The Eternal, Holy Night   

Tikkun Magazine, November/December 2003

The Eternal, Holy Night

By Thomas Moore

It is no accident that the festival of Christmas occurs at the time of year when the darkness has reached its low point and winter light begins to appear. Christmas is the honoring of light and the hope that comes with the end of nature's and the human soul's dark night. In the symbolic turning of time, Christmas is that part of the annual cycle that invites us to leave darkness behind and enter a new way of being, to start a new "year," that is, a new era of enlightened decisions rather than unconscious acts.

The most stirring songs of the season, "O Holy Night" and "Silent Night," and the popular verse-tale "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" explore the emotion of night, especially this night on which light once again shows itself. We honor this mythic night full of hopeful appearances—angels with their song, flying reindeer, kings bearing gifts of gold and spices, a lowly stable aflame with the brilliant arrival of the divine child.

Historically, Christmas was heavily influenced by the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a time of revelry and feasting when the burden of rules was suspended and values were turned upside down. Its arrival reminds us of certain values that we forget during the rest of the year. Why not learn from Christmas Saturnalia to be more forgiving and less moralistic, not to justify our existence by hard work alone but to find meaning in play and celebration, and to give more of ourselves to our children?

One of the most dangerous developments in contemporary religion and spirituality is the stress on rules, authority, heavy moral repression, and highly abstract and intellectual belief. Even new spiritual movements are often joyless and depriving. The modernism of the twentieth century created a largely disenchanted world in which we must now live. Most of what was enchanting in life fell to scientific analysis and historical research. The enthronement of fact chased the magic into cartoons and television programs about witches and spells and away from our homes and neighborhoods. The re-enchantment of daily life is crucial to getting over our dour moralism, our draining workaholism, and our melancholic belief in hard research. If you have lost enchantment, you are liable to divisiveness, intolerance, and aggression. If you don't love life, you are more susceptible to hating your neighbor.

Christmas gives us a remarkable antidote to the stern, demanding deity of self-righteousness—Santa Claus! This demi-urge, this spiritual figure who lives at the top of the world is jolly, generous, and fat. The only other spiritual father images I know that are even close to being so jovial and life-affirming are certain representations of the Buddha, where he is round, smiling, and accommodating. If we all had this kind of a god-image, we might be able to get along with each other and find peace among ourselves through the sheer enjoyment of life. War is an expression of deep emotional disturbance, severe neurosis, and the utter loss of humanity. Christmas is a feast for everyone, an opportunity to restore hope and to take part in meaningful and deeply-felt rituals, and to reconnect with our common humanity.

Of course, Christmas is overly commercialized, and people accordingly spend too much money, time, and energy buying gifts, which seem to get more expensive every year, but I am not one of those who think we need to restore the "true" spirit of Christmas, the austere theological mysticism of belief. The solution to all of the extravagance is not to become moralistic and insist on a severe, mental and virtuous observance. We need to deepen our observances, not dismiss them.

I like to speak of the soul of Christmas as well as its spirit. The soul of Christmas is low, embodied, tolerant, diverse, not always virtuous but humorous and earthy. The soulful side of Christmas comes forth in the preparation of family and community meals and the reenactment of traditional customs. I think we have it right when we go shopping, make cookies, sing carols, and trim trees. We might deepen these traditions by giving thoughtful, heartfelt gifts, contacting old friends, and giving more than usual attention to children. And we should all give each other—adults and children—at least one toy, as a symbol of our retreat from seriousness, ambition, and work. It honors the child in the manger, who is not an image of silly, naive childishness, but of new life, hope, fresh vision, and imagination.

The Christian liturgy of Christmas begins with the song, "A child is born, a son is given to us." Imagine this as the birth of the child-image, the spirit of renewal, and an end to old habits. Isn't this exactly what the world needs at this moment? We remain within the old categories of thought, and try to "win" our battles and overcome our "enemies." This child in the stable, this light to the world, taught us in his maturity to love our enemies. Imagine the Saturnalian foolhardiness of that vision! This teaching sounds so naive that it has been easy to dismiss, but in the context of Christmas it is the expression of a new way of seeing and doing things. Especially in times of widespread war, we could endeavor to love our enemies and to never justify the violent death of children caught in political conflict.

The child in the manger, Santa Claus magically bestowing gifts on everyone, the kings and angels honoring the birth of a new thing--none of this is naïve, sentimental, or impractical. Christmas is not only a celebration of the possibility of peace, it is a challenge to live differently. We need a shift in paradigm, a deep change in our mentality, if we are to care for each other and relieve human suffering.

