The Unitarians who saved Christmas

Christmas is our high holidays and when I conjure up thoughts of the spirit of Christmas many different visions come into my mind. I remember the Christmas of my youth. Certainly I think of the crèche, that representation of Mary, Joseph, and others around the crib of Jesus in the stable at Bethlehem. One was built in front of the Catholic Church and another very different in front of the Baptist Church where I went as a boy. They were the same figures but I remember a difference in the formality of the figures.

I remember the Christmas pageant in which the story was always the same but we characters changed as we grew. There was always the nervous Sunday School teacher who would line us up to march in our costumes and was constantly reminding us to be good, meaning less like the playful boys that we were. Lots of things have changed since then but the nervous energy of forty some years ago seems to have been present last week here at the last pageant of the millenium. Certainly the importance of the Christmas story has not been dulled for me by these past forty years.

It has not always been that way. Christmas for our pilgrim ancestors was much different. In 1621 Governor Bradford, one year after landing, found that some of the colonies new residents were planning to take Christmas day off and ordered them back to work. And in 1659 the General Court of Massachusetts declared that to celebrate Christmas was a criminal offence and until 1681 the criminal was subject to a fine of five shillings. In Puritan thinking the celebration of Christ's birth was not a biblical event in December but was an arbitrary decision of the Early Church Fathers.

They also objected to the medieval partying practices that had grown up around the holiday, the Revels if you will. December had become a month for natural over indulging, all of the harvesting was complete, the stock that was not being kept over the winter had been slaughtered snd much needed to be eaten due to lack of preservation options and the wines and beers brewed in the summer and fall were just starting to come into season.

The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston put it this way in 1687, "The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays after an holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, Interludes, in playing Cards, in Revelling, in excessive wine, in mad mirth..." You know I don't believe there was much fun here at all until the Irish arrived. 

Now that brings me to another memory of Christmas, Caroling. When we lived in Upstate New York the UU Fellowship used to go out Caroling on the streets of the town going from house to house. While my voice never added anything but volume to the proceedings, it is one of those memories that forms the spirit of Christmas. It too was not always viewed as a positive spirit of Christmas. One of the seasonal traditions that comes from England is the tradition of the misrule. In this tradition the servant and the mistress and master trade places and the Manor House master will throw a party for all his workers. The master will wait on the servant.

During Puritan times one of their objections to Christmas was the twelve days of reveling that developed from the misrule tradition. We see the practice still within our cultures with Boxing Day in England and Canada. This involves the practice of leaving Boxes or gratuities for all those people who have served you during the past year, in England this was our milk man and post person. In fact, I have even had a Christmas card left with my morning Globe, which means that my paper delivery man expects a card, with something in it back. In fact I can probably say that if he doesn't get something in a card I may not get an intact complete paper for the remainder of time I live in Kingston.

The early carolers of the 18th Century created animosity for Christmas with their practice of Wassailing. This practice was done by gangs of young males who would take to the street singing and snow-balling in the Christmas season and keep the Good Folks awake with their drunken singing until they were given some grog and then they would move on to the next community. This was sort of like Drink or Trick, and in some recorded incidents violence actually occurred. They mostly sang drinking type of Seasonal Songs. If fact some of the tunes of some of the early Carols were really seasonal words on drinking songs. Other Christmas hymns were written for other purposes.

The three Christmas carols we are singing this morning were all written by Unitarians in Boston. These three men represent many other liberals of their day who attempted to legitimize the spirit of Christmas into something more wholesome. The first Hymn was written by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the middle of the Great Civil War as an antiwar piece. Before this time there had been little attempt to align Christmas with a peace theme.

Certainly the biblical narrative with Joseph and Mary's uprouting from Nazareth and Harod's butchery, had no great peace theme before this time. Listen to the words from the second verse:
 

'the belfries of all Christendom had rolled along the unbroken song of peace on earth'

and the fourth verse:
 

'Then peal the bells more loud and deep:
"God's is not dead, nor doth God sleep;
the wrong shall fail, the right prevail with peace on earth,
to all good will"

These were certainly apt sentiments during that great confrontation. But now for me the spirit of peace is a integral part of the Christmas feeling, it is closely tied with that Christmas spirit. The second hymn 'In the Lonely Midnight' was written by Theodore Chickering Williams when he was minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York.

Listen to the Liberal Christian in the words of the last stanza:
 

love is king forever, though the proud may scorn:
If ye truly seek him, Christ for you is born.

I hear once again an attempt to broaden the spirit that Christmas can bring into our hearts.

