Friday, December 24, 2021

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXIII - Yule Edition

Let's interrupt our march through my cult years with a side visit to The Way's views on Christmas. It may surprise some people that there are Christian denominations that do not celebrate Christmas. In the early days of European settlement in North America Christmas celebrations were actually banned in some of the colonies. The Puritans in particular had problems with the way Christmas was celebrated. Their objections were manifold. On one hand they viewed Christmas as a distinctly Papist, i.e. Catholic celebration. This was in the era of religious wars between Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and the Puritans were if anything ultra-Protestant. The other part of their resistance was how English Christmas traditions, especially among the working classes, had become a day off from work and dominated by fun and games. And drinking. A lot of drinking. It took a long time for the Christmas observances of non-English immigrants to infiltrate their way into American ways of celebrating Christmas; but even today, there are groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses who do not observe any special days. 

The Way, at least during my involvement, talking a good game in regards to following the dictates of the Bible, but in practice found ways around their supposed standards. Christmas observance was no exception. 

It's no surprise to most people that the Bible does not give a date for Jesus' birth. It doesn't give a year either. Part of this can be attributed to the lack of a common calendar. The current A.D. numbering system was devised in what we now call 525 A.D., when Dionysius Exiguus came up with a numbering system independent of the regnal years of reigning monarchs. He calculated (although we aren't sure what he based his calculation on) that A.D. 1 was the first full year following the birth of Jesus, putting Jesus' birth in what we now call 1 B.C. (there is no Year "0"). There's also a lot of theories regarding what time of year Jesus was born, ranging from the Spring to mid September, but none are definitive. The December date that was associated with Saturnalia and the birth of "The Unconquered Sun" eventually became the accepted consensus date. 

Not satisfied with the position that we don't know the actual date or year of Jesus' birth, Victor Wierwille, the leader of The Way, set out to prove that the Bible really does give us that information, and that you can discover it with some Biblical research and a little astronomy. In 1981 he published Jesus Christ Our Promised Seed which claimed to narrow down the time to a 90-minute window on September 11, 3 B.C.!

In the late 1800's a Church of England minister, E.W. Bullinger, wrote a book titled Witness of the Stars. The premise was that the constellations told a story - the story of the Bible, and that interpreted properly, you could trace the prophecies of the coming messiah throughout the zodiac. His reasoning behind this was quite convoluted and somewhat technical, if not completely opaque and inaccessible to the layman, but Wierwille latched on to it and added his own theories. Wierwille made the assumption that the Magi of the gospels (nowhere are they called kings by the way) were the successors of the wise men of the court of Babylon who answered to the prophet (and lions' den guy) Daniel, which was why they thought a "star" heralded the birth of a king of a backwater province of a foreign power. This made sense, sort of, but like so much of Wierwille's "research", he took what was a reasonable assumption and promoted it as fact. So what did he think the Magi were looking for? Certainly not a laser beam from heaven spotlighting the manger. No, based on the constellation Leo the Lion representing the Tribe of Judah, Wierwille looked for astronomical events that would have been visible in Roman Judea during the time period between when he calculated Herod came to power and his death (which was based on calculations that disagreed with virtually all those who studied that time period). I don't recall the details, but he came up with something and tied it in with the completely unrelated verses in Revelation 12 about a woman "clothed with the sun, with stars in her hair and the moon at her feet" to indicate when the constellation Virgo was visible between sunset and moonrise using astronomical software and came up with the incredibly specific time frame that if I remember correctly was an 81 minute (my memory is a bit fuzzy on the actual time frame) time span the evening of September 11, 3 B.C. It was assumption built upon assumption based on a crazy theory, but it was wrapped up in a blue book cover and presented as undisputed fact. "Teachings" featuring the claims from this book were highlighted every December, with all of us faithful Waybots telling ourselves how superior we were to regular Christians because we knew this completely irrelevant and worthless information. We were also pretty fond of changing the words of Christmas Carols to make them more "accurate" and telling everyone who stood still for a half minute that angels don't have wings. 

Even before this book came out, The Way had a split personality when it came to Christmas. On one hand they preached that we weren't to be observers of days and seasons (like Christmas) but on the other hand we did observe most of the cultural and secular aspects of Christmas. Somehow The Way's leaders thought that simply changing the name made it all okay, hence the Wayism: Household Holiday. (I'm not going to get into it in detail here, but The Way made a distinction between the family of God and the household of God, with the household being the more exclusive, special and blessed). Even assuming that The Way was God's "household", what made December 25th a "household holiday"? No one ever had a good answer. What annoyed me personally though was how "Household Holiday" became "Ho Ho" and we would wish each other "Happy Ho Ho". Way employees, and those in their Way Corps training program, were given some time off during the "Household Holidays" in order to temporarily "relocate" off campus to visit family or friends (you know, just like people who did celebrate Christmas) - which was called (of course) "Ho Ho Relo". Yikes. 

Throughout my involvement in The Way I observed Christmas just like any other secular American. I had a tree, I put up decorations, I sent out cards, exchanged gifts, but I also engaged in smug superiority over all those poor, ignorant Christians who just didn't understand the "true meaning of Christmas". 

