Rebel that I am, I still love Christmas
Anybody who’s read my book, Catholic Women Confront Their Church, or my commentary in Salon.com and NBCNews.com THINK knows that I’ve been very critical of the Catholic hierarchy, and its relentless focus on the wrong things, its misogyny, its instinct to protect its own. Well, I could go on and on.
But I’m soft on Christmas. It’s such a human story. God decides to become human in a remote country, in the backwoods of the backwoods of the outer reaches of the Roman Empire.
Mary and Joseph were nobodies. They certainly must have been Jewish, but they weren’t extraordinarily close to the religious authorities. When an angel appeared to Mary, and asked her to be the mother of the Messiah, she didn’t respond, “Wait, let me consult with my rabbi.” She just went for it.
And as if she’d been wanting to speak her mind for a long time, she predicted what a merciful God could do — feed the hungry, send the rich away empty, knock the tyrants off their thrones, among other things. She was all in for equity long before income inequality became a thing. (That’s why I believe the gospels were divinely inspired; what man of that era would have given Mary those words to speak?)
And when Joseph had his dream informing him that Mary was still a virgin because her pregnancy was the work of the Holy Spirit, and she was going to give birth to the savior of the world, he didn’t go running to the temple for a consultation. He just accepted the dream was telling him something important. Perhaps he was so in love with Mary by then, he was willing to believe anything.
I believe that they traveled to Bethlehem for the census, and were turned away at the inn. They were an unhoused couple expecting a baby. What isn’t real about that? In this country, it happens every day, much to our shame.
Seeking kindness in a strange city, and not finding any, they gave birth to kindness, and hope, and a radical rethinking of the importance of wealth and power.
But during the course of each year, we forget all those lessons. So, each December, the drama gets repeated one more time. In the hope that someday what the nativity teaches will finally sink in.
