Making Space for a Multicultural Christmas

Conversations That Matter

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:03

Welcome to the Conversation That Matters podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a special Christmas edition for you today,

00:10

Making Space for a Multicultural Christmas. That's right, it is a Gospel Coalition article.

00:16

Several people have sent it to me and I have not read the whole thing yet. I confess, I did read like the first two sentences and I thought

00:23

I should probably do a show on this, but it'd be more fun if I did not read it. So I am going to go through it and we're gonna go through it together.

00:32

Making, you know, the title alone, the title alone sort of assumes, it seems like, maybe there's like an issue, like maybe it's morally virtuous to make space for multicultural, for a multicultural

00:45

Christmas, whatever that means. As if we haven't been doing it or someone hasn't been doing it who needs to hear this article.

00:52

I always thought, you know, in my family, we'd never had any problem with anyone celebrating Christmas the way they wanted to celebrate it.

00:59

At their home, with their family, in their way. I mean, we had our family. Sometimes Christmas would fall on a

01:05

Sunday and we'd go to church and we'd do what we do at church every week, sing songs and have a message, usually themed on Christmas.

01:16

I suppose many of those songs would be European and in English because most of the church spoke

01:22

English. But, you know, we did sing Feliz Navidad, not in church, but I do happen to really like that song.

01:30

So maybe I've already made space for a multicultural Christmas. Actually, if I think about it now,

01:37

I mean, I haven't even started this article. I'm already, I'm just thinking though, isn't, you know,

01:43

Christmas itself though, a lot of the traditions that we have, like for instance, the Christmas tree, they didn't come from England or Scotland or places that, you know, if you look at my family tree, according to ancestry .com,

01:59

look at my genetics, I should say, you know, that's a German thing. I don't have, I'm not majority German.

02:05

So maybe I've already done this. Maybe this is, maybe I don't even need this article, but just in case there's someone else who might need this article, we are going to read it.

02:14

And, you know, and the three wise men, appropriately, because, you know, they were not Jewish. They were from the

02:20

East somewhere. You know, they are on the cover of this and I think that was, that's a nice touch. The story of Christmas takes place in the first century and not a single character is

02:32

Caucasian. That's when I, when I read that sentence, I thought, now I know I have to read this article and review it.

02:40

Right, I'm sure that shocked so many of you. I'm sorry to let you in on this, but Christmas took place in Israel.

02:50

It did. And those in it aren't quote unquote white. You have some people from the

02:56

East, maybe you have some Romans. Actually, were Romans, I mean, I guess they're not, huh, depending on where you start the

03:02

Christmas story, I wonder, we should ask Gospel Coalition what they think about Romans.

03:07

I mean, they're usually, they're the villains usually in the story. So would they qualify as Caucasian?

03:12

I don't know. Yet the American evangelical celebration of Christmas, the article goes on, can have a distinctively vanilla flavor.

03:18

Uh -oh, vanilla, that's not good. Vanilla, by the way, is this racist with this?

03:24

If you were to say, you know, story of Christmas, or pick a different holiday, I don't know.

03:29

I can't think of one off the top of my head. I don't think, you know,

03:35

I was gonna say maybe Kwanzaa, but I don't think Gospel Coalition's gonna do an article about Kwanzaa. You know, Juneteenth just really has a distinctively chocolate flavor.

03:44

And we gotta like make space for other, like what? Anyway, nativity scenes have a white baby

03:51

Jesus, holiday feasts are filled with Anglo -American foods, and church services feature only

03:56

European hymns. Now, if I was gonna do like a multiple choice on an exam, which does not belong,

04:02

I would ask? White baby Jesus. Okay, that's inaccurate, right, to have.

04:08

Now, I mean, I don't know how, as a baby, Jewish baby, white, I mean, what do you,

04:14

I don't know what you're supposed to do there. I mean, how do you even, I mean, I guess if baby Jesus has blue eyes, that's probably unlikely, but it is possible.

04:23

It's not impossible. There's actually some Christian traditions that say that Jesus had blue eyes that are probably apocryphal, but anyway.

04:33

Let's just say, let's give them that and say that's untrue. Let's say white baby Jesus, untrue. Holiday feasts filled with Anglo -American foods.