Start from the beginning

Part XVIV

Thursday, December 23, 2021

Christmas: Then and Now

We always celebrated Christmas when I was a boy. To be honest, a lot of the details are kind of hazy, but if memory serves we would either have one of the grandmothers over, or we'd go over there - I'm sure there was some kind of schedule involved that I didn't have to be concerned about. My parents were religious, and back in those days so was I, so attending Mass on Christmas morning was always part of the holiday ritual. One Christmas memory that is very clear involves a visit from Santa Claus. I don't remember how old I was, but I was in that transitionary time when I hadn't given up believing in Santa Claus yet, but was developing some skepticism. My brothers and I were already in bed on Christmas Eve when my parents opened the bedroom door, turned on the lights and came in...accompanied by Santa Claus. I'm sure that this extended the duration of my belief, but to this day my mother has not revealed which neighbor or friend had donned the Santa suit to visit us kids. 

As a young adult I was involved in a group that had some non-mainstream and often contradictory beliefs about Christmas and how to observe it, if at all. There's a verse in the Bible which tells Christians to not be observers of times or seasons, so this group told us that we shouldn't be celebrating Christmas (or any other holiday), but they did anyway, changing the name, but putting up Christmas trees and exchanging gifts, while pretending that they weren't celebrating Christmas. The leader of the group had also published a book wherein he claimed to have calculated the birth of Jesus down to an around 90 minute window on September 11, 3BC. So, not only were we supposedly not supposed to observe Christmas, but Jesus wasn't even born in December according to them. It made for a lot of confusion, but mainly they just gave lip service to the "not observing" and observed anyway. It was around this time that I moved to Nebraska, away from my family and ceased to be involved in family Christmas gatherings. 

After getting married and starting a family I wasn't so involved with my former group, and celebrated Christmas in a more or less traditional manner, although on a small scale. My income was pretty small, so we couldn't afford anything lavish, but we always had a tree and gifts, assisted by my parents who always sent a box with small presents and a check to purchase other stuff. But since we weren't involved in any church and my only family were my in-laws who were very unsociable, I really missed the big family gatherings of my childhood. After being married around 10 years we got back involved in my former religious group. We sometimes did group things - one year we got a few hotel rooms on Christmas Eve and hosted a pool party for our local home Bible fellowship. My kids were also, after hearing Adam Sandler's Chanukah song, became curious about that holiday. Having grown up in New York around many Jewish families, I knew what Chanukah was and for a few years we celebrated, in addition to Christmas, the Festival of Lights. We also had a Christmas ornament tradition for many years. One year, after one of my children complained that our tree had no star, I cut out a photo of Bob Dylan and put it atop the tree. Every year we had a different "star". 

Things changed quite a bit in 2001 when my wife and I separated and then divorced. She had convinced most of my children that I was a bad guy and pressured them to not spend time with me. I spent Christmas 2001 friendless and alone, living in a dingy apartment that I called "The Hovel". On Christmas Eve, after closing the store where I worked, I went back to my apartment, ate dinner and got drunk on eggnog spiked with Jack Daniels. At midnight I went to the nearby Catholic Church where the highlight of the evening was me enthusiastically hugging people who I didn't know at "the sign of peace". On Christmas Day, as I took an afternoon walk, I discovered that movie theaters were open on Christmas Day and I stopped in for a viewing of The Fellowship of the Ring which had just come out. For the next several years that was my Christmas ritual: close the store on Christmas Eve, go to a movie and eat dinner at a buffet on Christmas Day. After a few years I met my second wife, Susie, and we continued the tradition, spending time with Susie's daughter Sami on Christmas Eve. 

This tradition lasted for a few years until, one by one, my children saw through their mother's propaganda and started spending time with me again. We started inviting all the kids over on Christmas Eve and continued our movie and buffet tradition on Christmas Day. Most years we put up a tree and outdoor lights and sent out cards. I was so excited to have my kids as part of my life again, and having put my former religious group behind me, I was also excited to be able to reanimate the family-oriented Christmases that I membered from my childhood. This also lasted a few years, but began to peter out as marriages and jobs and different interests began to interfere. I became a bit jaded about the planning and work I'd put into a family gathering only to have several no-shows. Probably the last Christmas Eve gathering was 2018. We had left town for Thanksgiving, and had a small open house on Christmas Eve. The year before, 2017 we drove to New York to spend Christmas with my mother (whose birthday is Christmas) and siblings. For Christmas 2019 we got together for a movie on Christmas Day with some snacks afterward. The pandemic pretty much killed off any Christmas gatherings - I think the momentum is gone. 

Now, as the second Covid Christmas is almost upon us, I reflect on my expectations for the holiday. The local family just doesn't seem interested in doing anything for Christmas. So we're not. I still put up Christmas decorations (no tree), watch Christmas movies and listen to jazz, blues and rock versions of Christmas songs, but we're not even attempting to organize a family Christmas. And that's okay. I've gotten comfortable with not beating myself up over not conforming to societal expectations for the holiday, and accepting that the warm and fuzzy memories of Christmases past don't necessarily paste onto the present. 

This doesn't mean that I'm sad about it. Quite the opposite. I'm happy and thankful that I am in regular contact with family, both local and far-flung, and that we all can do what makes us happy on the holidays and any other day.

Happy Hogswatch!