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.