by: Marceline Donaldson
We have been raised with Christmas and all the trappings. The Christmas decorations in the department stores; the characters who make up the story like Santa Claus, Jesus, the reindeer including Rudolph and so many more.
As you grow into adulthood, one of the first things that happens is a questioning of all of the stories of a child’s Christmas beliefs.
I used to love going to bed on Christmas Eve with much anticipation of waking up the next day with every wish fulfilled and a Christmas tree with every toy I ever wanted under the tree.
As an adult, however, I have questioned it all.
The only thing left is Jesus, Mary and Joseph surrounded by the Shepherds, the Wise Men and the animals around this baby in a manger. Today I realize all that surrounds the “Holy Family” is romanticized because Jesus, Mary and Joseph were homeless but for whoever let them stay in the barn. We portray this as a wonderful scene all warm and cozy and beautiful. In reality?
Christianity came into being in the Near East. It came into this world through Judaism. These were and are very un-American type religions. But Christianity, in particular, spread across the world and particularly across these United States. Something had to be done or capitalism as it developed , arm in arm with slavery and later with the Industrial Revolution would be jeopardized as it pulled together that underbelly group of people who were always at risk of losing their jobs and who always lived on the edge because that is what capitalism requires to control inflation and to grow again quickly when the warning signs are gone – people, lots of them, grateful for a job alternating with the misery of being out of a job and how will we eat! Christianity morphed as it grew in these United States and a structure was superimposed on the religion which put it under the control of Santa Claus and his henchmen.
That was a religion in which one could believe and not have it interfere with ones day to day necessities of living. Jesus, Mary and Joseph would not interfere with the growing influence of the great white father – the huge, older white gentleman with flowing white hair, a happy demeanor, who took care of all those who were “good” and Santa and his helpers defined what it meant to be good. He was not the great spirit talked about in Scripture and Christianity, but enough like him that we could live with this religion and it would do our bidding. This religion with the Santa Claus structure built around it to tame it would maintain the world’s sexism, its racism, define its ethics and we would not have to deal with the values, ethics and more of Jesus. Santa Claus flying through the air in a huge sleigh full of goodies for those who followed what he laid down under the guise of partnering with Jesus over Christmas and the birth of this God made man. Santa would be the one left standing when Jesus had been emasculated and put in “his” place. Something had to be done as Christianity spread so this Santa Claus developed to maintain “white” culture and values and everything else which Jesus and his crowd threatened.
I remember stories and pictures, especially from Texas of German prisoners of war being brought to the United States, during Hitler’s time, and put into the prisons constructed to hold them. What most of us don’t want to remember are the stories which circulated and which were well documented about U. S. citizens who went to the German prisons on Sundays to ‘check out” a prisoner and take them to dinner at a lovely restaurant. In Texas most of the stories were about these dinners in the restaurants where black GI’s could partake of the food, but had to do so by going around to the back door of the restaurant – placing an order – paying the same amount for their food as those who were inside seated at tables with their German prisoner of war guests – but who had to eat their dinners in the back yard of the restaurants or take their food someplace else because they were welcomed on the battle fields in Europe and other places, but not in the restaurants and such other places in these United States where the Nazi Germans could go.
And so enters Christmas and Jesus and that entire story.
As I grew older I began to understand a lot more. With family who were clergy and/or totally devoted to the Christian Church – Episcopalians, AME, Congregationalists, Catholics – I began to look around and realized the spiritual world in which we were living was totally skewered. We in these United States had created an identity of being “better than.” Better than anyone – blacks, jews, latinas, LGBTQ people, people from other countries we did not consider culturally equal to, but less than ours. We have paid high prices to maintain that identity. One has to be constantly at war to maintain such – peace is not an option.
Those “better than” were recently threatened with the possibility that maybe we were all equal and these United States went crazy. Most recently 74 million citizens stepped up to the plate to say they were irretrievably better than and would vote for whoever guaranteed they would maintain that fiction for us all. As it was at the time of Jesus’ birth, so it is today.
This Middle Eastern religion – this Christianity as it grew and spread broke into two parts. Many denominations, but two major groups. One group spread throughout the European countries into the United States and South America. The other spread along with it into the same countries, but the theologies differed. The teachings changed. The belief system of the two groups were so widely different I didn’t understand how they could all fly under the same banner of “Christianity.”
We lived and live in a very racist, sexist, bigoted world. A religion like Christianity could have changed all of that. Instead, we changed the religion.
We took the theology and superimposed on that simple religion, on the faith and belief system which Jesus brought – the religion in which today we claim to believe and have ordered our lives around. A religion with a set of beliefs which maintained and helped grow the structures of capitalism and slavery which walked hand in hand. Later on as slavery gave way to Jim Crow – and even later as Jim Crow gave way to the sophisticated bigoted structures under which we now live we still espoused this “sort of” Christianity suffering under the institutional structure we superimposed on it for reasons of control. These institutions were constantly structured and re-structured to hide the truth of who we are and in what we believe and the world we have created. It has a picture it puts out to help us maintain the belief that it is all good.
