Christmas and Chanukah Not Seasonal

I read a fascinating article this week which talked about the difference between Christmas and Chanukah.
Rabbi Michael Lerner noted that both holidays, the one celebrated by Christians and the other by Jews, share a message, that it is possible to bring a message of light and hope in a world of darkness, oppression and despair. But he said that ‘whereas Christmas concentrates on the life of a single individual who was supposed to bring liberation, Chanukah is about a national liberation struggle involving an entire people who seek to remake the world through struggle with an oppressive social and political order.”
The political, economic and social order is so oppressive that people will do anything to survive. Women sell their bodies; people sell drugs, even to kids, not caring whose lives they are messing up. Just this week, a 14 year old boy, an American citizen, was arrested for killing four people. He was under the direction of the Mexican drug cartel and was paid to kill people. He said he did it because he wanted to escape the squalor in which he lived, and he said he “loved” killing people.
Surely, there is a need for light in this world. And who but we who love God should be bearers of that light?
We celebrate the birth of the Christ, but as an isolated holiday where the emphasis is gifts to each other, not provision of light to the world. How wonderful it would be if we as Christians would take on the national liberation struggle seeking to remake the world through struggle with our oppressive social and political order?
This week, the Republicans forced a compromise on tax cuts that will allow the most wealthy people to continue to get tax breaks for at least two more years. That was their price for extending unemployment benefits for another 13 months for the long-term unemployed. There was no justice in what they did; the wealthy will only get more wealthy, and the tax cuts for them will add about $500 billion to the federal deficit.
In the end, the poor will bear the brunt of suffering for the spoiled habits of the rich. There is no justice in that.
We need to be the light of Christmas and Chanukah, long after the tree is down and the lights are put in storage. We need to concentrate on being the light to those who live consistently in darkness, from homeless kids to homeless adults to people suffering from HIV/AIDS to inmates trying to make it in a society which is so closed to them to abused women … we need to be the light of Christmas every single day.
I would say that we give food consistently to feed the hungry; the number of homeless and hungry are increasing, not decreasing. We need to make sure we take care of our children, making sure they can read and write and compete in this world. We cannot afford to think that Christmas is a one day a year thing, or that the Christmas season is only a December event.
Not so. There is too much darkness in this world, due to oppression. The tax breaks given to the wealthy does not mean that there will be more jobs for people, or relief for those suffering. We who love God need to take the spirit of Christmas and Chanukah and make it a year long center of everything we do.
We cannot afford to do anything less.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith