Everybody’s kin to Jesus (Part 1)

– for mom and dad

Christ’s peace be with us, fellow earthlings. I’ve beaded these words over days and days, rubbing them with prayers to make a difference. 

Americans lean into neighborliness at the end of every year. For a couple of weeks, hearth and community go arm in arm. Then we revert to business as usual for the next twelve months.

Today’s finale to the Gregorian calendar feels like a close-out sabbath, or maybe a collective hospice, with society rallying for one last burst of caregiving. Either way, Christmas often feels more like an end-of-year balm rather than the affirmation of eternal love.

So here’s my resolve for our ride round the sun, a rosary for kinder revolutions. I’m carrying the holiday torch, trying to keep the holy going, for personal sanity and civic well-being.


The idea of holiness might summon images of a big cathedral, but I think of it as a little cabin in the woods. Once upon a time this was a homeplace. Now it’s a vacation spot people visit on certain occasions, especially Christmas.

In my childhood the holy visit began after Thanksgiving, built momentum through Advent, then peaked on December 25th. But in the old days it included Epiphany (January 6th) and Candlemas (now February 2nd, originally observed on February 14th).

A cozy fire always glows inside this cabin, stoked to counter cold dead news. Everyone’s welcome here to warm the old cockles, thaw our souls for the haul so we can jingle all the way.


Hopefully my stay includes watching more Hallmark Christmas movies with mom, as long as she’s able. Such flicks beam us into the zone of benevolence, usually with the help of a love story.

Not long ago, such hearty endearments were only available during annual network broadcasts or December theater showings. Today’s tech enables us to swaddle ourselves in Christmas cheer whenever the deck we wish.

“Miracle on 34th Street” had a formative influence on mom, soon after it was released in 1947. The movie transported her from small-town Appalachia into the sparkly bustle of New York City. The holiday classic co-starred an 8-year-old girl (mom was about that age when she first saw the movie) and an elderly Macy’s Santa who was 8 years younger than America’s repeat boomer president.

Cynics easily pick this movie apart, ending as it does with a wish that’s beyond reach for most people (namely, suburban affluence). Yet the screenplay filled mom’s childhood with spunk. It whirls round the relationship between an adorable child and a sweetly meshuga senior who renews everyone’s faith by being a real mensch. For families like mine, such stories mesh with a magical wish for humanity.

What’s inside that big box, if we’re blessed with a miracle? Material riches? Worldly dominion? Triumphal pride? These are logical guesses at our skyscraping wants, as manifest in the towering grandeur of Christmas in the Big Apple.

“People are proud to be saying Merry Christmas again,” President Trump tweeted during his first stay in the White House. “I am proud to have led the charge against the assault of our cherished and beautiful phrase. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!”

Those exclamation marks stick like arrows from a strongman’s bow, shot through the axe-heads of America’s conscience. Yet look inside our target hearts. What tender wisdom does Christmas plant that grows and bears fruit among us?

For me the answer is simple. Christmas points to the first thing every person wants  – a loving home with loving parents in a loving community. We don’t have to choose between these loves, as if they’re competing social engagements. They fit together, forever and ever, kindled with the love lit by Jesus Christ.

“Oh Christmas isn’t just a day,” says Kris Kringle in the holiday classic. “It’s a frame of mind.”

Some would use the word “worldview” here, to convey a spiritual vista that guides our relationships. It motivates our shared care for the most vulnerable. It fuels our stewardship of creation.

These blessings of our God-given nature shine bright during the dark months of winter, when folks need them most. As light returns we gather to wassail the lengthening days. Yet this camaraderie can and should happen anytime. There’s year-round inspiration in the stories and songs linked with Christmas. Mere words can always open doors.


Consider “Kris Kringle,” for example. As a cross-cultural geek I find it cool that this jolly-old-elfin name is derived from “Christkindl,” originally a cherubic child figure who still serves as the key Christmas gift-bringer in parts of the Americas.

Replicas of the Christkindl (also called “Niño Dios”) are carried into churches every Candlemas, similar to the way dolls are used to reenact the Nativity during December. This commemorates the presentation of Jesus by Mary and Joseph at the temple in Jerusalem, following the prescribed 40-day period of post-birth repose. Religious lawmen say this interval is for “purification.” From an all-natural perspective, it’s a time of motherly healing and parental bonding.



The presentation of Jesus was a special case. Questions about his paternity were circulating, amped by the dramatic circumstances of his birth. Joseph was not the biological father. Did God sire the child, as some had heard? Two witnesses at the temple lent weight to that understanding.

Another story making the rounds was that Mary had been seduced and/or raped by a Roman soldier. This crime is common with martial subjugation. Indeed, history shows that sexual assault is a not-so-covert weapon used in empire’s arsenal. Records indicate that many women were violated during Roman occupation of the area where Mary and Joseph resided.

Religious authorities extol the couple’s faith in overcoming social challenges. Their faith must have been intertwined with an awesome soul-mated love, though I rarely hear this mentioned as part of the Nativity. Surely the deep romantic bond between these young newlyweds was manifest to all who came in their presence. Time and again, such depth of human affection transcends ethnic codes.

