Socialism, Christianity, and Christmas
Editor’s Note: One of my goals here at Red Letter is to explore leftist beliefs from different perspectives. If we are truly to become a collectivist society, we need to be able to see through each other’s eyes, respect each other’s beliefs, honor each other’s truth. This beautiful and personal piece about the juxtaposition of Christianity and socialism was written by the very talented Ian Murphy.
—RL
In this special season I’d like to look through the prism of Christianity at issues that are central to who we are and what we believe.
Let’s start with the music of the holiday.
“O Holy Night” came from an unlikely source, with words by a French poet, socialist and wine merchant named Placide Cappeau and music by Adolphe Adam, a Jewish composer best known for his ballets. In this carol, Cappeau gave us an explicitly Abolitionist hymn with the third verse declaring: “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease.” The words are a condemnation of slavery, and that contributed to its popularity in North America.
Franz Gruber was a schoolmaster in the tiny village of Arnsdorf, Germany. After the local church flooded in 1818, damaging the church organ, Father Joseph Mohr asked Gruber to compose a melody for words he had written that could be played on guitar to accompany that night’s mass. What resulted was the simple and iconic carol “Silent Night.” Designed to help a village come together after flooding, the carol has come to embody a sense of peace and fulfillment but the words, written two years previously in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, likely had another form of peace in mind: No more war.
Let’s look now at the people and the stories.
According to the New Testament, who are the first to learn of the birth of Jesus Christ? Angels declared to poor shepherds — not emperors, kings, rulers, politicians or wealthy men — that Christ, the King of Israel, had been born. This echoes Mary’s words in the Magnificat, the Catholic liturgy inspired by the New Testament’s Book of Luke: “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.”
On the other end of the spectrum, the modern Baptist hymn “Mary Did You Know?” was written as a series of questions the male writer wanted to ask the mother of Christ. For me, this song makes obvious many of the wrongs of modern Christianity in treating Mary as if she were a child, inexperienced, uneducated and ignorant. The Book of Luke again makes clear that Mary, the woman chosen to birth the saviour of the world in rather ridiculous circumstances, absolutely DID know. The carol is a lengthy and uncomfortable bit of mansplaining.
Mary is a complex figure. Traditional readings of the Bible chart are patriarchal of course, with men writing the text, translating the text, reading the text and teaching others about the text. These men often seemed to feel that women are evil — Eve commits the first transgression and encourages Adam to do the same, after all — and hold Mary up as an exceptional example of purity and perfection because she was a long-suffering virgin.
This reading overlooks that when Mary is notified by an angel that she is going to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God, she is actually being told that her body is going to be violated and impregnated without consent, she will carry and birth the child and name him Jesus. Mary is given no choice over her own body and is not even given a choice on the name of her child.
We must not forget the cultural consequences of the time for an unwed, pregnant woman — she could expect to be socially shunned and expect her engagement to a righteous man to be called off due to her perceived impurity. We must not forget that Mary must rely on Joseph believing her and forgiving her (for something she didn’t do). We must not forget Mary’s remarkable strength and endurance and remember only her purity.
Congregations are reminded of how innocent and unsuspecting and perfect Mary must have been by some young girl singing “Mary Did You Know?” in church. The congregation complacently coos over her flawlessness. In a similar way believers can be guilty of complacency in thinking that if we make sure we seen doing the right things — because how we look to others is critically important in an organization with a social hierarchy like exists in a church — and if we say the right things and pray hard enough there will be a brand new Mercedes Drop Top Kompressor wrapped with a shiny gift bow parked outside our door on Christmas Day.
It doesn’t work like that.
The first book of Luke in the New Testament is a declaration of war and revolution. Mary knows her history. She knows the Israelites had waited centuries for a Messiah. She understands what this means for the world and, with the Magnificat, she marks the occasion by singing. She sings not merely to celebrate Christ’s birth or to announce his arrival. Her voice, her song, is a rallying cry, a call to arms. If this carol were scripturally accurate it would simply say:
“Mary, did you know?”
“Yes. I knew. What time does the revolution start?”
That would be the entirety of the song. I can hear Chumbawamba recording it now as an intro to a blazing Socialist Christmas E.P.
You don’t have to be a Christian to get something out of Christmas and the message of Christmas. “Peace on Earth, goodwill to men,” kindness, hope. After 2020 we need a season of hope, but we need more than just that. Hope is passive. We need the hope of a better future due to the change that we are going to bring about. A change that is implemented in the hearts and actions of an army of individuals. Drastic change and a total revolution are required to implement enduring change that exists in the heart of people. We can hope for that if we are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, if we have religious faith or humanist faith or no faith in anything at all.
It was obvious over 2,000 years ago that a revolution was necessary. Governments and leaders have come and gone but vast inequality remains. Women are still giving birth in stables due to inadequate and unaffordable healthcare. Women are still prized by the patriarchy for their purity and punished for enjoying their sexuality. War, pestilence, famine and plague still ravage the world. Vain and corrupt leaders still live in luxury while lording it over us, abusing the public purse for their own benefit, while ordinary people grapple with the impacts of floods, war and a patriarchy still determined to tell a woman’s story for her, sanitize it and usurp her place in the narrative.
We still need a revolution and we are running out of time.
May all of our readers have a happy, healthy and peaceful Christmas and if you believe in him, remember that Christ did not come to pat little kids on the head and tell you everything will be okay if you are kind to animals and not a jerk. He came to spark a revolution and change the world.
So Happy Christmas, and bring on the revolution.
It’s time to remake the world.