[Dialogue] Tropical Marianas at Christmas

[SVESjaime at aol.com]

It is midnight in tropical Marianas, and the police sirens are blaring as the 
firecrackers are popping around this 5 by 12 mile island.   Tomorrow's Saipan 
Tribune will have the following (the Monday contribution was on Labor Pains 
and can be accessed at www.SaipanTribune.com, Letters to the Editor section) - 
same disclaimer as before applies: those not interested, move on; those who 
asked for occasional musings, my pleasure.

Jaime Vergara
Saipan 

SVES is my elementary school.

Tropical Marianas at Christmas.   Joy, Joy, Joy.

The SVES monthly assembly focused on the Tropical Marianas at Christmas, 
highlighting the musical and dance traditions as well as current practices of most 
of the prominent ethnic groups who have resided in the Marianas.

By the day's title, tropical Marianas was what was on display; Christmas was 
simply the time of year though in previous years, Christmas practices and 
traditions were intentionally put on stage.   Some may think that there is a 
splitting of hair in this minor shift, and they would be right.

Some religious groups have taken exception to participating in the December 
assembly on religious grounds, and last year, the program specifically stated 
that it was a cultural celebration.   The events, however, were still on 
Christmas as a religious dramaturgy.   In Tuesday's assembly, the focused shifted 
and it may take another year before members of religious groups who oppose 
religious Christmas in their public schools may eventually decide to allow their 
children to participate in the school program, but at least, the option will 
already be there.

The Community Church of Saipan Choir's rendition of the Craig-Clarr and 
Clydesdale's contemporary musical Joy, Joy, Joy to diners at Aqua Resort Club 
Friday evening was spectacular, at least to those who share in mainstream Christian 
metaphors prior to WWII, the metaphor of Empire, of sovereign Lord and the 
Liege Savior.

It was not until the ascendancy of the Christian Church within the Roman 
Empire, first with Constantine and later with Theodotius, that the Christian 
community started celebrating Christmas as the birth of Jesus.  In the eastern 
tradition, the birthday was either in January or in April, but the Romans needed 
to counter Bacchanalian debauchery in the introduction of new wine, so a shift 
to bread and wine as the Eucharistic elements became central to liturgy; the 
Germanic tribes added the promise of newness in the end of the longest night at 
winter solstice.

No self-respecting historian, Christian or otherwise, would ever seriously 
claim December 25 as the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth.   The evolution of 
Christian piety and the need particularly of the feudal structures of Medieval 
Europe to highlight the sovereign authority of either Emperor/King or Pope/Bishop 
resulted in the idolatry of Jesus, thus, in some circles, we might as well 
rename Christmas to Jesusmas.   In Christian theology, Christ is the role, the 
messianic role that Jesus's disciple ascribed to his life's meaning, thus, the 
religion was called Christianity and not Jesusism!   And lest we forgot, Jesus 
was not a Christian; he was a Jew!

Conversant as I am as a Methodist cleric with the Christian metaphors of a 
bygone age, I am thus concerned that after the theological revolutions 
accompanying the two World Wars with the rediscovery of G_d, that is YHWH in the 
Semitic sense, is but a devotional term to radically living one's life before 
Reality sans illusions of the mind, delusions of the heart and the external mirages 
that many cultural inventions are heir to.   

Zoroaster coined the eternal battle between good and evil, and of course, 
when President Reagan dubbed more than half of the world as belonging to the Evil 
Empire, American reality got defined as history's 'good guys,' and it did not 
take us long to justify every conceivable atrocity that we would not normally 
countenance from the other guys were it not that we were literally ushering 
the Armageddon and saving the world in our war against terror.   The Egyptian 
pharaohs gave us heaven, and the decline of the Roman empire gave us purgatory 
and hell.

Serious, committed and educated Lutheran Chaplains, Roman Priests and Spanish 
Clergy, pronounced the invocations and benedictions to the gatherings of 
forces of the Third Reich, Mussolini's and Franco's fascism.   

Christian piety in converting the Jesus of history into the idolatrous 
worship of a cosmic savior (evolution for the curious in holy writ goes from Paul's 
good guy, to Mark's divine son, to Matthew and Luke's royal King, to John's 
cosmic Logos) with insistence on one's literal interpretation of scriptural 
metaphors has led to centuries of Christian-initiated wars in defense of the faith 
and the promotion of holy Christian Empire!

So I get concerned when devotees continue to insist on their limited 
observation of Christmas to the idolatry of Jesus.   The Joy, Joy, Joy theme of the 
musical rendition last Friday was sufficient for me to appreciate the 6th grade 
boy at SVES who rendered the best Santa with the sexiest moves this side of 
the Arctic.   And when 5th grader girls threw their jackets off to 
bump-and-grind it to today's music, there was an affirmation of the physiology of our 
existence that is missing in today's education.

If Christmas is about birthing, then let it be about the infant's cry for new 
air in the lungs, and the instinctive protest against being pulled out of the 
room service and regulated temperature in the womb, the cutting of umbilical 
cord that is a prerequisite to liberation into glorious freedom.

Let Christmas be a celebration of the way life is, in the here and now, and 
the glorious struggle with all the contradictions we have created in only five 
millennia of human civilization.   Then, Christmas becomes a “Yes” to life, 
and in my Christian understanding, that is what it is all about.



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