Some call this philosophy of mine "lite," superficial, and even superstitious, but I believe it touches the very heart of our problems. I think that if you become too spiritual—insisting only on meaningful actions and highly intellectualized understanding—the human community suffers a loss of soul, and that loss is the source of conflict. The stern, frowning, spiritual zealot seems to enjoy divisions and wars and political battles; while the soulful holy fool appreciates the beauty and richness of other cultures, eating their food, playing their music, and embracing their spiritualities.

I am sometimes asked to sum up my writing in a few words. I don't hesitate: "Lighten up!" Recently some students gave me a bumper sticker with those words in bright letters. But isn't this the punning message of Christmas, the festival of light? I think we best celebrate this time by lightening up and opening our hearts.

Let this baby be born in you. Be a humble manger. Let your light and your levity show. Let the Christ-nature, blessedly free of dogma, church, law, moralism, and belief, shine in you like the divine child aglow in so many paintings of nativity. Understand that nativity happens in you, in your family, and in your community, or it happens only for show. Unless you are Christmas, then this festival is only a story to tell and not a myth to live.

This year, we can remember the good people on all sides who have died and have been hurt in war and conflict. We could allow the new light to take up residence in us so radically that we couldn't tolerate the thought of bloodshed for puny political purposes and insane fantasies of ownership and belonging. You don't have to be a genius to understand that there is another way, that peace is both imaginable and practicable. But it will only happen if the new life represented by the Christmas crèche is lodged deep in our thoughts and feelings. The joys of Christmas can congeal into a philosophy that affirms life radically and translates into soulful political action.

The promising vision of that child in the stable has never been fully realized. It has been hidden beneath neurotic concerns of membership, authority, exclusiveness, and belief. Its very soul has been largely out of reach because it has been so intellectualized and moralized. The story of Christmas is simple but not simplistic. It can become a philosophy of life without any mediation of church or academic theology.

The Jesus of religion is not a mere philosopher or teacher. He comes from another reality, and so at his birth there is no room for him at the inn, an image of accepted human society. He is comforted by animals, received by shepherds, and acknowledged by kings and wizards. By nature he is outside the box of normality.

To take him to heart requires being outside the box yourself, discovering that when you think radically about love as a basis for life and culture, there will be no room in the inn for you. You will be eccentric, ostracized perhaps, and eventually even crucified. You will be like some Gnostic visitor, someone who fell to earth to awaken those who have fallen asleep and have forgotten the wisdom that would make human life effective.

At the same time, if you have had your Christmas, you will have a light in you that will make your life worthwhile. You will be deeply satisfied for being a stranger in a familiar land, involved with this life and yet mysteriously connected to the stars and beasts. You will be what the Gnostics called "anthropos," alive with a vital humanity within you. You will see past the pragmatics and self-concern of those not yet born in soul and spirit, not yet aware of how deep and vast our human nature is.

For all its charm, Christmas is a stark reminder that to be fully human entails hosting another cosmic self that transcends the petty needs of any particular insecure nation, family, or personality. It is an outsiders' festival, suggesting that the perspective of the stars and beasts be included among our concerns. If we were to take the veil of sentimentality off Christmas, we might be startled to discover that there is an alien in our very make-up, a being gifted with a vast potential for love and creativity, but one so foreign to ordinary values that his story takes him directly from Bethlehem to Golgatha, from the wooden stable to the wooden cross.

The stars were right that night, that eternal and recurring night, when childlike hope was born into the world. This year, Mars will be bright in the sky during the Christmas season. He is an archon of war and aggression, and there is no denying his terrible influence at this time in history. But the spiritual traditions say that he has a good side—he strengthens, fortifies, and sharpens everything we do. This year might be the time to firm up our notions of what it means to be religious and spiritual, what it means to love our enemies, and what it means to make peace.

The red star that shines over Bethlehem this season holds the message that real strength lies in the substance of our ideas, the depth of our character, and the power in our souls. Overt aggression always betrays the collapse of that internal strength. Mars doesn't bless bloodshed; he promises a real peace that comes from the maturing of emotions and ideas.

The same is true of the child shining in the manger. There is deceptive strength in the simplicity of that scene. I would hope that the Christians who display that creche would be generous in offering it openly to the world, and that those who are not Christian could enjoy it without taking offense. It displays a secret embedded in all of life: the promise of renewal, birth, beginnings, a spiritual cosmos alive with song and light, extreme peace and indomitable hope.

Thomas Moore is a psychotherapist and author of many books, including Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. www.careofthesoul.net.

Source Citation

Moore, Thomas. 2003. The Eternal, Holy Night. Tikkun 18(6): 80.