“… finding myself on the other side of the regulatory apparatus for the first time ever — regarding the proposed transformations in our world as a traducing of everything I valued — and thus aware for the first time ever of what conservatives have felt for a long time.”
Boy, this is how I have increasingly felt over the past ten years. I don’t think I’ve heard it put so cogently before. Going from being as liberal as one could imagine to, in desperation for some cultural terra firma, devouring Roger Scruton’s galvanizing “Why I Became a Conservative,” has been one of the most flabbergasting developments in my life. I HATED catholic teachings a kid and the Moral Majority even more, also having been carried by the counterculture wave of the previous decades. I couldn’t wait to see it all shed from our lives. Make the 1960s last forever, baby!
Well….. I still am not a believer -and I still like The Doors- but am stunned to 40+ years on from those experiences find myself searching for any threads of these faded Christian American traditions to stay connected to that less irresolute, integrated time you write about. At Christmas time it’s nutcrackers, old Christmas programs, traditional songs, silly things… and the rest of the time it’s reading First Things and The New Criterion as a way to pull back close a cultural raft I spent my heedless youth callowly kicking out to sea.
It all seems reactionary, but what else can we do? Honestly? We cannot abandon what we know or forget what we saw.
“God-given rights”?!!! No. Law and the mere idea of rights come from man. (As do these devices we are all using). We had religion long before we had rights. Woke might be an obnoxious religion, and late to the party. But Christianity missed the boat on slavery(use) and slaughters too numerous to discuss.
Wesley's post resonated with me, as seems to be the case for many other commenters of a certain vintage. I am currently in my late 50s, and first had children at a late age (they are now 10 and 7). I was eager to re-live cherished Christmas rituals of my youth with my kids. One of those rituals was "Charlie Brown Christmas," which I had not seen in many years. I recalled that it delivered a heart-warming holiday message about goodwill toward man. However, when we sat down to watch it, I was frankly shocked; I had not remembered the extent and overtness of the Christian messaging. It was a perfect example of how thoroughly the times have changed, as it is difficult or perhaps impossible to imagine a children's cartoon of this type being shown on broadcast television to a wide audience today.
My upbringing did not involve any religion. Indeed, I recall discomfort when exposed to Christian ritual, such as when a friend's family said "grace" at dinner where I was a guest. And yet, with maturity I have come to appreciate that there are valuable lessons in religious teaching, even for those of us who are not believers. For example, Judeo-Christian principles (e.g., the Ten Commandments) provide a pretty decent framework for leading your life. As intelligent beings, we have the ability to pick and choose what we want to take from a set of religious teachings, from a political philosophy, etc. without adopting them in toto. It is not an all or nothing proposition. I realize now that is exactly what I did as a kid watching "Charlie Brown Christmas." I took away the message of the importance of compassion and goodwill toward my fellow man without adopting (or even remembering!) the expressed religious beliefs. As a parent, I trust that my kids can do the same, and thus we will watch "Charlie Brown Christmas" together and discuss the meaning of the messaging, its source (i.e., Christianity), and its importance to us, even as non-believers.
As other commenters have pointed out, the problem with the "de-Christianitizing" of America is that, while people are no longer exposed to as much Christian messaging, they are also not as exposed to the underlying principles, which, again, provide a useful framework for leading your life. Initially, no replacement was offered, leaving some people unmoored and adrift. The successor ideology has filled the void for some of those, leading to our current predicament. After all, the successor ideology does not exactly teach goodwill toward man.
The public sphere may be de-Christianized but there is much music that is beautiful and you don't have to believe the back story to be moved. Here's a 600 member chorus of The Messiah from the Sydney Opera House--Hallelujah at 01:54:51. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR0cEOTpYSk
We are finite creatures who spring from, and for all practical purposes dwell within, an infinity. Splitting hairs over the nature of this reality fills libraries. Some have recognized as valid within themselves, experiential moments that seem to reveal a living, conscious, intelligent transformational force that permeates both the temporal and the eternal. For them, the human relationship with this force defines history. Consequential terror and world destruction results from the violation of the defining lines of demarcation we call human morality. It is fearsome and to a some extent why we gather here and why we send checks to Mr. Yang.
