Author: Al
Posted: 2007-11-26 12:41:22
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Happy Birthday Jesus, Now Let's Get Sloshed
When I wrote that our recently filled forty-four ounce bottle of Obscvrvs would make for a very merry Christmas next year, I caught some flack. It seems that some people think a proper love of alcohol to be taboo at Christmastime. How did we get here and why? Does no one know what wassail is when we go a wassailing?
My first response to this indignation was to point out the vulgar commercialization of Christmas. Why attack a holy and blameless thing like good booze when there are more insidious and pervasive things like unfettered materialism marring the celebration of our savior's birth? That would be a fun but fruitless column, for in the end it is an ad hominem argument. It only says that alcohol at Christmastime is in the nebulous area of better-than-the-worst.
Nothing ever applies to everyone. At least nothing that I will ever say does. Some people obviously cannot have any alcohol. That is their problem, and the rest of us should respectfully keep away from them when we feel inclined to partake. We all have our temptations. I, for instance, cannot have praise. Believe me when I say that I find it far more intoxicating than any liquor. Should I then demand that no one else ever have any of this thing that is appropriate for most? No. Of course I do not hand out praise like it were free. Nor would I expect a bottle of Westlvleteren 12 from a teetotaler.
The reason is simple. Gifts often reciprocate themselves. Praise is often returned for praise, and micro brew is often returned for home brew. When it comes to such things, my disposition is more suited to the strict rule of the Trappist than to harsh appreciation from a teetotaler.
But for those of us who are not alcoholics, what makes the stuff so appropriate during this season? A new baby is the time for celebration and cigars. It is a time when we whisper to the newborn and then shout in the street. Pregnancy is a terrifying time. Even today, the medical uncertainties can be daunting. On top of that is the anticipation of the life that will soon be in your hands. All of this comes to a head in a spectacular and lengthy climax. It is painful and fraught with danger. To prepare to go through it is almost as hard as the thing itself. Thus, there was something fitting in the obsolete practice of giving the mother-to-be a shot of whiskey to numb the pain of birth. Now they merely get a shot in the back to deaden it entirely. I guess practical things are rarely beautiful.
When it is over, daddy has a new pride and joy. While mommy has, from all accounts, an experience more mystical that St. John could have ever drem't. If that isn't cause for celebration, then nothing is. We are a little cheated that our hospitals don't light a bonfire for the new father to dance around holding his new little one surrounded by friends, family, and rivals. The pagans and the peasants of the middle ages knew this and lived it. For them, more than for us, new life was really a victory over death. So many mothers and babies died during the process, that a happy ending was truly a relief on a level few of us experience today.
But there is one season, more than any other, that we all get to taste a fresh victory over death. During this time, when everything that springs from the ground returns to it, and all that has been sown has been reaped, and our bones are chilled to the core to remind us just how fragile we really are, we think back to the time when the hands that made the universe were tiny and new.
A young mother and baby fought through pain and terror in a cave in the middle of night with death itself. The babe's first victory was so much like everyone's before him. His last victory would be the first new thing under the sun in untold generations. He was the new wine. The best had been saved for last and we fall at his feet in worship even as we drink and dance in celebration. In him, relief and exhilaration are combined like never before and never again. Try not to focus too hard on one aspect or the other, or you will rob yourself of the miracle.
Worship and drink. For there are still preparations to make before our own battle with death, but we know that the battle is already won. |
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