The world being what it is, there is always plenty of justification for pessimism. Christmas can be especially difficult if we are facing illness, divorce, or financial hardship. The season’s jollity taunts and rebukes us. Our thoughts may turn to those who, without expectation of return, supported us and believed in us, in the vague but civilization-sustaining hope that one day we would vindicate their faith. That these people are too often out of our minds, crowded as we are with the mere business of life, contributes to the moral drift of middle age. We find ourselves further and further from whatever we set out to become. And yet hope, whether it be for eternal salvation or something nearer to hand, must be embraced. We are an optimistic people. That is our signature strength.
As a child, I spent most Christmases with my grandparents in Florida. The priest in their wealthy parish drove a white Cadillac, wore fine vestments, drank expensive whiskey. If you did not stock the whiskey, Father Reilly did not come to your house. Since a social visit from a priest was a status marker—things being somewhat different then—the local merchants kept plenty of Glenlivet on hand. Father Reilly probably told himself that his exemplary taste added to the honor of his office. I felt a strong, instinctive resentment of him. He was form without substance, status without honor.
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The Army–Navy football game, always played on the second Saturday in December, marks the start of the holiday season in my house. The CBS television broadcast, which leans heavily on patriotic themes, is a chance to meditate on the fortunate but complex fate of being an American. The broadcast opens with a short documentary film, the “tease,” that combines contemporary interviews with archival footage to celebrate the game’s history and the tradition of American military service. On one hand, the tease is a lavishly produced, Emmy-seeking, entertainment product. It openly courts an emotional tribute from its audience. On the other hand—my goodness. There are some things about which one should try not to be cynical.
After they finish playing football and graduate, this season’s Army and Navy players will be commissioned as officers and will owe the U.S. government five years of military service. At 22, they will be undertaking lethal responsibilities as platoon leaders or division officers. We have trained them to fight and to lead, perhaps someplace far from their homes, in environments where the moral lines so clear on the parade ground may be much harder to make out. Since 9/11, several players who played in the Army–Navy game have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars we’re still fighting at home. Yes, being American is a complex fate.
At halftime of this year’s game, I saw a commercial for those miniature Hess trucks that appear for sale around the holidays. I received several of these trucks as a child. They were then sold at Hess gas stations, a saving grace for many a harried father. The trucks are a vestigial product of American manufacturing, with their heavy die-cast metal, rubber tires, and working doors and headlights. It pleased me to own something so well-made. Hess gas stations have been gone for more than a decade, and this year, the Hess oil and gas production business was sold to Chevron. All that remains now of the Hess name are the toy trucks. There is something American in this, too. Those who lament the commercialization of Christmas do not understand how much emotional valence we can invest in mass-produced things.
Gifts, after all, are meant to have resonance. You could write a thudding doctoral thesis on the Santa Claus myth and never begin to unpack his symbolic meaning. Indeed, he is somewhat different in every Christian culture. In the United States, Santa Claus is fat. In The Netherlands, Sinterklaas is tall and thin. I like him fat. I like to think of him at the end of Christmas night, after he has unburdened himself of his enormous sack of presents, rolling up his red velvet pants and dipping his swollen legs in warm salt water. His customary jollity has been spent: the job seems to get a little harder every year. He is weary but well-satisfied. He has done his duty. In this mental image, perhaps, he becomes a symbol of American empire rather than of universal joy. It’s not easy to keep the whole show going.
I won’t argue that things are going well for the United States at the moment. They are not. We are richer than ever, but our faith in our riches as a sign of God’s providence ebbs, and the peace of our hearts is ever more elusive. Can we love our neighbor as we love ourselves? If we cannot, despite our blessings, then we will deserve our fate. And that is just what much of the rest of the world thinks about us now—that we are getting, at long last, what we deserve. It is not a law of history that the American story always ends in triumph. For now, at least, our future is still in our hands.
The small newspaper that my archdiocese puts out ran an insert last week about this year’s ordinations, accompanied by photographs of the new priests. The men were of different ages and races, but the faces were somehow the same, with the same expressions of openness and slightly forced goodwill. I found myself moved by those photographs, not because I think that priests are extraordinary people but because I know that they are not. The courage of those men in taking religious orders at a moment when Catholic priests are viewed with great suspicion depends upon that very ordinariness. They are embracing lonely and difficult work for which they can expect meager reward, at least in this life—not even, in all likelihood, a Cadillac to match Father Reilly’s. They do so in the hope that they will find strength when strength is needed. They are prepared to stand in the breach. I wish them well.
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