It's interesting that the Star of Bethlehem is visible this Christmas for the first time in centuries. Anthropology tells us that the man creates a safe space for the woman to bring forth the future. The Nativity depicts a man, woman and child fleeing for their lives, sheltering in a stable. It also depicts wise men who recognize that the family and child are precious and in danger. They were guided to the family by a living Universe. Or, so the story goes. If the child and the family that sustains it is not worthy of honor and protection, what is? If access to the moral wisdom that enables meaningful participation with a living Universe, and recognition of the sacred within the child, and within ourselves, is denied, what is lost?
We are untethered, unmoored and the successor ideology is stupid, illogical, spurious and it’s stupidity is enforced through fear. Interesting that Christian theology is being replaced by a very shitty theology of the academic left. Such arrogance, end of history, the old lessons no longer apply. I’ll find Wesley‘s final thought the most spooky: kids today are fully indoctrinated in this stuff, unaware and ill equipped, discouraged to think for themselves, they are taught decent is a micro aggression.
Have you noticed that the same people deploring public celebration of Christmas tend to be the people insistent that all of us respect the cultures and traditions of the immigrant populations? These same people are ignorant of the origins of many of the Christmas traditions, e.g. Santa isn't Christian. I suppose it's fair for us to term these people "Grinchs" at least until they can ban any reference to Dr. Seuss. It can't be too long before Easter egg hunts on the public green will need to be banned. The fact that the Easter Bunny appeared nowhere in our Sunday school lessons is irrelevant. The Postmodern Calvinists won't rest until no one, any where, ever has any fun. The only traditions suspect are ours.
You've touched a chord with those of us of a certain age who remember well the world of which you speak. (I'm 63.) And yes, like many others, I remember "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and the soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi (don't forget that!), as a powerfully moving experience--a religious experience, one might say. I was Charlie Brown, that lonely kid oblong to coolness; but I was also Linus, the cheerer-upper who felt the spiritual message behind Christmas and knew that that scrawny little tree nobody loved could, if treated properly, give bounteously and unite the community. What distinguishes me from many here, I suspect, is that I was the product of a mixed marriage: a Jewish father, a Protestant (Dutch Reformed) mother, neither of whom were observant, but both of whom were intensely invested in the seasonal ceremonies--the tracking down of the tree at some downstate NY lot, the lashing of it to the roof, the singing of carols (well, I did more of that in K-6), Nat King Cole endlessly replayed on the record player. I never went to church or synagogue; never read the Bible of the Torah; had ethnically very Jewish but notably unobservant grandparents. I enjoyed bellowing "Merry Christmas!" when out for a walk on Christmas day. (FWIW: Christmas IS still a national holiday. They haven't yet come for it with a hatchet, although the dictates of the successor ideology may demand that at some point after the next civil war has occurred. That pesky Christ phoneme, plus something that sounds like "mass.") Wes, I'm really glad that you reminded us that Christmas's exemplar, Santa Claus, is Norse, not Biblical--but of course a snarky person might say "Nordic! Whiteness personified!" In any case, at the turn of the millennium I went through a spiritual awakening that led me to join an interfaith church in Manhattan, Interfaith Fellowship, and there, for the next two years, I found a spiritual home that knitted together the half-Jew, half-Protestant ritual-hungry secularist in a kind of New Age cocoon, one anchored in "A Course in Miracles." (Evangelists consider ACIM the devil's handiwork.) There I came to understand the unities behind the plethora of faiths in a way that really opened things up for me. Buddha, dharma, sangha. The enlighted teacher, the wisdom-teachings, the community of faith. Sensing these unities, really coming to hear and feel their truth, I found myself sad for those contemporary thinkers--and I guess Chris Hitchens falls into this category--who are wholly invested in atheism and convinced that anybody who speaks of God, especially God working in their life, is a fool. I don't talk much about God these days, and I haven't attended any sort of regular worship service in the past 18 years. I intensely dislike the way that evangelical Christianity has been coopted by the Right; but I equally intensely dislike those on the Left who sneer at those who speak of God as an active presence in their life. Reserving a little room for the mysteries is probably a good idea, considering just how large a proportion of the world's population embrace, to one degree or another, the Buddha/dharma/sangha triology, adapted to local conditions and rephrased as needed. It's not all bunk. There's a there there. The genius of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was that it expressed all three stable elements of religious faith--ALL faiths--in a winning blend of psychology and spirituality, neurosis AND recovery AND mystery, with a big star on top of the scrawny little rescue-tree. Linus, a kid with a security blanket, got to play the enlightened master, with Snoopy as the low-comic wise dunce who feels and knows pleasure; the wisdom-teachings were Christmas's perennial wisdom, as expressed by Linus at that memorable moment. And the community? Somehow, after organizing themselves around stigmatizing and abusing neurotic "old" Charlie Brown, the community of kids is brought back into line, spiritually disciplined, by Linus, and his teachings, and that lil' ol' rescue-tree, and the drama of the school stage moment in which Linus works his magic. AND you've got Vince Guarldi's hip tinkly jazz and Christmas carols. And snow. That show had it all, for many of us--and yes, the overt Christianity probably wouldn't fly these days. Hard to know.
