Join Hands: Message of Unity Heartens Island Over Christmas

By JOHN SCHULE JR.

The moods of the Christmas season are many and wondrous. They speak of joy and of hope, of laughter and of love, of warmth and of peace on earth, good will to all people. These moods, and the other emotions of Christmas days, are familiar to many, each mood beautifully expressed and each one touched with a special magic of the season.

There was magic, remember, in that week before Christmas - was it a year ago, 50? Remember when the snow fell thickly, leaving the ground a spotless carpet of white. You had stopped at the store, you had bought a couple of gifts, and as you walked home that quiet night with snow crunching underfoot, you walked in a veritable wonderland of winter. The air was cold and crisp. The stars shone brightly. There was joy and wonder in your heart. And it was all because of the spirit of Christmas.

There is magic, too, in the legend of jolly Old Saint Nicholas. In homes a bright fire must be kept and food displayed in plain sight on the kitchen table or on a window ledge the night before Christmas. Santa Claus, being the plump little man he is and with all the work he has to do, will find a moment to stop and eat. He always has; he always will.

The first sleigh ride and the singing of the carols: Silent Night, surely the most beautiful song ever written, and Jingle Bells, the most popular. Chestnuts roasting over an open fire. Hundreds of cookies baked and put away for safekeeping until the week of Christmas. Children laughing as they build the Christmas snowman; the pleasure mom and dad derive when they ask to help and are permitted to do so. The holly and mistletoe. The hiding of gifts, the trying to find them and sometimes succeeding, the silver and the gold, red and green wrappings. The buying of the tree, the trimming, the tinsel, old ornaments and new ones, too, and the star or angel at the top. We know these moods well, for these are the lighter moods of Christmas. The other moods of the season are just as familiar, but they bring with them a closer look at the real meaning of Christmas.

Home for Christmas! Those three words mean more to more people than perhaps any other words. And why shouldn't they? Home to family and friends, to warmth and love, to the familiar. This feeling is so much a part of Christmas.

The best part of Christmas is, of course, the reason for Christmas. Christmas eternally reminds us that there is something more heroic in life - something more worthy than we have ever known. Christmas creates a spirit that supplies the urge to seek a quality of living more exalted, if not for ourselves, at least for our children, as in Ogden Nash's quatrain:

God rest you, merry innocents,
While innocence endures.
A sweeter Christmas than we to ours
May you bequeath to yours.

Almost every year, I spend some time thinking of Christmas past and how the past may help to celebrate the meaning of this season in the present and in the days to come.

It is easy to assume that everyone is looking forward to the coming of Christmas, but I suspect that there are many who are looking forward to its passing.

The fact is, however, that something does seem to happen at this time of the year. Is it all a pose? Has it become a fake? Is Christmas a result of all the artificial sentimentality that is deliberately cultivated by opportunists of various interests?

Or, could it be that once upon a time God reached out to humanity in the form of a precious present? Does the Christmas message help to shape a more meaningful present? Does it form a more creative future?

Several years ago the Associated Press carried an article about a little child who was lost in one of those vast cornfields in the Midwest. Family and friends searched a day and a night and did not find the child. Another day and a night the search continued. On the third day, one of the searching party said, "Let's join hands." Then a single column of hundreds of people, hand in hand, moved across the field. Later that day they found the child, dead. And a grieving mother said, "Why didn't we join hands sooner?"

Coming just before Christmas, it made me think of things I might not otherwise have thought of, and the first thing was how many people, how many communities, how many countries there are in trouble every Christmas as we sing, "Peace on earth, good will toward all."

Every Christmas there are wars being fought, if not world wars, then local wars, and if not wars on battlefields, wars going on in homes and families, in political factions, in neighborhood strifes. There are prisons and prisons and more prisons. And there are always hospitals and convalescent homes filled with the sick and the dying, always homes broken and breaking, always aches and pains that go unrecorded. Will there ever be a Christmas without the needy, the lonely, the lost, the dying?

One of the things the spirit of Christmas does is to join us together. We all have times when we want to be alone, we want to be left alone, we need to be alone. That is part of our nature as an individual. There are times for that.

But we won't get very far alone, ever, not if we cut ourselves off from the rest of the family. I mean not only our immediate family but the total family. When we do that, the only way we are likely to go is downward.

For instance, if we haven't been well and we want to get well, we've got to join hands. We can't do it all by ourselves. We join hands with the ones who can help us - a doctor, a nurse, a friend. We join hands with God!

If we have lost a loved one and we want to get out of the valley of the shadow of death, not to reject it, but to get out of it and get on with living and helping others, we have to join hands with other people who have been through the same thing. We join hands with a community of faith, with Hospice, who can help us get through it and out into the light.

If we have lost our grip on life - lost our confidence not only in ourselves but in life, in the world, in the system - we have to join hands with others if we want to do anything about it.

It seems to me that at Christmas we begin a change, at least most people do, to reach out to others and others reach out to us. That is, messages come on cards and in telephone calls. People we meet on the street we greet, and we feel a little freer communication between them and ourselves. Families reach out to families, one generation out to another, fathers and mothers to the children. And, as we get older we reach backward through our memory to all the Christmases that have gone before; how different they were, and yet how much the same. Of course, we are different, too, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but we change.

At a season like this we begin to join hands. We don't get back exactly what we lost, not often. We get something else. We get a new and more inclusive perspective on things, a new vitality and energy. And, at some point along the way we come to the conclusion that we didn't do it alone.

At Christmas we continue the same old journey, but a little better prepared to meet the rough spots, the dark places, the sad times, because we have joined hands with a few other people. We give up the idea that we can go it alone.

We join hands to pray for peace and for the return of those in harm's way. We join hands to preserve the beauty of Martha's Vineyard, we join hands to make our community safe, we join hands in providing good education for our young, we join hands to conquer disease, we join hands to fight poverty. And wouldn't it be wonderful if all people, of all faiths, would join hands and celebrate one God, rather than be alienated from one another by the different paths to God . . . join hands with God and bring peace and good will to everyone.

On that first Christmas, God reached out to everyone and said, join hands, join hands with me, help me find the lost child.

In this world of polarization, thank God for a child who can capture for a few days the hopes of poor shepherds and rich men alike. In this world of little dreams which enhance the power of some over others, thank God for a child who can unite the imagination and will of so many millions and millions of people for the common good.

If we want to find the lost child, we cannot do it by ourselves. Not until we join hands will we ever find the lost child.

The Rev. Dr. John Schule Jr. serves as pastor emeritus of the Federated Church in Edgartown. He will speak during the Sunday service this weekend.