04:39

Well, that's not something that is either true or false. That's just how you do things. That's just culture.

04:46

That's, you know, church services feature only European hymns. Like, again, not a true or false thing.

04:52

It doesn't take anything away or, I mean, from the Christmas story, I think there's an acknowledgement that there's a celebration of this event in the tradition culture forms that are unique to the culture.

05:06

And that's not just European, but, you know, there's other cultures who are going to use different languages and different forms to celebrate it differently.

05:14

And there's nothing wrong with that. This article seems to insinuate off the top like that's a problem though.

05:21

And it's somehow that goes along with, you know, baby, the inaccurate portrayals of baby

05:27

Jesus. And I can fully, I have no problem saying, yeah, some of the depictions of Christ are inaccurate, but it's not unusual.

05:36

Something can be inaccurate and not unusual. You know, I've been in churches,

05:42

I've been in places where I've seen depictions of Christ that, you know, he was other races of some kind, other ethnicities.

05:51

And, you know, I wasn't offended by it. I mean, I understand in that culture probably for, you know, however many years, that's just how

06:02

Christ was depicted. This is before there was a lot of interaction between people groups, not a lot of travel.

06:09

So the gospel got there, but it's not like people were interacting. I mean, I think there's something that as Americans, especially we kind of take for granted in especially in the technological age that we're in now, you can just meet people all over the place.

06:22

Your neighbor is probably, in fact, my neighbors, I have neighbors who are all sorts of different ethnicities, and which is great, but there's, you know, there's a, that's not the reality that would have existed, you know, in 1960 even, all right?

06:38

We're not going back that far. 1960, 90%, about 90 % of the

06:43

United States would have been some of European descent of some kind. Go back before that.

06:50

I mean, so that's part of the issue here is when artists are depicting for their culture, these biblical stories, often they're gonna look like them because that's their field of experience, and then that gets carried on.

07:04

And I'm not saying it should be. I'm okay with depicting more of an accurate depiction if we can try to arrive at that, but it's not morally wrong to have

07:14

Christ depicted in those ways. It's just inaccurate. And I think everyone today recognizes that.

07:21

We know that that's inaccurate. How can each of us celebrate Christmas at the intersection of our faith and culture while welcoming differing cultural perspectives on Christ's birth?

07:32

Now, intersection of faith and culture, I don't like that. The Intersect Project of Southeastern uses this language.

07:38

It's not like you have two different roads that are completely separate. There's nothing connecting them. And then all this little place they intersect and you gotta choose which way to go.

07:45

Actually, more accurately, faith actually shapes culture. Religion shapes culture,

07:52

I should say. And culture actually is part of,

07:58

I should say, religion is part of culture. So even like the songs that you sing, like the author was just mentioning hymns.

08:06

These things have been shaped by, however, whenever the gospel got to your neck of the woods and people were saved, they started expressing it.

08:13

And in many Western traditions, those things can go back hundreds of years of tradition.

08:19

That's an expression of faith. Even people in your culture who don't accept the tenets of a faith, the core tenets anymore, they still, those traditions linger.

08:28

And so there's a, and maybe even some of the beliefs still linger. So faith is actually embedded in a culture.

08:35

It's not like this two really, I don't know, abstract things that you can just separate in your mind completely and then make a calculation and change.

08:44

Actually, once you're expressing faith, you're doing it in a cultural setting. You don't do it in a vacuum, right?

08:51

So I just think this is that basic artificial understanding of cult, this neo -Cyperian understanding of culture that the

08:57

Gospel Coalition constantly, well, we'll see if it affects anything later in this article, but they're constantly trumpeting that.

09:07

Gaining Fresh Perspectives. That's the title of the next section. The message of salvation is for every people group.

09:14

What God has done through Christ crosses ethnic divides and extends to everyone at all times. Still, we can approach and celebrate this reality differently from one culture to the next.

09:22

And our celebration of Christmas is no different. Okay, true. And we read the Bible together in a multicultural community.

09:29

Wait a minute, what? We read the Bible together in a multicultural community. Believers from different cultures help us see things in scripture we tend to miss due to our own blind spots.