"I should say this to situate myself among the ranks of those hostile to the ideological succession, a relativist, an all too-self-conscious nostalgist, riven by ambivalence, not too sure of oneself..."
Truly wonderful essay, could identify with so much of what you wrote.
Just a guess, but one of the great tensions in your writing/thinking may have to do with what I would call your post-metaphysical move (a relativist) combined with a simultaneous metaphysical yearning for something mores substantial (God or First Principles)--an attempt to reconcile Plato or someone like Kant with Nietzsche or Heidegger.
In total agreement on McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time", which is truly awful and a complete assault on my psyche when I hear it everywhere this time of year.
After watching the fantastic Get Back Beatles documentary, it just shows how humans are fallible, and while some may be geniuses, they can still fail.
Meanwhile I will try not to drive into on coming traffic when this song comes on.
So I’ll put the complementary part first: I, too, feel unmoored from the contemporary mores of my Liberal tribe, and enjoy your writing for assuring me that I am, in fact, not just imagining cherished liberal ideals being thrown rapidly to the wayside.
However, in the case of “de-Christianizing” Christmas, much less America, I’m not missing it (and it’s likely overstated, in any case). It has, in fact, allowed me as a Jew to be far less wary of the holiday than I was growing up, such that while we’re raising our son as Jewish in our interfaith household, we are celebrating both Chanukkah and Christmas.
I also wonder how much of my Judaism (Classical Reform) has been inflected with Christianity. Like you, I’m ambivalent about it: It’s what I grew up with, and certainly *felt* Jewish, but if lessons of Grace, for example, seeped into some of what I was taught, does that make it less authentic? Isn’t “authenticity” a sham, anyway?
I do, however, worry about the de-patriotism movement that seems to have taken hold of some on the Left (see Noah Smith’s recent work for a good critique). I was just watching *Free Speech In The Sixties*, a documentary about the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (produced in 1990, with interviews of many major players from Berkeley and the Black Panthers), and the first protest was in San Francisco in 1960 against a HUAC meeting there, and the student protesters, to demonstrate their commitment to what they believed their country could be, and must be, stood and sang *The Star-Spangled Banner*. Even Kaepernick’s kneeling to it shows a reverence that I think he himself would now disavow, and I simply cannot imagine a protest movement on the Left that would even attempt to claim it today.
A few years back I took piano lessons from a Korean woman, of an age to have children ranging from toddlerhood to early elementary. I learned from her about a performance of Handel’s Messiah at her church. The church, the First Baptist Church of Tacoma, is almost entirely populated with first-generation Koreans and their children. And it is the largest Baptist congregation in Tacoma, seating and serving hundreds. They have a full-sized concert grand piano on their stage. I sat fully absorbed, listening to the expert performance of a work by a Baroque-era German resident of England by fine Korean musicians. Yes, the children are there in the church, but I suspect that most of them will abandon it as my own children have abandoned worship attendance. The recent Korean immigrants apparently find comfort and stability in these ancient forms, but their children will prefer the nihilistic individualism offered them by the millimeter-deep but pervasive corporate/political/academic culture that will soon be swept away by the much more disciplined and determined Chinese Communist Party.
Love it, as the successor ideology deepens I feel more and more sympathy for how conservatives must have felt over the years. My only complaint is that you didn’t specifically mention the ancient Roman origin of Xmas: lo Saturnalia! Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia.
