Download CHRISTMAS: WHAT`S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT

CHRISTMAS: WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
By Prof Tinyiko Sam Maluleke
Executive Director for Research: UNISA
...it's physical
Only logical
...What's love got to do, got to do with it
What's love but a second hand emotion
What's love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken
(Tina Turner - 1993)
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When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary
home as his wife (Matthew 1:24).
Consumption Time?
Ever since the early Christians set aside a day and a date for the commemoration of the birth
of Jesus Christ, now known to us as Christmas, the day has come to mean many things.
Layers of myth, tradition and ritual have been used to embellish, design, describe and
proscribe Christmas. Two thousand years later, a great Christmas industry of merchandise
and folklore - complete with reindeers, carols, boxed presents, Christmas trees, Josephs,
Maries and Santa Clauses of all shapes and sizes - has been born.
How has the birth of one child inspired such an industry, such fantastical imagination, such
demand and such insatiable consumption? What has all of these things to do with Christmas?
What have they to do with Jesus? All the noises, the things, the aromas, the colours and
feelings we have come to associate with Christmas - what have they do to with Christmas?
Has the Christmas industry developed its own logic so that it has become a logical and
merely physical constellation of events culminating on the 25th of December? Is the
Christmas industry something that appears so logical that we ‘have no choice’ but to be part
of - something evocatively physical and powerfully practical to which we succumb rather
than subscribe?
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
In her celebrated and well-known song, Turner sang of the ‘logic of the logical’ and the
powerful ‘attraction of the physical’ - not mediated or diluted by love - which is but a
‘second-hand emotion’. She was, of course, not talking of Christmas but of the difference
between committed loving relationships and non-committal physical relationships. But the
question she asks repeatedly in the song is worth directing at our Christmas traditions and
practices as they have evolved. What has love to do with any of the things that we have come
to associate with Christmas? Christmas has become busy, practical and logical with little
room left for love which is not mediated through the materials associated with it. As a matter
of fact, love is and should be what Christmas is all about.
First, we may talk of love, at the level of Mary and Joseph. Inherited tradition and teachings
tend to discourage us thinking of Joseph and Mary as a couple, let alone as a loving couple.
Instead they are presented to us like a loveless couple who are propelled by duty and
obedience to become husband and wife. Even as husband and wife their roles are functional
and utilitarian - they were just a channel through which the baby Jesus was to be born and
protected. What has love to do with this picture of Joseph and Mary? Almost nothing. Yet
surely, only a couple with deep love for one another could go through all the things that the
two of them went through. No amount of angelic interventions and admonitions is going to
make a man stick around a woman he has no feeling for and vice versa!
Second, despite the hype with which we now approach Christmas and despite the consumerist
excesses of the event, love does not seem central to our Christmas practices. Is this why the
so-called festive season is also the loneliest most miserable season for many? Is this the
reason why some of the highest suicide rate statistics in many countries of the world fall
between 24 December and 2 January?
Third, love as understood in the story of Christmas is not merely love for self and love for
one’s own kin and kith. God had no business to love humans but loves them all the same.
When Chrismas is construed as a time for love for one’s inner circle – a time for ‘family’ in
the narrowest and exclusivist sense of the word, then we are distorting both Christmas and
God’s intention.
Behind our folkloric embellishments and behind the marketing razz matazz that accompanies
our Christmases, lies the simple story of a child whose birth indicates and symbolises - for
Christians at least - the most direct intervention by God in the lives of human beings ever. In
other words, the most complete demonstration of God’s love for human beings. Therefore, at
the heart of the Christmas story, is the story of love. So; what’s love got to do with
Christmas? Well, what Christmas outside of and without love? We therefore need to sing a
different song from that of Tina Turner. Love has everything to do with Christmas. Indeed
Christmas is all about love. This then is the time to have a heart and risk it being broken. Just
like God does in the birth of Jesus Christ.
Discussion Questions
1. Describe and share the current myths, lores and practices associated with Christmas in
your community. How do they affect your perception/reading of the New Testament stories
of the birth of Jesus, if at all?
2. Using the relevant passages from Matthew 1 and 2, retell the story of the birth of Jesus
with love as a central theme and objective.
3. As a Christian, write to the mayor of your city or the leader of your village suggesting
practical ways in which your community can i) avoid some of the excesses of the Christmas
industry ii) reduce the strains and stresses that affect the poor and the lonely at this time of
the year, iii) ensure that Christmas is practically experienced as a time of love.