Christmas 2019
In 1942, the Hollywood musical Holiday Inn premiered, featuring two of the biggest stars of the time, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Everyone who was involved with the movie thought that its song “Be Careful, That’s My Heart” would be the big musical moment. How many of us remember that song? It was released as a single and did well. But it was the second single from the movie, released that fall, that would become its best-known moment. A song that everyone making the movie liked but that no one thought of as very special.
White Christmas.
The song became a huge hit. The Guinness Book of World Records considers it the best-selling single of all time. Even now, many of us in northern climes feel somehow cheated if our Christmas isn’t white. Once, when Bing Crosby was asked to name the hardest thing he ever did, he replied that it was singing “White Christmas” in December 1944 at a USO show in France, before tens of thousands of weeping GIs, without breaking down himself. Some of those GIs would soon die in the Battle of the Bulge.
Why were the GIs so moved? Why did “White Christmas” defy all expectations and become such a landmark song?
1942. This nation was in World War II. There was the growing realization that Christmases are not always merry and bright, let alone white. That Christmas would be one of great anxiety for many, many people. Thus, the great appeal of a song that offered a dream: let’s dream of a White Christmas, just like the ones we used to know. The dream seemed consoling, and so much better than the painful reality.
Unfortunately, the GIs and families back home in 1942 were not – and are not – the only people who struggle this season. Christmas is not always merry or bright for many even now. Some people are troubled by world events, or political controversies, or other problems in our society. Others have troubles that cut much closer to home: health issues, strained relationships, financial challenges, family members afflicted by dangerous addictions. Our Church is also troubled by scandal and division.
We cannot bear such tension and pressure indefinitely. We need ways to cope. We need to give ourselves breaks. We need humor to reduce the stress, if only for a moment. Yet, as the anxieties and difficulties continue, we may need other remedies. We may seek medical help. We may seek self-medication, which may lead to more serious addictions. We may also seek the help of dreams.
How can dreams help? Or can they help? Are they not an escape from reality?
I am speaking here not of dreams we have in sleep, but dreams we turn to while awake. We can name two kinds of dreams. One kind we can call fantasies. Fantasies are, for the most part, escapes from reality, retreats into a world of our own making. Some fantasies are quite innocent – imagining oneself, for a moment, scoring the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl, or being a famous recording artist. Others can be more deceiving and more sinister, leading us into a world totally cut off from reality, where other people are threats or merely bodies to be used. Such dreams will not help us at all. They will only pull us into anger, bitterness, narcissism, or despair.
There is another kind of dream – the kind that thrusts us back into reality with renewed energy and purpose. One example of this is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech, given in Washington, DC, in 1963. It was a dream where people of every race, religion, and other background could overcome their differences, treat each other with justice and love, and form one great community. He himself would die for this dream. Nevertheless, this dream motivated – and still motivates – many, many people as they seek to bring it about. We can still see the speech on YouTube. It continues to move hearts as it speaks the truth of who we really are and reveals to us how far we are from that reality, even now.
On Christmas, we are invited to consider another dream. This is not a fantasy that takes us out of the world, but a dream that thrusts us back into the world with renewed purpose, vigor, enthusiasm and love. It is the dream symbolized by the baby Jesus in our Nativity sets. It is the symbol, so to speak, of God’s dream for us. It is the Incarnation.
Standing or kneeling before the manger, we witness something so good, so far beyond our human hopes, that one Muslim said he could not become a Christian because it seemed too good to be true. In the Christ Child, God has taken on our flesh. The age-old division between humanity and God is being healed. In Christ, God and humanity are one again.
There is more. In the Incarnation, humanity is revealed as one. There is one Body of Christ. We who now belong to the Church are the ones who have accepted this Good News so far. We are all one in Christ. Every one of us has a place in the Body. Every one has a role. Every one, no matter how “useful’ or “useless” he or she may seem to the world, is a child of God, with infinite value. We cannot say to the poor, the immigrant, the blind, the child with Down’s Syndrome, the autistic person, or anyone else, “I do not need you”. Nor can any of them say that because they are not like the rest, they do not belong to the Body. They belong because Christ Himself has grafted them in. Christ Himself has warned us that what we do to the least of His brothers and sisters, we do to Him. All this, and more, flows from the gift of the Incarnation. All this, and more, flows from this dream that God has given us.
But there is more. Much more. Most human dreams end in bitter disappointment. But not this one, no matter what may happen to any of us along the way. How can this be? The final achievement of this dream belongs to Christ, not to us. He is the One who builds His Church. He is the one whose Spirit inflames the hearts of His dreamers, empowering them to be beacons of a better world and to help to bring it about, again with Christ’s own power working through them. Each one of us will succeed at times, and fail at times. But the Dream lives on. It lives because Christ lives, Christ who is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
Come, then, to the manger. Come and see God’s dream for us all, in the flesh of an infant. Come and be inspired and renewed once again, so that, filled with the Spirit of Christ, you and I and all of us can bear witness to a Dream that none of us can create by ourselves, but which is nevertheless happening all around us. Filled with the Spirit of Christ, we do not need snow for Christmas! Every day will be merry – and bright!!