A great post. There is a long line of argument that claims faithful tradition(including but not limited to Yuletide tradition) is indeed always developing, because if a tradition lives it requires both stability and ongoing nourishment and movement to remain continuously itself, rather than being an inert thing removed from view, preserved in dark rooms at minimal temperatures, etc. Our own culture assumes tradition to be "the dead hand of the past weighing upon the living," and even if it is acknowledged rather than repudiated, it is usually recognized, as you suggest, under the now-obligatory and tedious imperatives of transgression, irony, and subversion. I'll add that celebrations of Christmas-- and some though not all of their constituent elements-- are fairly old. If you look up Eleanor Parker on Twitter (or her Patreon) she does engaging work with the Christmas season in medieval England, which is certainly different from your childhood experiences in America, but is recognizably oriented around some of the same events, ideas, and celebratory practices. By the way, if you're interested in exploring both Christian development and its relation to the Successor Ideology, Tom Holland's book Dominion is very good.
Perhaps I could suggest you, Wesley, that you read through G.K.Chesterton’s works, then Tolkien, Lewis and some metaphysical poets to round out some creative yet grounded Christian works. My three kids were raised on these authors and attended an orthodox Anglican Church. While they revolted and questioned and recalibrated much, in their thirties they all agree that neither woke ideology nor modern blather are at all meaningful.
While institutional church life, for me, has grown weaker in these past decades, to me the rearing of children requires exploring religious communal life because knowing how powerful prayer can be will transform their thinking, appreciation of culture, the arts and how beauty informs the human soul.
Only as an adult did I discover Meister Eckhart, a call to reconsider charity at its fullest.
Your article is both poignant and melancholic, yet some friends of the faith have overcome the wilderness theme you express and taught me so much. Do not despair—Job, David, Ruth and Paul faced enormous human traumas, yet persevered in their God-centered faith.
“… finding myself on the other side of the regulatory apparatus for the first time ever — regarding the proposed transformations in our world as a traducing of everything I valued — and thus aware for the first time ever of what conservatives have felt for a long time.”
Boy, this is how I have increasingly felt over the past ten years. I don’t think I’ve heard it put so cogently before. Going from being as liberal as one could imagine to, in desperation for some cultural terra firma, devouring Roger Scruton’s galvanizing “Why I Became a Conservative,” has been one of the most flabbergasting developments in my life. I HATED catholic teachings a kid and the Moral Majority even more, also having been carried by the counterculture wave of the previous decades. I couldn’t wait to see it all shed from our lives. Make the 1960s last forever, baby!
Well….. I still am not a believer -and I still like The Doors- but am stunned to 40+ years on from those experiences find myself searching for any threads of these faded Christian American traditions to stay connected to that less irresolute, integrated time you write about. At Christmas time it’s nutcrackers, old Christmas programs, traditional songs, silly things… and the rest of the time it’s reading First Things and The New Criterion as a way to pull back close a cultural raft I spent my heedless youth callowly kicking out to sea.
It all seems reactionary, but what else can we do? Honestly? We cannot abandon what we know or forget what we saw.
“God-given rights”?!!! No. Law and the mere idea of rights come from man. (As do these devices we are all using). We had religion long before we had rights. Woke might be an obnoxious religion, and late to the party. But Christianity missed the boat on slavery(use) and slaughters too numerous to discuss.
At some point, in some places.
Wesley's post resonated with me, as seems to be the case for many other commenters of a certain vintage. I am currently in my late 50s, and first had children at a late age (they are now 10 and 7). I was eager to re-live cherished Christmas rituals of my youth with my kids. One of those rituals was "Charlie Brown Christmas," which I had not seen in many years. I recalled that it delivered a heart-warming holiday message about goodwill toward man. However, when we sat down to watch it, I was frankly shocked; I had not remembered the extent and overtness of the Christian messaging. It was a perfect example of how thoroughly the times have changed, as it is difficult or perhaps impossible to imagine a children's cartoon of this type being shown on broadcast television to a wide audience today.