09:41

Okay, this is sounding like standpoint epistemology. When we read the

09:48

Bible together in a multicultural community, believers from different cultures help us see things in scripture we tend to miss due to our own blind spots.

09:56

Okay, is it possible that someone coming from a different background who thinks about things differently or emphasizes different things can point things out to you that you miss?

10:07

Of course it is. That's obviously true. But is it true that it is by nature of their multicultural, their whatever culture they live in, does that give them a grasp on reality that you were missing, that you don't have?

10:29

Does it flesh out and make your perspective better simply by nature of it being from another culture?

10:36

No, that's not true. And that sounds like such maybe a small difference, but it actually is a large chasm.

10:43

If you believe that there are different cultures that have different understandings of truth, and therefore, the more of them you get,

10:52

I mean, this is kind of the idea that the Democrats always do this with the vote. The more people represented in the vote, the better the vote's gonna be, right?

11:00

The more diverse people, people from the city and people from, well, they don't like people from the country, but generally, but their logic lends itself to that.

11:09

People from the country, all the minorities of every kind, you need every gender, which

11:15

I think there's 623 now for in their thinking. You need all these things represented, and that's gonna give us the best vote, right?

11:22

That's the get out the vote, the motor voter, making it easy to vote. We gotta eliminate barriers.

11:27

ID checks are horrible. We need to just make sure every single person can vote, and that's going to render us, this democracy's gonna render us the best available choice because there's wisdom, supposedly, in a multiplicity of voices.

11:42

No, there's not. There's not. That does not give you a good vote.

11:48

What actually gives you a good result in a vote would be people who are informed and have actually good morality.

11:55

They understand social ethics. They understand government. They understand how our system works, and so there's wisdom.

12:01

It's actually wisdom that's gonna give you probably the best outcome, and so it's not multicultural.

12:12

It's not a multicultural community that's gonna render a right or a better, I should say, interpretation of scripture.

12:20

It's going to be the wisdom and the faithful application of grammatical historical approach to the text of scripture that's gonna give you a good interpretation, and sometimes you can have a multicultural community, and they're given their perspectives, but they're not applying that, and you can have a worse interpretation, just like you can have a worse vote if you have a number of people represented there, the maximum number, but they don't have understanding, right?

12:46

So this is actually faulty thinking right here. This just isn't true. As Christianity declines in the

12:51

United States, we should be all the more eager to learn from believers of other churches, cultures, and ethnicities so that our eyes might be open to a new richness and depth to our faith.

13:01

Well, why? This is an unargued -for premise. Why, because, and it's underlined, declines in the

13:08

United States. Well, okay, Christianity's declining in the United States, but why does that mean? Are we gonna jump ship?

13:13

Is that what that means? Like, we're gonna, we're moving somewhere? Or, I don't know.

13:21

Somehow, that means that we should be more eager to learn from other believers, from other cultures, because the circumstances lend themselves to that.

13:28

Well, how? I don't know. Is that gonna give us a better interpretation of Scripture because the

13:35

United States is, Christianity's declining? It seems like it's moral posturing, that there's something urgent, right?

13:43

Christianity's going down. There's something urgent. If we wanna save it, right, we have to go to these other, somehow adopt other traditions, other perspectives, other things.

13:54

This learning isn't simply about what global foods, dress, and decorations we can incorporate in our homes during Advent. It's about discovering each culture's particular narrative, which emphasizes different elements of the story of Christ's birth.

14:07

I'm gonna tell a story after this. How long is this? This goes on for a little more. Let's just read it, and then

14:13

I'll analyze. Let's see. All right.

14:20

Pasadas and remembering the outcasts. For example, many Central Americans celebrate pasadas. The practice includes going to a friend's home and reenacting

14:29

Mary and Joseph's rejection from the inn. This tradition reminds us that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were not accepted.

14:35

It reminds us that Jesus identified with the outcasts, and his followers should, too. I don't know if the liberation theology's gonna come in.

14:45

Let's see. The songs and food exchanged during pasadas allow its celebrants to express solidarity with those in need by testifying that even if we have little, we will share it with God and our neighbors.