The final hymn is "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" by Edmund Hamilton Sears. This 1848 hymn was written in the shadow of the great civil war when the issue of slavery was on the minds of most of our clergy. It is now viewed as "a major landmark in Christmas music and in Christian philosophy." This carol may have been the first clear expression of what became the social gospel movement, because it was the first Christmas carol with a social-ethical message. It was such a radical departure from the standard Christmas message that it worried many Christian conservatives. The third verse sings:

 
‘But with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong; 
And man at war with man hears not the love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.’

Sears brought to the spirit of Christmas a dimension of liberation with his message against the sin of slavery and conflict. This Christmas song, though one of the best known ever, never refers to the Nativity. 

But the spirit of Christmas also includes Santa Claus. The development of which comes to us from New York traditions of the Dutch and Knickerbocker ideas through the writing of Clement Clark Moore. Moore wrote the poem "A visit from St. Nicholas" or more commonly "the night before Christmas." Prior to Moore's poem St. Nick was always portrayed as a medieval bishop. Moore develops Santa Claus as an elf-like being who brings joy especially to children. In Moore's time children were looked at as small adults but in Moore's message we see a more important image of childhood, an image of imagination and wonder. This too is the magic of Christmas. But it was especially socially relevant in the reform movements to end child labor. If children are seen as only small adults, they are easier to exploit. Here is another liberating influence of the spirit of Christmas. 

Coupled with the image of Santa Claus is the idea of children receiving gifts. We all remember our early Christmas morning discovery of the Christmas tree with its magic silvery balls, lights and particularly the tinsel icicles which you found still cleaning up months later. Under the tree we also found the magic of presents that just seemed to appear. I think I will always remember my children's sense of wonder and delight on Christmas morning. This too is the spirit of Christmas. 

Now there are lots of stories how the Christmas tree came to these shores and became popularized but the one I like involves two other Unitarians. One was a Radical Unitarian Minister and Harvard professor of German Charles Follen. Follen was a German immigrant who was exiled from his native Germany and then Switzerland for his Republican ideas and came to these shores in 1824 with papers of introduction from another famous radical the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette suggested Follen try Boston and there he fell in love and married a young woman named Eliza Cabot. Eliza's prominence opened doors to Charles and found him a position at the college and introduced him to Unitarianism. He devoured both.

Anyway in 1835 the other Unitarian in my story came to visit with the Follens. This was the famous author Harriet Martineau who came from the most prominent British Unitarian family of the 19th Century. Follen decorated a pine tree German style with candles for his young son and Harriet wrote a story about seeing it for the first time. The Christmas tree became part of the spirit of Christmas. This was not so coincidental as it may look. Follen was a rabid anti-slavery and children's advocate and a close friend with William Lloyd Garrison.

Both men believed that to change the image of children into a softer public image would help the cause of child labor laws and institution of slavery in this country. Martineau's story helped bring children into Christmas. The spirit of Christmas was again building.

Now about the same time a young Unitarian writer in Britian published a short story about Christmas. He had been raised as a poor son of a London clerk who was consumed by alcohol. He had known poverty and hunger for most of his life and into this Christmas story "he poured not only all of his craft but some intimate experiences from his personal life." Charles Dickens was that writer, and his story was that which Lois and Ron read, the timeless "A Christmas Carol."

Dickens' story caused him instant success. He came to the Boston in 1867 and gave his public readings. "Many people wept as he read it to them." Dickens was a bitter critic of wealth and power. "Neither in the Anglican church nor in the so-called nonconforming churches could he find anything like a social conscience." He went to the Unitarian Essex Chapel in London, and he found what he heard there refreshing. In time he joined the Chapel. According to his leading biographers, he became a Unitarian for the rest of his life." In the Christmas Carol, Dickens gave the spirit of Christmas other images. First there is the redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge. Even the name Scrooge has come to typify an anti-Christmas spirit. In the image of the Cratchit Family, Dickens helps change the spirit of Christmas from one of Revelers to Family.

I hope no one heard me debunking or belittling the spirit of Christmas in this sermon, or heard a claim on Christmas as being only a Unitarian Thing, or heard this sermon as a history lesson on the evolution of Christmas traditions but as a continuing evolving spirit that is alive in the world today, that has caused wars to go into cease fires and prompted us to reach into our pockets with compassion as many did yesterday at the Luminaries for the Worcester Tragedy.

For in truth the Spirit of Christmas is alive and growing today into so much more than just the story of two millennia ago. In an ever evolving and never ending world. Amen.
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