My upbringing did not involve any religion. Indeed, I recall discomfort when exposed to Christian ritual, such as when a friend's family said "grace" at dinner where I was a guest. And yet, with maturity I have come to appreciate that there are valuable lessons in religious teaching, even for those of us who are not believers. For example, Judeo-Christian principles (e.g., the Ten Commandments) provide a pretty decent framework for leading your life. As intelligent beings, we have the ability to pick and choose what we want to take from a set of religious teachings, from a political philosophy, etc. without adopting them in toto. It is not an all or nothing proposition. I realize now that is exactly what I did as a kid watching "Charlie Brown Christmas." I took away the message of the importance of compassion and goodwill toward my fellow man without adopting (or even remembering!) the expressed religious beliefs. As a parent, I trust that my kids can do the same, and thus we will watch "Charlie Brown Christmas" together and discuss the meaning of the messaging, its source (i.e., Christianity), and its importance to us, even as non-believers.
As other commenters have pointed out, the problem with the "de-Christianitizing" of America is that, while people are no longer exposed to as much Christian messaging, they are also not as exposed to the underlying principles, which, again, provide a useful framework for leading your life. Initially, no replacement was offered, leaving some people unmoored and adrift. The successor ideology has filled the void for some of those, leading to our current predicament. After all, the successor ideology does not exactly teach goodwill toward man.
The public sphere may be de-Christianized but there is much music that is beautiful and you don't have to believe the back story to be moved. Here's a 600 member chorus of The Messiah from the Sydney Opera House--Hallelujah at 01:54:51. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR0cEOTpYSk
We are finite creatures who spring from, and for all practical purposes dwell within, an infinity. Splitting hairs over the nature of this reality fills libraries. Some have recognized as valid within themselves, experiential moments that seem to reveal a living, conscious, intelligent transformational force that permeates both the temporal and the eternal. For them, the human relationship with this force defines history. Consequential terror and world destruction results from the violation of the defining lines of demarcation we call human morality. It is fearsome and to a some extent why we gather here and why we send checks to Mr. Yang.
It's interesting that the Star of Bethlehem is visible this Christmas for the first time in centuries. Anthropology tells us that the man creates a safe space for the woman to bring forth the future. The Nativity depicts a man, woman and child fleeing for their lives, sheltering in a stable. It also depicts wise men who recognize that the family and child are precious and in danger. They were guided to the family by a living Universe. Or, so the story goes. If the child and the family that sustains it is not worthy of honor and protection, what is? If access to the moral wisdom that enables meaningful participation with a living Universe, and recognition of the sacred within the child, and within ourselves, is denied, what is lost?
Merry Christmas.
Phew! May the force be with You, sir.
We are untethered, unmoored and the successor ideology is stupid, illogical, spurious and it’s stupidity is enforced through fear. Interesting that Christian theology is being replaced by a very shitty theology of the academic left. Such arrogance, end of history, the old lessons no longer apply. I’ll find Wesley‘s final thought the most spooky: kids today are fully indoctrinated in this stuff, unaware and ill equipped, discouraged to think for themselves, they are taught decent is a micro aggression.
Hi again, Sir RJF. "...it’s stupidity is enforced through fear." True...
I"m not ready to throw in the towel, because it's STILL possible that courage will raise the flag of Reality (with a capital "R" ;), right?
Right you are (and yes hello 👋) isn’t Wesley the best!
Yah, no DOUBT. :)
This makes me want to re-read St Augustin's Confessions.
Have you noticed that the same people deploring public celebration of Christmas tend to be the people insistent that all of us respect the cultures and traditions of the immigrant populations? These same people are ignorant of the origins of many of the Christmas traditions, e.g. Santa isn't Christian. I suppose it's fair for us to term these people "Grinchs" at least until they can ban any reference to Dr. Seuss. It can't be too long before Easter egg hunts on the public green will need to be banned. The fact that the Easter Bunny appeared nowhere in our Sunday school lessons is irrelevant. The Postmodern Calvinists won't rest until no one, any where, ever has any fun. The only traditions suspect are ours.
Sometimes, Wesley, you hit it out of the park. This is one of those times.
