‘Tis the Season

The holiday season that begins with Thanksgiving and ends, more
or less, with New Year’s Day, is a time of parties large and small
in families and all kinds of civic, service, and business
organizations. It’s a time when music fills the air in school
auditoriums symphony halls, churches, and even in streets and
plazas; everything from Jingle Bells to Handel’s Messiah. Parades
of every imaginable conveyance welcome Santa Claus. I was delighted
to see a mechanical grape harvester in the lighted tractor parade
around the Healdsburg Plaza on the night when the Christmas tree
was illuminated. 
The day after Thanksgiving has been dubbed Black Friday, and now
the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend is called Cyber
Monday. Shop ‘til you drop is the order of the day and the
season, whether it’s at the mall, online, or, for that matter at
the lovely shops around the Healdsburg Plaza. It’s easy to
caricature this consumer frenzy, but it gives some people part-time
jobs which many badly need, and I guess many retail businesses
depend on the sales they make in this season to stay in
business. Also, people like me who do not like to shop at any time
of the year should remind ourselves that many people actually enjoy
shopping for themselves and for others.
Along with and perhaps off-setting the consumerism of the
season, there is a great outpouring of generosity. Churches and
service clubs, fire fighters and national guardsmen, and
many others unite to prepare and serve free meals beyond counting,
and to give gifts to the less fortunate – teddy bears and bicycles,
jackets, sweaters, and scarves, books and DVDs. Shoppers are
invited by tinkling bells to add their gifts to the red kettles of
the Salvation Army. As I put in a few hours with bell and kettle
outside the local Safeway, I will recall the childhood memory of my
dad standing outside the Napa post office doing the same thing.
‘Tis the season to be jolly, to sing, to shop, to give
generously of time and treasure, and, perhaps most importantly to
give yourself.
For some of us ‘tis also the season to think of the Last Things.
Christians who attend churches that observe the traditional Church
Year are in Advent, the season of four weeks before Christmas when
the Bible readings, hymns and prayers focus on the Second Coming of
Christ as judge at the end of time while at the same time to giving
thanks for his First Coming as the Savior born in Bethlehem. In the
midst of the festivities of the social celebration of the holiday
season, the Church asks us to think about our end, the fact of our
coming death, the hope of resurrection, and the reality of a final
judgment. Although it is not so common now, the traditional sermon
topics for the four Sundays of Advent were death, judgment, hell
and heaven. So for some of us, ‘tis the season to ask the big
questions: what am I doing here and what is the meaning of my life,
and even most fundamentally, does my life in fact have any meaning?
The threat of meaninglessness, the nagging suspicious that nothing
means anything, is the dark side of modern life, a threat or
suspicion that may be felt with a heartbreaking intensity during
the holiday season. 
Contemporary social values hold up being non-judgmental as a
virtue. If being non-judgmental means not being mean and not
needlessly beating up on people, well of course. But logically and
even grammatically, if there is no judgment, day by day judgment,
and judgment at the Last Day, then there is in fact no
meaning. Meaning and judgment are inseparable. In the end, on the
Last Day, it is the judgment of a loving and merciful God that may
give meaning to every season of our lives.
Canon Marvin Bowers is a retired clergyman and may be
reached at fr************@gm***.com.