14:59

I guess it was the moral of the story, I guess. They shouldn't have been rejected, except I thought there was no room.

15:09

I thought it was a practical matter. And I don't know, maybe the innkeeper's the hero here. He allowed them to stay when there was no room anywhere.

15:16

He said, hey, you can stay here. But instead, they turned it into this solidarity with the oppressed kind of thing.

15:23

You know, that's a distortion of the Christmas story. I'm sorry. My family's not gonna be celebrating that. Now, I don't know.

15:29

Maybe Gospel Coalition is distorting what pasadas really is. I don't know. But we're not gonna do the whole, like,

15:36

Jesus came to be, or Mary and Joseph, I guess, because, you know, well, it says

15:42

Jesus here. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were showing solidarity with the oppressed because they were rejected from the inn.

15:52

They were, solidarity is a, that's the sneaky word. You can see relatability in that,

15:58

I guess. But solidarity, standing, solidarity means you're standing against what? What are you standing against?

16:05

What, the oppressors who, all the innkeepers, all the people who had, it was full.

16:11

They didn't have capacity. They're private property. They, you know, they had the ability to make that decision.

16:17

And, you know, I don't know. If they were willing, they couldn't. I mean, we don't, we just don't know enough about this.

16:25

And it's not the focus of the Christmas story either. That's, to make, to recenter the Christmas story around that would be, that wouldn't be a good idea.

16:32

That's not what it's about. Kayak, Kayak, I don't know how you pronounce this, and identifying with the reproach.

16:39

Coptic Christians in Egypt, among others, give focus to the image of the pregnant Mary by practicing a liturgy of Kayak, reminding us that Advent is a time of waiting and preparing our hearts for Jesus' birth.

16:50

Many Coptic Christians fast during the month of December, believing that Mary would have endured reproach for her mysterious pregnancy and may have responded to her trials by fasting until her son's birth instead of overindulging in the sweets and pleasures of our

17:03

Americanized holiday offers. So again, you know, you can sense this through this piece, is this idea that these other cultures,

17:10

I guess, are doing it. They have a superior way of doing things, you know. Are America, you know,

17:16

Christianity's declining here. It's, you know, we gotta jump ship. Overindulging in the sweets and pleasures of our

17:21

Americanized holiday offers. Well, maybe actually overindulging. I mean, could we say, maybe, hey, that represents the gifts of the wise men and that's something that they can learn from us or something.

17:30

I mean, I'm making it up, but like, why does it only work one way? How might the practice of fasting reorient our minds to the struggles that the

17:42

Christmas story includes? Now, one of the reasons at Christmas time, I was always taught this as a kid, we engage in gift giving and all the feasts.

17:50

It is a celebration. It's a celebration, joy to the world. And it's,

17:56

God gave us gifts, so we are giving others gifts. So you wanna undercut that?

18:03

I mean, you have to pick and choose here. You don't really, I mean, I guess you could fast for a while and then have a feast if you wanted.

18:09

And if your family does that, that's fine. I have no problem with that. But I'm also allowed to look at this and say, nah, that's not for my family, no.

18:17

And that's not a morally inferior thing. In the midst of an immigration crisis at our borders, here we go.

18:23

How might our heart attitudes be reshaped by not overlooking the relatability of Mary, a vulnerable young woman expecting a child out of wedlock as the one to whom and through whom

18:33

God's incarnate son came? We have much to learn from our other cultures about remembering and honoring their approach and faith of Mary in the

18:40

Christmas story. Now, why did they throw in immigration crisis at our border there? Because they're trying to draw a parallel between illegal migrants and Mary, the mother of Jesus.

18:52

You often hear this at Christmas. Jesus was an illegal immigrant. He was a

18:57

Palestinian preacher. As someone running for the,

19:03

Democrat running for Georgia Senate seat said. You hear that they were refugees.

19:13

And would we deny them? That would be so horrible. Except that they were going from one part of the Roman Empire to another part of the

19:18

Roman Empire. So it wasn't, it's not the same thing at all.

19:25

And it's kind of, it's just, it's not a connection that, that dog don't hunt, as they say in some parts of North Carolina.

