A week ago, it didn’t seem possible that folks in our part of the world would be wondering whether we’d have a white Christmas. As late as Tuesday, “snow was falling, snow on snow, snow on snow,” to quote the carol, and plows were having trouble keeping up. But in the last two days, the temperature has vaulted into the 50’s, and now the only snow left is in the shrinking banks at the ends of driveways. Forecasters are teasing us with a chance for more snow today and tomorrow, but if it comes, it will be very light.
There’s an interesting post by Jesse Ferrell on Accuweather.com about why we Americans dream of a white Christmas. Considered objectively, it seems odd that snow should be associated with Christmas at all, since the vast majority of us rarely if ever experience both at the same time. Even Syracuse, the snowiest city in the lower 48, is covered in snow only two of every three Christmases. So what gives?
According to Ferrell, our mythical view of Christmas owes to the “Little Ice Age” of the early to mid-19th century, when snow was more common in December in both the U.S. and Europe, and when much of our holiday lore was composed. In 1844, Lydia Maria Child wrote, “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go,” and described a snowy Thanksgiving near Boston, Massachusetts. In 1843, Charles Dickens penned “A Christmas Carol” and described Londoners on Christmas Day “scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.” In 1822, Clement C. Moore wrote how, on Christmas Eve, “the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.”
Farrell says it is quite possible that all three of these authors were accustomed to snow in November and December because of the climatological conditions of the time in which they lived. But of course, the “Little Ice Age” was relatively brief, and has not been repeated, leaving most of us only to dream of a white Christmas.
This reminds me of the way many mainline Protestants look back longingly on the 1950’s and early 1960’s as normative for American church life, not realizing that church attendance in those years (particularly in historic Protestant churches) surged to peculiar heights. Attendance peaked at about 50% of the American public in 1957, but this was hardly typical. Even in the heady days following the Second Great Awakening in the 1830’s and 1840’s, church attendance never claimed 40% of the population. From the colonial era through the Revolutionary War period, it was below 20%. And yet, the decade of the 1950’s is commonly regarded as the last in a stable era of American Christendom that extended back to the beginning of our history.
We probably mythologize our own lives the same way. We fondly remember some period of time that we once thought would never end. Perhaps it was when our children were young and we made friends with other parents of young children. The community we developed with other families may have shaped our values in a profound way. Later, when we look back on those days, we wonder why the next generation doesn’t seek the same experiences we did. We regard those earlier days as “normative,” and lament the present as a time of decline or regression.
I have found that many people regard their relationships to God in a similar way. They recall a time when they were passionate about their faith – more prone to pray; “closer” to God – and wonder why they cannot return to that place. They regard their spirituality in that earlier time as normative (for a faithful Christian, anyway) and conclude that because they don’t have the same passion today as they did then, they must have disappointed God, who has since turned away from them.
In all these instances, the mistake is to regard a brief moment in time as the standard by which to judge all time, when in fact, those special experiences were gifts to be enjoyed when they were given, but not to be possessed in perpetuity. Life is always unfolding, and each leg of its journey offers its own blessings. When we mythologize one period of time or one past experience, we commit a kind of idolatry that prevents us from recognizing goodness wherever we are. When we idolize a particular experience of God, we lose the ability to recognize how God is at work in all of our experiences.
Instead of dreaming of a white Christmas, we do better to stay awake to the gifts that each Christmas brings to us, whether or not there is snow on the ground. And rather than dream of returning to some earlier time in life, we do better to give thanks for the particular gifts that come with every stage of life, even the hard ones, knowing that God is always with us.
©2013 by J. Mark Lawson
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