You've touched a chord with those of us of a certain age who remember well the world of which you speak. (I'm 63.) And yes, like many others, I remember "A Charlie Brown Christmas," and the soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi (don't forget that!), as a powerfully moving experience--a religious experience, one might say. I was Charlie Brown, that lonely kid oblong to coolness; but I was also Linus, the cheerer-upper who felt the spiritual message behind Christmas and knew that that scrawny little tree nobody loved could, if treated properly, give bounteously and unite the community. What distinguishes me from many here, I suspect, is that I was the product of a mixed marriage: a Jewish father, a Protestant (Dutch Reformed) mother, neither of whom were observant, but both of whom were intensely invested in the seasonal ceremonies--the tracking down of the tree at some downstate NY lot, the lashing of it to the roof, the singing of carols (well, I did more of that in K-6), Nat King Cole endlessly replayed on the record player. I never went to church or synagogue; never read the Bible of the Torah; had ethnically very Jewish but notably unobservant grandparents. I enjoyed bellowing "Merry Christmas!" when out for a walk on Christmas day. (FWIW: Christmas IS still a national holiday. They haven't yet come for it with a hatchet, although the dictates of the successor ideology may demand that at some point after the next civil war has occurred. That pesky Christ phoneme, plus something that sounds like "mass.") Wes, I'm really glad that you reminded us that Christmas's exemplar, Santa Claus, is Norse, not Biblical--but of course a snarky person might say "Nordic! Whiteness personified!" In any case, at the turn of the millennium I went through a spiritual awakening that led me to join an interfaith church in Manhattan, Interfaith Fellowship, and there, for the next two years, I found a spiritual home that knitted together the half-Jew, half-Protestant ritual-hungry secularist in a kind of New Age cocoon, one anchored in "A Course in Miracles." (Evangelists consider ACIM the devil's handiwork.) There I came to understand the unities behind the plethora of faiths in a way that really opened things up for me. Buddha, dharma, sangha. The enlighted teacher, the wisdom-teachings, the community of faith. Sensing these unities, really coming to hear and feel their truth, I found myself sad for those contemporary thinkers--and I guess Chris Hitchens falls into this category--who are wholly invested in atheism and convinced that anybody who speaks of God, especially God working in their life, is a fool. I don't talk much about God these days, and I haven't attended any sort of regular worship service in the past 18 years. I intensely dislike the way that evangelical Christianity has been coopted by the Right; but I equally intensely dislike those on the Left who sneer at those who speak of God as an active presence in their life. Reserving a little room for the mysteries is probably a good idea, considering just how large a proportion of the world's population embrace, to one degree or another, the Buddha/dharma/sangha triology, adapted to local conditions and rephrased as needed. It's not all bunk. There's a there there. The genius of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was that it expressed all three stable elements of religious faith--ALL faiths--in a winning blend of psychology and spirituality, neurosis AND recovery AND mystery, with a big star on top of the scrawny little rescue-tree. Linus, a kid with a security blanket, got to play the enlightened master, with Snoopy as the low-comic wise dunce who feels and knows pleasure; the wisdom-teachings were Christmas's perennial wisdom, as expressed by Linus at that memorable moment. And the community? Somehow, after organizing themselves around stigmatizing and abusing neurotic "old" Charlie Brown, the community of kids is brought back into line, spiritually disciplined, by Linus, and his teachings, and that lil' ol' rescue-tree, and the drama of the school stage moment in which Linus works his magic. AND you've got Vince Guarldi's hip tinkly jazz and Christmas carols. And snow. That show had it all, for many of us--and yes, the overt Christianity probably wouldn't fly these days. Hard to know.
"I should say this to situate myself among the ranks of those hostile to the ideological succession, a relativist, an all too-self-conscious nostalgist, riven by ambivalence, not too sure of oneself..."
Truly wonderful essay, could identify with so much of what you wrote.
Just a guess, but one of the great tensions in your writing/thinking may have to do with what I would call your post-metaphysical move (a relativist) combined with a simultaneous metaphysical yearning for something mores substantial (God or First Principles)--an attempt to reconcile Plato or someone like Kant with Nietzsche or Heidegger.
So looking forward to the rest of your series.
In total agreement on McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time", which is truly awful and a complete assault on my psyche when I hear it everywhere this time of year.
After watching the fantastic Get Back Beatles documentary, it just shows how humans are fallible, and while some may be geniuses, they can still fail.
Meanwhile I will try not to drive into on coming traffic when this song comes on.
So I’ll put the complementary part first: I, too, feel unmoored from the contemporary mores of my Liberal tribe, and enjoy your writing for assuring me that I am, in fact, not just imagining cherished liberal ideals being thrown rapidly to the wayside.