19:32

It's not a connection that's actually significant. Parole in shining

19:40

Christ's light. A parole is a Filipino lantern displayed during the

19:46

Christmas season. And I've actually seen this on like pictures and stuff. And actually it looks really cool. I'll be honest, like it does look really cool.

19:52

Traditionally constructed using bamboo and paper, its most common form is a five pointed star with its bright colors and twinkling lights.

19:59

And parole evokes not only the star of Bethlehem, but also the coming of the true light that gives light to everyone. Whether families hang their paroles from windows or line them in church sanctuaries, this tradition celebrates the first advent of Christ, the light of the world.

20:11

It's also an opportunity to prepare our hearts with gratitude and consider, am I shining Christ's light into the world? Am I proclaiming

20:17

Christ's good news to my neighbors and friends? Now I would check first. Now I have two things came to my mind, actually sort of three.

20:25

So if you're in California during COVID and a drought, should you be practicing this one?

20:32

It's cool, but I mean, I don't know, sending burning things into the air in the middle of a dry spell, especially when there's

20:41

COVID going on. And you know, I don't know, I'm not sure that's the wisest thing. I mean, does this undercut, is that breaking quarantine to go out and do that?

20:50

I don't know. I mean, you're supposed to stay in your house. And I mean, I thought that was loving your neighbor. So maybe it's actually loving your neighbor not to do parole or peril.

20:59

I don't know how you pronounce it. But is this an environmental concern? I thought the

21:05

Gospel Coalition cared about that. I mean, couldn't you set like the forest ablaze? I mean, I don't know. Anyway, a conflict of interest.

21:14

Dia de los Reyes and celebrating Gentile faith in Argentina, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Mexico.

21:20

Dia de los Reyes, Three Kings Day, celebrates the Gentile Magi who traveled far to worship and offer gifts to the true

21:27

King of Kings. The Magi are important characters in scripture story because of God's promise that the nations would one day worship

21:34

Christ. The Gospel of Matthew opens with these Gentiles coming to Jesus and closes with the commandment to make disciples of all nations.

21:41

El Dia de los Reyes reminds us that like the Magi, we too are welcome to come and worship

21:47

King Jesus in the fullness of our cultural identities and expressions. So what if you wanted to worship

21:54

King Jesus in the fullness of your, some kind of Western, let's say your

22:00

Scottish, your Scottish traditions and heritage. The fullness, nothing else, just that. What if you wanted to do that?

22:07

There's a book that I like reading every single year. This is my favorite Christmas book called

22:12

Old Christmas by Washington Irving. I'm just hooked on it. There's very few books like that that I'll read over. I don't usually read books twice.

22:19

And I'll be reading it now, I think, for the fourth time this year. And it's about an

22:24

English Christmas. Like Washington Irving is seeking the good old countryside

22:30

English Christmas that he feels like is lost already. And he's writing, you know, a while ago.

22:37

And I love it. I love the traditions they talk about. I just love it. Now, what if you just did that and you didn't incorporate any of these other traditions?

22:44

Is that okay? Or is it just the West? Is it just the

22:50

United States maybe that has this problem of not diversifying? And we have our hymns that are

22:57

European and white Jesus and our sweets that we indulge in.

23:06

Are you sensing the moral play that's going on with this article?

23:12

That's what I'm trying to get at. Multicultural Christmas. Here we go. We do well to make space for a multicultural

23:18

Christmas, inviting culturally diverse perspectives and celebrations of Christ's birth in our homes, communities, and churches.

23:24

May we ask ourselves, how does my ethnic heritage highlight a unique element of Jesus' birth and what new aspect about the

23:30

Christmas story can I learn from other cultures? We learn the answers to these questions while in community as we read the story of Jesus' birth together and learn from each other how to better behold and worship

23:39

Christ this Christmas. Now, let me comment on this because I'm gonna just give you some biographical information here.

23:48

I grew up in a church that when I was a kid was all pretty much Italian and wasps,

23:58

Anglos, I guess if you wanna call them that, descendants of probably the Puritans in upstate

24:04

New York. That's most of my, actually just about all of it up until probably, because I was always home for the holidays, my experience has been in that geographic area.

