December 26, 2006

Christmas morning thoughts

Posted by Adrienne Maree Brown at 11:20AM

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I grew up with heaven, somewhere better to aim for, above this place, cloud based, made possible by a life of good behavior defined by sins.

I grew up with Jesus; he had died for our sins. I ate his body, drank his blood -- I was only a child. He was born of a virgin, crucified at the age of 33, buried behind a big rock, returned to leave again. I remember when I learned he might be 'of color'. Yay, Jesus!

I grew up with Christmas, wreaths, stockings, Santa Claus, shopping, trees and tree-skirts, cookies, magic, abundance -- at least once a year. I didn't have an analysis around consumption; I had an expectation for magic and joy. My parents were the ringleaders of this -- they allowed enough innocence to abound for moments of discovery that showed you someone was paying attention ... Santa knew your favorite color, singer, and all your needs.

When I am with my family, we slip back into this place which each of us carries to some degree.

We have Christmas, none of us ready even in adulthood to give up Santa or each other, no one having crossed the line yet to add an outsider to the process of our ritual. Some things are too awesome.

We have Jesus, a sprinkling, this time in the sleepy, pretty tradition of midnight mass insisted upon my youngest sister, our newest and only Catholic. And it is good to remember Jesus, champion of the poor (or as we now say the disenfranchised, marginalized, the people of color, the global south, the impacted, etc, etc), humble man of the streets with savior and sacrifice running through his young veins.

But most of all, we have heaven as a point of comparison for when the five of us are aligned, not angry or passive aggressive, not regressing into old familiar roles, but laughing together and present and completely alive, over breakfast, cherishing our precious time together -- no harps, my mom on the short list for possible angels in the flesh.

As we grow up and develop our long list of ways the world is conspiring against us and call it an analysis of oppression, I sometimes want to show people the inside of my family's Christmas, with its relative abundance as we all give each other what we can. With its portion of Jesus, implications of heaven ... this adoration of each other, and the certainty that this world and each person in it contain, it must be said, multitudes.