Garrison Keillor: Christmas without translation

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/12/24/christmas/


Christmas without translation

When you don't understand the language, it's easier to find the dumb childlike wonder that's the essence of the season.

By Garrison Keillor



Dec. 24, 2008 | It is the blessed Christmas season. But of course you know that. Unless you live ten miles up a box canyon deep in the Wasatch Range with only your dog Boomer and are demented from drinking bad water, you are inhaling Christmas night and day and "Adeste Fideles" is stuck in your head like a five-inch nail.

This Christmas I am in New York for the general dazzlement and variety. On Sunday St. Patrick's was packed to the rafters for 4 p.m. Mass in Spanish, the name "Jesucristo" drifting around the battlements, and a few blocks south the Jane Austen Society was meeting to discuss Christmas in Olde England, and in between, I stopped in a men's store and bought six pairs of red socks. For myself.

Down deep I am selfish and don't like to feel obliged to do what other people are doing -- dancing, leaping, piping, drumming, welcoming the Christ Child with joyful hearts, etc. -- at the times when other people are doing them. This city enables one to leap or pipe pretty much whenever you feel like it, even after 10 p.m. on weekdays.

Yesterday I took my sandy-haired bright-faced daughter to dinner at 9 p.m., which is late for a 10-year-old, and introduced her to the idea of Ordering Whatever You Want, No Matter What Others May Think, and she got the chicken Kiev and for dessert an apple tart as big as a Gideon Bible. She is a good eater. She approached her meal with the quiet devotion that a chicken deserves. She loved the candles, the linen, the silver, the formality. I enjoyed a tiny quail egg poached in a toasted brioche with a dollop of caviar, though, thanks to my upbringing, I eat my meals surrounded by gaunt Chinese children holding out empty rice bowls. And when the check arrives, I have visions of debtors' prison, dank stone walls, a wooden bunk, a straw mat, water dripping, and so forth.

Here in New York, Mr. Madoff allegedly made off with billions of dollars of other people's money in a Ponzi scheme, which is selfishness raised to a high level indeed, but the selfishness I am indulging is a simpler kind -- for example, if I feel like having a mocha, I just step into a Starbucks and get one. A small one, no pastry, but it feels luxurious, coming from a utilitarian background as I do. Why mocha? How does it further God's work on Earth? I don't know. I just like it.

A few weeks ago a pundit wrote about what a wonderful thing it would be to appoint Bill Clinton to the Senate to fill his wife's seat, him being a former president and all, and then that idea vanished. Bloop. I imagine Bill called up a few people and said, "Whom are you kidding?" When a man can jet around the world and be received as a potentate and knock down a hundred grand every time he feels like giving a speech, he is not going to want to sit in the Senate chamber and hear old men drone on about Arbor Day and the crucial role of the forest products industry.

I feel the same way about Christmas parties. It isn't fun to stand around making small talk with other people's friends as they anesthetize themselves. But slipping into St. Patrick's for Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold I go.

It brought back memories of Christmas Eve in Copenhagen 20 years ago and how beautiful the sermons were before I started learning Danish.

A man gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not your own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand. Which makes me glad I am no smarter than I am. Let's go have lunch.

[monmouth]

1. Garrison has such a velvety touch with words. Glad he didn't mention

the "gift store" at St. Pat's. The commercialism of that little business is mind-numbing...

[acmavm]

2. What, may I ask, is 'sold' in this gift store and who benefits?

[monmouth]

4. Oh all sorts of sourvenir types of things, crosses, rosaries, shirts I

believe and I'm thinking St. Patrick's benefits. It just struck me as very tacky...

[acmavm]

5. It (I hate to say) is.

[noel711]

6. Tacky, yes, But it serves a purpose....

Most churches survive because of attachment:
many folks are committed to a certain parish because
their families were nurtured in the congregation.
HOwever, in an increasing mobile society, few people
stay in the neighborhoods in which they grew up; thus
there is little parish loyalty in many changing communities.

Ccommunity parishes flourish because the surrounding
area benefits by the works of the congregation,
be that parish schools, outreach programs of feeding/housing
the hungry and homeless, or parish nurses attending to
the needs of the elderly.

Then there are the 'big steeple' legacy parishes or cathedrals
that represent the divine in their midst. Altho they are well known,
they don't have huge committed families that make up
their necessary income. Many continue to survive because
of endowments from their past, or have a few wealthy
benefactors. These large old churches find creative ways
to pay their massive bills (heating/cooling huge edifices
are deadly; paying staff eats away at budget ~staff includes
janitorial and maintenance, parish workers, teachers,
musicians, and clergy to tend to the flock).

The possibility of the income of 'gift shops' migrated here from the
cathedrals of Europe that could not survive without the
income. Sure they are tacky, but the income from books,
photos, taped musical programs, banners, mugs, etc
sure helps keep the ship afloat- realize than any funds that
come into the parish thru these shops do NOT go into the pastor's pocket.
The income pays bills. In a capitalistic world,
altho it may be frowned up, gift shops offer benefits.
No one is forced to spend cash in a shop (just as in most churches,
no one is forced to put money in an offering plate- I'm not speaking of
of those churches that force tihing....)

Many of the 'mega-churches' that have developed in the last 20 years
in our country have similar devices: they have gift shops, book stores, children's stores,
some even have food courts! All of these little capitalistic ventures promote
what is considered 'brand loyalty' to the congregation.
I'm not a fan of mega-churches (A'la Rick WArren)
but they obviously fill a need with certain people.

[yellowdogintexas]

7. every big cathedral in Europe has a gift shop. Rosaries, crucifixes,

little figurines of the building, postcards of the stuff you aren't allowed to take photos of, the big picture book of the place, bracelet charms, any sort of souvenir things any tourist site might have.
When I visited Notre Dame in Paris (in 1959) there were vendors all around the grounds, row after row of
all sorts of Notre Dame related stuff. Same thing in the great cathedrals in Spain

St Pat's is both a house of worship and a tourist site. The St Pat's in Fort Worth, a beautiful historic Spanish style building, does not have a gift shop as it is not a tourist attraction.

[grasswire]

3. thank you (eom)