24:17

But when I was a kid, it was basically Italian, some Irish, and people descended from the

24:24

English. As I got older, and especially as I went in my teen years and now, the same church that I grew up at in the area that I grew up in had a lot of people coming from other places, especially

24:42

New York City, people would move up, and a lot of new foods. I mean, it was great, honestly,

24:48

I loved it because you go to a church potluck and you got all, it's not just green bean casserole,

24:54

I hated green bean casserole. And I don't know why, you'd have like four different women at the church that would all make green bean casserole.

25:02

But I don't see that anymore. I see all sorts of stuff, stuff I don't even know, and most of the time it tastes great.

25:09

I love that. Christmas, I'm trying to think if Christmas traditions look different there, probably not a whole lot different.

25:18

There's some years, I think, that they did some songs in some other languages and things like that.

25:24

But what's the main point I'm making? Here's the point. I don't know of anyone who's against that.

25:31

But the way that it happened was not forced. And it actually created, culture is, many factors are interconnected and changing, culture changes, many factors come together to create culture.

25:51

And it's a fluid thing, it's not something that's, you can't just define it, it's not abstract like that.

25:57

And so all these different people who are coming to this church that I grew up at, they just, they put their own, they brought themselves, their family traditions, they brought themselves to this church and they became part of that.

26:11

And so it actually, it wasn't like you had multicultural, it was many different cultures. It actually almost created like one kind of new, new kind of culture in that church.

26:24

And of course everyone goes home and they go to their families and I'm sure they do things more, according to how, if you grew up in the

26:31

Dominican Republic, you're gonna do it the way that your grandparents probably did in the Dominican Republic. And no one has a problem with that.

26:38

But there was never any kind of, well, we have, we have a certain, a superior aspect that we emphasize that needs to be present in this celebration here at this church.

26:55

Or your family, you're so white, you do things all white, all

27:01

English or something and you need to do it our way. There was never anything like that and vice versa.

27:07

And I would say anyone who thinks that way, who's, you're overthinking this. And this, that's what this article is.

27:14

You could have had a great article, in my opinion, that just went through, here's some of the different Christmas traditions, here's some of the ways that people worship

27:24

Jesus throughout the world. And maybe someone reads it and says, oh, that's a good idea. But instead, what happens is, this article was written and it was written with a motive in mind of making this some moral play of some kind.

27:42

And look at all the negative things in this article are Americans, that's the negative stuff.

27:47

When you see positive things, even if they're not the great, honestly, passadas, really, but it's gotta be good because there's some virtue connected with minority, whatever the minority culture is of some kind.

28:01

And that's, that runs through this article and it runs through a lot of the Gospel Coalition stuff.

28:06

And that's why the article's ruined, honestly. It has you sitting there doing this comparison thing and rather than just being free to worship

28:17

God according to the expression that you've been doing it probably for a long time.

28:23

While, you know, this is how culture happens, marriages, becoming friends with people.

28:31

It's not generally, you know, hey family, we're gonna do something different this year because people in some other part of the world that we don't even know are doing it differently.

28:41

Maybe you can do it that way. But then it's yours, you're not getting it from that source, really.

28:49

But that's how, you know, that's how cultures change. That's how cultures develop.

28:56

So that's just thing, it's just an inadequate understanding of what culture even is. And it takes the emphasis off the celebration and more on how it's being celebrated.

29:06

It's very like, you're very self -aware now and you have to do it in a certain way and you should probably feel guilty for doing it completely

29:16

Western if you have a Western culture you're part of. That being said, have a good

29:22

Christmas. Merry Christmas, don't overthink it. Worship Christ, the newborn king who came just the way we all came into this world.

29:30

There are no small people, no small places, little town of Bethlehem and then took the sins of his people on himself.

29:39

Gave his life, born to die, born that man might live. And that is a glorious story.

29:47

And don't get lost in worrying about what culture, whether or not you should be adopting elements from another culture because, you know,

29:55

I don't know, for whatever reason. You're gonna get a better interpretation of scripture from that culture or whatever.

30:02

Just focus on the truth that we have in the word of God, translated in the language that you can speak and celebrate