However, in the case of “de-Christianizing” Christmas, much less America, I’m not missing it (and it’s likely overstated, in any case). It has, in fact, allowed me as a Jew to be far less wary of the holiday than I was growing up, such that while we’re raising our son as Jewish in our interfaith household, we are celebrating both Chanukkah and Christmas.
I also wonder how much of my Judaism (Classical Reform) has been inflected with Christianity. Like you, I’m ambivalent about it: It’s what I grew up with, and certainly *felt* Jewish, but if lessons of Grace, for example, seeped into some of what I was taught, does that make it less authentic? Isn’t “authenticity” a sham, anyway?
I do, however, worry about the de-patriotism movement that seems to have taken hold of some on the Left (see Noah Smith’s recent work for a good critique). I was just watching *Free Speech In The Sixties*, a documentary about the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (produced in 1990, with interviews of many major players from Berkeley and the Black Panthers), and the first protest was in San Francisco in 1960 against a HUAC meeting there, and the student protesters, to demonstrate their commitment to what they believed their country could be, and must be, stood and sang *The Star-Spangled Banner*. Even Kaepernick’s kneeling to it shows a reverence that I think he himself would now disavow, and I simply cannot imagine a protest movement on the Left that would even attempt to claim it today.
A few years back I took piano lessons from a Korean woman, of an age to have children ranging from toddlerhood to early elementary. I learned from her about a performance of Handel’s Messiah at her church. The church, the First Baptist Church of Tacoma, is almost entirely populated with first-generation Koreans and their children. And it is the largest Baptist congregation in Tacoma, seating and serving hundreds. They have a full-sized concert grand piano on their stage. I sat fully absorbed, listening to the expert performance of a work by a Baroque-era German resident of England by fine Korean musicians. Yes, the children are there in the church, but I suspect that most of them will abandon it as my own children have abandoned worship attendance. The recent Korean immigrants apparently find comfort and stability in these ancient forms, but their children will prefer the nihilistic individualism offered them by the millimeter-deep but pervasive corporate/political/academic culture that will soon be swept away by the much more disciplined and determined Chinese Communist Party.
Love it, as the successor ideology deepens I feel more and more sympathy for how conservatives must have felt over the years. My only complaint is that you didn’t specifically mention the ancient Roman origin of Xmas: lo Saturnalia! Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia.
A great post. There is a long line of argument that claims faithful tradition(including but not limited to Yuletide tradition) is indeed always developing, because if a tradition lives it requires both stability and ongoing nourishment and movement to remain continuously itself, rather than being an inert thing removed from view, preserved in dark rooms at minimal temperatures, etc. Our own culture assumes tradition to be "the dead hand of the past weighing upon the living," and even if it is acknowledged rather than repudiated, it is usually recognized, as you suggest, under the now-obligatory and tedious imperatives of transgression, irony, and subversion. I'll add that celebrations of Christmas-- and some though not all of their constituent elements-- are fairly old. If you look up Eleanor Parker on Twitter (or her Patreon) she does engaging work with the Christmas season in medieval England, which is certainly different from your childhood experiences in America, but is recognizably oriented around some of the same events, ideas, and celebratory practices. By the way, if you're interested in exploring both Christian development and its relation to the Successor Ideology, Tom Holland's book Dominion is very good.
Perhaps I could suggest you, Wesley, that you read through G.K.Chesterton’s works, then Tolkien, Lewis and some metaphysical poets to round out some creative yet grounded Christian works. My three kids were raised on these authors and attended an orthodox Anglican Church. While they revolted and questioned and recalibrated much, in their thirties they all agree that neither woke ideology nor modern blather are at all meaningful.
While institutional church life, for me, has grown weaker in these past decades, to me the rearing of children requires exploring religious communal life because knowing how powerful prayer can be will transform their thinking, appreciation of culture, the arts and how beauty informs the human soul.
Only as an adult did I discover Meister Eckhart, a call to reconsider charity at its fullest.
Your article is both poignant and melancholic, yet some friends of the faith have overcome the wilderness theme you express and taught me so much. Do not despair—Job, David, Ruth and Paul faced enormous human traumas, yet persevered in their God-centered faith.