It’s that sea­son again, the time when unpro­grammed Friends talk about Christ­mas. Click Ric has post­ed about the seem­ing incon­gruity of his meet­ing’s Christ­mas tree and LizOpp has reprint­ed a still-timely let­ter from about five years ago about the meet­ing’s chil­dren Christ­mas pageant.

Friends tra­di­tion­al­ly have lumped Christ­mas in with all of the oth­er rit­u­al­is­tic boo-ha that main­stream Chris­tians prac­tice. These are out­ward ele­ments that should be aban­doned now that we know Christ has come to teach the peo­ple him­self and is present and avail­able to all of us at all times. Out­ward bap­tism, com­mu­nion, planned ser­mons, paid min­is­ters, Christ­mas and East­er: all dis­trac­tions from true Chris­t­ian reli­gion, from prim­i­tive Chri­tian­i­ty revived.

One con­fu­sion that aris­es in lib­er­al meet­ings this time of year is that it’s assumed it’s the Chris­t­ian Friends who want the Christ­mas tree. Argu­ments some­time break out with “hyphen­at­ed” Friends who feel uncom­fort­able with the tree: folks who con­sid­er them­selves Friends but also Pagan, Non­the­is­tic, or Jew­ish and won­der why they’re hav­ing Chris­tian­i­ty forced on them. But those of us who fol­low what we might call the “Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion as under­stood by Friends” should be just as put out by a Christ­mas tree and par­ty. We know that sym­bol­ic rit­u­als like these spark dis­uni­ty and dis­tract us from the real pur­pose of our com­mu­ni­ty: befriend­ing Christ and lis­ten­ing for His guidance.

I was shocked and star­tled when I first learned that Quak­er schools used to meet on Christ­mas day. My first response was “oh come on, that’s tak­ing it all too far.” But it kept bug­ging me and I kept try­ing to under­stand it. This was one of the pieces that helped me under­stand the Quak­er way bet­ter and I final­ly grew to under­stand the ratio­nale. If Friends were more con­sis­tent with more-or-less sym­bol­ic stuff like Christ­mas, it would be eas­i­er to teach Quakerism.

I don’t mind Christ­mas trees, per se. I have one in my liv­ing room. In my extend­ed fam­i­ly Christ­mas has served as one of the manda­to­ry times of year we all have to show up togeth­er for din­ner. It’s nev­er been very reli­gious, so I nev­er felt I need­ed to stop the prac­tice when I became involved with Friends. But as a Friend I’m care­ful not to pre­tend that the con­sumerism and social rit­u­als have much to do with Christ. Christ­mas trees are pret­ty. The lights make me feel good in the dol­drums of mid-winter. That’s rea­son enough to put one up.

Unpro­grammed lib­er­al Friends could use the ten­sions between tra­di­tion­al Quak­er­ly sto­icism and main­stream Chris­t­ian nos­tal­gia as a teach­ing moment, and we could use dis­com­fort around the rit­u­al of Christ­mas as a point of uni­ty and dia­log with Pagan, Jew­ish and Non-theistic Friends. Chris­t­ian Friends are always hav­ing to explain how we’re not the kind of Chris­tians oth­ers assume we are (oth­ers both with­in and out­side the Soci­ety). Being prin­ci­pled about Christ­mas is one way of show­ing that dif­fer­ence. Peo­ple will sure­ly say “oh come on,” but so what? A lot of spir­i­tu­al seek­ers are crit­i­cal of the kind of crazy com­mer­cial spend­ing sprees that marked Christ­mases past and I don’t see why a group say­ing Christ­mas isn’t about Christ would be at a par­tic­u­lar dis­ad­van­tage dur­ing this first Christ­mas sea­son of the next Great Depression.

I’ve been talk­ing about lib­er­al unpro­grammed Friends. For the record, I under­stand Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions among “pas­toral” and/or “pro­grammed” Friends. They’ve made a con­scious deci­sion to adopt a more main­stream Chris­t­ian approach to reli­gious edu­ca­tion and min­istry. That’s fine. It’s not the kind of Quak­er I prac­tice, but they’re open about their approach and Christ­mas makes sense in that context.

When­ev­er I post this kind of stuff on my blog I get com­ments how I’m being too Scroogey. Well I guess I am. Bah Hum­bug. Hon­est­ly though, I’ve always like Quak­er Christ­mas par­ties. They’re a way of mix­ing things up, a way of com­ing togeth­er as a com­mu­ni­ty in a warmer way that we usu­al­ly do. Peo­ple stop con­fab­bing about com­mit­tee ques­tions and actu­al­ly enjoy one anoth­er’s com­pa­ny. One time I asked my meet­ing to call it the Day the World Calls Christ­mas Par­ty, which I thought was kind of clever (every­one else sure­ly thought “there goes Mar­tin again”). The joy of real com­mu­ni­ty that is filled once a year at our Christ­mas par­ties might be symp­tom of a hunger to be a dif­fer­ent kind of com­mu­ni­ty every week, even every day.