoples left offerings to nature around these trees. They eventually, some of them, began to decorate their homes with pieces of evergreen branches during the winter festival of Saturnalia to remind themselves that life persisted, even in the winter, when the nights were long and it looked like life was gone.

Look around you. Greenery is everywhere, reminding us that even when things look bleak, the spirit of life and nature go on. And that’s the thought I want to leave you with this morning. Perhaps for you life blooms all around. This financial downturn hasn’t hit everyone equally, and if for you life is all green leaves and running streams, wonderful. But if that’s not the case for you, remember that the spirit of life goes on in you. Even in the dormant times just before the solstice. And after today, may the love of this community and your family and friends make the light hours grow longer for your spirit. The trees will once more bear leaves, even if they don’t today. And may this season remind each of us to find the evergreens in our lives, to see the beauty there is to see, and to remember that these winter seasons do not last forever.

To remember that, rich and poor, rag-tag and powerful, we’re all in this together. And that’s reason enough to celebrate. Amen.

 

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[1] www.stnicholascenter.org