Girl Detective

As my grandmother does not hesitate to remind me, I am overeducated. I minored in religion in college, then later went back to school to get my master’s degree in religious studies. I learned many things, among them that I did not want to convert to Judaism after all. I am abashed to admit that after all the classes and studying and pondering and soul searching, the biggest take-away I had was this: organized religion bugs me.

To all of you who realized this without grad school, I say, “Well done.”

As this realization crystallized, I stopped attending religious services, except when there was a good reason to do so, like visiting family for the holidays. While there are many people who like to attend church only on Christmas and Easter, I find the holiday services even harder to sit through than that of an average Sunday. The sermons have a more sunny, populist bent as the celebrant plays to the crowd. While the liturgy and the hymns are familiar and soothe my need for repetitious ritual, the telling of the Christmas story grated more on me each time I heard it. Here is a good sample of words from the Christmas story: He, he, he, father, son, virgin, he, he, he. Nowhere in the Christmas story was there a place for me; hearing it alienated me even further. I remained annoyed until this year, when I recalled a few other words from the Christmas story: mother and child.

I am now able to very physically relate to the story. Mary, great with child, had to ride a donkey to Bethlehem for the census, then gave birth in a stable. I wouldn’t wish those things on anyone, much less a woman near her due date. The thought of giving birth in a stable, with only her husband for company, who certainly had not attended any birthing classes, is a sobering one. Was her labor long? How did she handle the pain? Was she afraid that she might die? Was Joseph helpful, or did he go outside and smoke till it was over?

This year, I chose to attend a church service because I wanted to. I did not, though, attend a conventional one. Instead, I chose one with a labyrinth walk, during which the celebrant read passages from The Message, a paraphrased version of the Bible, and a small group of musician’s played a selection of Christmas music. It had been over a year since I last walked a labyrinth, and I had missed it a lot. I found the paraphrase of the Christmas story mostly unoffensive, but aggravating in a few parts. I am aware that listening to a familiar story in unfamiliar words can allow listeners to really engage with it once again, but this technique in this instance did not work for me. My fingers twitched as I longed to shout out, “No, it’s ‘Be not afraid!’ you idiot!” Instead, I held my tongue. I did laugh aloud, though, during “Away in a Manger,” at this line: “The cattle are lowing, the poor baby wakes; But little lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” That, I thought, is how you know the story is mythologized.

It is mythologized. Jesus wasn’t born in December near the winter solstice. His birth, which can be established through historical records based on both when that census actually took place and the position of the star, probably happened in April, closer to Easter. But setting up religions and myths is hard work. Jesus’ birthday was grafted onto that of Mithras, another sun god. Likewise, his death probably did not take place in the spring–its memorial was merged into the spring equinox of birth, fertility and renewal; those bunnies and eggs are not just cute icons from Hallmark.

The Christmas story, then, is not completely “true”. But lots of stories aren’t technically true, yet they still have value. A novel isn’t true. Neither is the book of Esther, and everyone knew it and included it in the bible anyway–the “proper” bible, too, not even the apocrypha! I found something new in the Christmas story this year. I still got aggravated at points during the service I attended. But I also found things of worth–the meditation of the walk, the rhythms of the music, even the story, though I didn’t like the words with which it was told. I continue to wrestle with what I believe, but the struggle and its details have shifted over time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 26th, 2004 at 2:00 pm and is filed under General, Weird Things That Bother Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.