A Diamond-Hard Lesson In A Lump Of Christmas Coal Wednesday, December 22, 2004
All I want for Christmas is . . . well, the two front teeth are still intact, so what I'm thinking of instead is something to banish that lump of coal that really deserves to be dropped in my stocking. I want forgiveness.
As a religious figure, Santa Claus has two qualities to remember at Christmas. As he goes along his route he makes character judgments -- which is why we fear finding coal where we'd rather see presents. Obviously, a generous, happy Santa has been much easier to market, but perhaps the commercial wind beneath his sleigh has carried him too far from his roots as a virtuous pilgrim.
Santa Claus began life as Saint Nicholas in fourth-century Turkey, a boy tragically orphaned and touched by God. He became a church leader and a bishop, and travelled his world bringing Christian teaching, healing and gifts for the young and vulnerable. Any Dutch Canadian will tell you that in Dutch legend, Saint Nicholas still looks like a bishop, and has a helper, Zwarte Piet or Black Pete. Zwarte Piet carries a switch with which to whip children, and lumps of coal to leave for the really bad ones (he threatens to stuff the worst ones in his sack and cart them off).
To me, it seems totally out of character for Saint Nicholas to allow such a killjoy around him. No wonder any judgments Pete dispenses for Santa haven't translated into North America's generously commercial nature. It's as easy for us to forget the point of the coal lump as to forget what motivated the bishop in the first place.
"Emmanuel, God with us" is the original gift from Heaven that moved Nicholas to action and got the Christian world consumed with the gift of giving this week. The Christ Child, known as Emmanuel, a baby of divinity lying in a virgin's arms, was the first gift. When I wonder if there really is a God, I look at that baby Jesus, Emmanuel, Christ and marvel at what's in my culture because of Him. Two thousand years later we are still changing our lives because of Christ and our interpretations of His teachings. The very fact that the story has endured and grown to the world's largest faith movement, to say nothing of the impact Jesus has had on my personal life, is proof to me that the gift of a baby from God was supernatural. God's activities among humankind live in our storytelling because they are true. Christmas is a supernatural event; God is deeply involved.
If "God with us" could really be embraced, there'd be far less coal in stockings. We'd be having national discussions about virtues. And virtues are the gifts we should long for under our tree. But you need to only look as far as yesterday's headlines to find our aching collective and personal need for more virtue in our lives.
When Canadians involve themselves in the most dangerous elections in the world, leading the mission to observe Iraq elections and contributing monitors to Ukraine's latest, those are tests of the virtues of honesty and courage. When Walkerton, Ont.'s former manager of public utilities must spend Christmas in jail it speaks to a lack of those virtues. The sentencing in Saskatchewan of a repeat drunk driver who killed six innocent people in one crash shows how a lack of the virtue of self-discipline can be fatal. The virtue of friendship is in a Vancouver parking company that gives an amnesty for its parking tickets in exchange for gifts for children (and I'm jealous that this didn't happen in Toronto!) Listening to the debate between NHL fans, owners and players on CBC Radio's Cross-Country Checkup on Sunday, you could conclude that virtues of loyalty and responsibility were at stake in the national game.
Here's the conundrum though, just when you think you've "got" a virtue, it's gone. One of my very favourite Christmas presents ever is a 800-page copy of The Book of Virtues. It was a gift I unwrapped as a young mom, a library of moral stories to read to my children. By the time my kids were teenagers, the book's editor, William J. Bennett, had developed a gambling addiction that had cost him $8-million (U.S.) from the profits he'd made from virtues. Let's face it, we're all vulnerable to temptation. Tomorrow it could be me.
Sometimes I'm asked if I think a person can be good without God. My answer: absolutely yes. Proof abounds. But what you cannot have is a definition of good without God. Christmas is the reminder that God's story with humanity was to bring us the source of all that is good. Emmanuel, God with us.
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On April 30, 2005 Lorna was privileged to receive an honorary Doctorate of Christian Ministries from Canada's largest Christian university, Trinity Western University. Lorna was recognized for the witness and leadership that Listen Up TV has provided in public messaging: "a leader in the voice of evangelical life in Canada."
