Angels we have heard on high. Or have we? Because some magic infuses the carols.
There are humbugs hearing the patriarchal foundations of Western civilization song and trying to serve “Happy Holidays” ditchwater as gin punch. But while not everybody celebrates Christmas, nobody celebrates “holiday,” so that counterfeit is no more inclusive than its authors.
I sing beneath their window anyway. And those of all who experience, and celebrate, some of the magic of Christmas. Including joyfully plunging into some of the most beautiful songs ever written, whose lyrics if true bring the most wonderful message anyone ever heard or ever could.
Then I risk spoiling the mood. Not with figgy pudding but by asking who else is singing along, a.k.a. “Is Christmas real?”
If you celebrate it somehow, if you gather with loved ones and try to embody peace on earth, and goodwill toward anyone not currently ahead of you in traffic, you must think something special really happens, something marvellous we sadly cannot sustain 365 days a year, at least yet. But what? And how?
If you watch “A Christmas Carol” or read it aloud in company and tear up, are you being had? After all, as a grownup you know there is no Ebeneezer Scrooge and never was.
When the Ghost of Christmas Present says he and his brethren live not just one day a year, they live all 365, like the child born in Bethlehem, you know some sort of dramatic licence is being employed. But if you cry anyway, or just happen annually to get something in your eye at the miraculous redemption of that grasping, covetous old sinner, you know it’s being employed legitimately. It’s not just clever manipulation.
By the same token, it won’t do to protest that we thrill to Christmas carols and eat candy out of socks before a dead tree, because our ancestors did. Or to say it’s why we eat turkey and mince tarts that we don’t wish we had 365 days a year because it wouldn’t be marvellous.
It won’t do on two grounds. First, many people choose to roast something other than turkey, and it doesn’t spoil the feast any more than skipping eggnog on the grounds that “nogs” aren’t a genre for a reason. (As with group readings of classics, if you tackle the apparently daunting task of spatchcocking the turkey, you’ll rejoice. Eggnog, perhaps not.)
Second, and I’ll apply it acerbically to multiculturalism much more broadly if it ain’t out of keeping with the situation, you can’t do something because your ancestors did it without it becoming totally ersatz, because it’s not why they did it.
They did it because they thought it mattered. Unless you think so too, you’re faking it. Which is why updated Christmas carols that expel the baby from the manger and the tune from the melody fail in ways that roast chicken or roast beast on Dec. 25 do not. We can celebrate Christmas without fruitcake. But not without Wenceslas.
We cannot find meaning in making gestures, donning garments, eating or shunning specific foods, etc., knowing it’s meaningless, then stuff it perfectly by assigning everyone the meaninglessness their genetic forebears mistook for meaning. Yes, I did once try haggis because of my partial Scottish antecedents. But the reason I still eat it periodically, though never yet for Christmas dinner, is that against all odds it turns out to be delicious if done right.
So, some may say, does getting and giving presents, even without attaching cosmic significance to this particular display of mutual affection, or grasping why the original packages contained gold, frankincense and, gosh, myrrh. Ditto belting out hauntingly beautiful songs claiming we shall be redeemed from our sins and enjoy eternal bliss through God’s baffling, marvellous intervention because, for once, we can sing loudly in public out of key. But it’s not why they work.
Rituals matter, and redemption arcs make the best stories, only if both are real. Christmas particularly could only touch the frozen nugget that supplanted Scrooge’s heart, and not his alone, indeed redeem Marley from beyond the grave, because something really is going on, something important and marvellous.
If it’s not that angels really brought good news to shepherds outside Bethlehem, I’m open to suggestions. But if you can feel the magic, and can’t explain it, surely it’s time to be open to the lyrics proclaiming that behind all myths lies one true one, one Redemption written on all our hearts. Or as Buster Scruggs put it, “There’s just gotta be a place up ahead where men ain’t low-down and poker’s played fair. If there weren’t, what are all the songs about?”
So open your mouths, ears, and hearts. And perhaps, faintly but unmistakably, you’ll pick up the infinitely thrilling, perfectly harmonious strains of an accompanying chorus Angelorum.