We live in a sexist/racist/anti-immigrant society – in these United States, extremely so. To make that palatable and a structure with which we have made peace we created Santa Claus – a very large, older white Northern European-ancestry male who overcame God and Jesus. Santa Claus dressed in the red of joy, living comfortably in the most inhospitable of climates with amazing powers. A man – a superman who every year gave gifts to the world, but only to those who in the world adhered to the rules he put down for this society. The United States created Santa Claus, his sleigh and reindeer who flew around the world delivering gifts to the “good little boys and girls” and bad things into the stockings of those who did not behave properly.
The idea of this huge white man who had access to every home in the world was scary to many, but we kept our peace because to say such things about Santa Claus was unacceptable. He could enter your house at will whether you wanted him to or not and indeed this Santa Claus went into every home on Christmas Eve to deliver “gifts”. In the mythology you had no way to keep him out nor would you want to.
Take away what the marketers and advertising people have given to Santa to make him acceptable and you are left with a very autocratic, ugly, and pushy man who didn’t make it into many homes because they were not “good” enough or supposedly left sack cloth and ashes in those who didn’t fit Santa’s mold for “goodness.” Nothing was ever said about what Santa did to the homeless, but it was not good because they received nothing. They didn’t have the beautiful stockings to put up to receive Santa Claus’ largesse.
Growing up there was always the shock between Jesus, Mary and Joseph and God’s promises and the reality of what we turned Christmas into. Going to the Churches as a child growing into adulthood it was the same across the United States. Some Churches were for whites only. Some Churches allowed non-whites to come in, but you had to sit in the designated spots in the back of the Church and there was the requisite sign which indicated “For Colored Patrons Only”. Some Churches – especially in the north didn’t have the signs and you could enter and worship, but in the balcony and you had an etiquette about how and when you entered and what you did and how you acted. Always in a very subservient way so you could be assured of being welcomed back.
And – that was not generations ago. Coming to Cambridge, MA. Christ Episcopal Church in Harvard Square with its then rector the Rev. Murray Kenney referred to his “plantation” and there were blacks very proud to be members of Christ Church who saw nothing wrong with being able to attend only if they sat in the balcony and did not interact with those whites who were real members of the church. A pattern practiced across the north.
Today, we have that same separation.
Years ago, I had friends – Mary and James Tillman. They had “sensitivity” sessions on racism for corporations and churches. If you were a member of the Southern Baptist Church back in the 1960’s or 1970’s or there-about and you were elected to a national office in the Church you could not serve in that office until you had been through the Tillman’s course and they said you were ready to serve in the Church because your racism would not handicap your service.
Their sessions were amazing. I went to a few – in spite of the fact that they generally did not allow blacks to attend. They couldn’t because most blacks would defend whites showing their racism and block Mary and Jim from moving to help that person deal with and understand their racism. It was tough and the sessions put you through much to get you to face and deal with your racism. All done in the context of Christianity.
Problem is – Santa Claus and his henchmen intervened and after that incredible and incredibly brief period of time the Souther Baptists reached the point of not allowing women to be ordained – who prior to that could be ordained – and moving Blacks into those spaces of oppression which they could not fight against without being moved out of the Church. That has changed a bit today, but the blacks so moved into leadership positions still are surrounded by the wisps of smoke which come from the racism/self-hatred/self-negation they have to practice to stay in their positions.
Sort of reflective of what happened in these United States when Barack Obama was elected president and we looked forward to moving into a time of wonderful equality, justice and God’s peace only to have the rude awakening of Donald Trump whose racism would have made him comfortable around Hitler and Santa Claus. As President Obama was replaced by President Trump who, while claiming the office of president actually acted more like a foreign agent of Russia – a country in which most of the people, especially those at the top, were white.
So where do we go now with all of this. How do we walk in the sunshine again without the shame our history could dump on us?
I have no answers – make no proposals – have spent a lifetime fighting for justice and trying to live as an equal amongst equals and have not been very successful at it.
This last bout, that Robert and I suffered was enough to make us realize the extreme racism in these United States is alive and well and will overtake anyone at anytime and feel justified in the act. We spent our lives trying to bring about justice – trying to help people see the beauty of truth and how it most helps you live a great life – how much better it is to be equal than better than or less than and opt out of responsibilities which face others.
We made many sacrifices for our children so they would not have to experience what we have had to endure. When we stepped back we saw that we simply did for them what our parents did for us – a life of sacrifice which produced less than nothing and we and they still had to go through horrors. A lifestyle generations before us practiced without realizing the hopelessness of such sacrifices.
As young people working hard to acquire an education and all the other accouterments this society claims are necessary we were sure footed and thought we knew the answers. Today, we are just as sure we don’t have the answers and those we put out there were only given to us to insure our blindness and deafness and that we would not impede the growth of the white culture of Santa Claus violating Jesus and all the teachings of Christianity.