Absent this loving union, Jesus might have been marked for life as a mix-blood or mongrel, what’s known as a “mamzer” in the religion of his upbringing. Apparently mamzers still occupy a low caste according to the strictures of Judaism. They’re banned from membership in the Lord’s congregation, an exclusion that applies to 10 generations of their descendants.

Mary and Joseph’s presentation of their son affirmed the incarnation of Christ in community. Imagine concentric circles of love, spreading out from the Christkindl to all God’s children. Love connects all relations in that holy worldview. 

How might the end to purification console victims of conquest throughout the ages? The question inspires me to think more deeply about the meaning of purity, and the whole notion of virginity as it haunts subjugated people. I’m especially interested in what happened around the first Christmas celebrations of Epiphany and Candlemas, when the collective memory of Jesus was fresh, and followers expanded on oral testimonies to center our fellowship.


Candlemass was not celebrated as part of my Appalachian upbringing. Neither was Epiphany, for the most part, even though elder traditions in the hills refer to Jan 6th as “Old Christmas.”

People who live in other regions still celebrate these holidays, as part of the extended Christmas season. This includes many congregations with cultural roots spanning the US/Mexico border. In some latina/latino communities, parents are chosen on Epiphany to host a feast for Candlemas, also called “Candelaria.” They dress the Christ-child in fine clothing and prepare food to share, reenacting the presentation of Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem.

These celebrations of the holy have crossed borders to rejuvenate Christ’s love within communities all over the world. They affirm our universal homecoming, point our collective compass toward love in every geographic region and sector of society.

Universal? Yes, because Old Christmas commemorates the arrival of Magi to welcome Christ on earth. These “Wise Men” (though there may have been women among them) came from beyond the religious establishment of Judea.

Called “gentiles” at the time, these outsiders would have been tagged with other labels by the political hierarchies that arose later, after Jesus was murdered. These included “heathen” (people of the heaths, unsettled areas) and pagan (from paganus, meaning country dwellers). The word “savage” is a synonym, used by colonial forces to dehumanize inhabitants of the land.

All these labels signify rural lifeways that rely on working relationships with ecosystems and knowledge of outdoor lore. “Hillbilly” is a modern relative, used by empire-builders to belittle people who live beyond the urban order. Such words imply unclean, contaminated, impure.

Surely the Magi crossed paths with many hillbillies on their way to that straw-filled manger, probably exchanging stories around the fire. These would include farmers who plant by the signs, flock tenders who sleep beneath the stars, frontier trackers, wildcrafters who gather natural medicines. I imagine first-hand accounts of the Nativity included many colorful homegrown idioms rooted in generations of living close to the land, praying in the wilderness.

Epiphany and Candlemas remind humanity of our shared welcome to holiness. Yet selfish rivalries tempted people to exclude and sacrifice others, long before the inn-crowd forced Mary to labor with the livestock. I suspect the first attack on inclusivity occurred when Cain founded the earth’s first city. The spirit of Candlemas has been abandoned, in many places. And it grieves me to think that January 6th may no longer be celebrated as Epiphany, but instead an imperial assault on democracy.

I reckon much of what’s happening now is a cultural reflux of what went down a while back, when rulers began using Jesus as a prop for colonization. Empire has co-opted spiritual leadership in this way for millennia.


During the 1960s and 70s it was generally accepted in our neighborhood that the high holy days of winter should cease soon after New Year’s Day. Christmas was bundled into the weeks leading up to December 25th, which was a singular climax for the season. That date was chosen under the Roman rule of Constantine, in the 4th century AD, along with other customs that served empire.

The actual date of Christ’s birth is uncertain. Placing the holiday soon after the winter solstice ties it with the solar cycle. As days begin to lengthen, there’s beauty in celebrating Jesus as the light of the world. The connection continues with Epiphany, which is near perihelion, when the sun is physically closest to the earth. The current date for Candlemas (Feb 2) is shared with Groundhog’s Day, which began as a Roman prognostication involving the sun and hedgehogs.

Links between Christ and earth’s closest star were reinforced under Constantine with the shift toward Sunday as the sabbath. Some believers fret over such connections, claiming he tossed a bone to infidels who held the sun in higher esteem than Jesus. I view such worry itself as a diversion from far more somber changes that empire wrought on the fellowship of Christ.


Truth is, our universe is one creation that includes all critters and heavenly spheres, indeed everything our puny human senses can detect and so much more. Being a miniscule part of the whole is overwhelming, yet the loving faith of my parents comforts me in the knowledge that every least particle is treasured by God.

This quantum love frees me of the notion I’ll ever benefit from the driving motives of Constantine. I know we earthlings won’t be better off if we surrender civic authority to oligarchs who roll the dice at Crimean resorts, or rich sun-worshipers who’re lining up to buy new ocean-front condos in Gaza.

Of course it was wonderful growing up with the privilege of annual trips to the beach, before over-tourism strangled the Carolinas. Mom and dad would sing songs during our 8-hour drive from the hills down into the low country, trying to keep peace among us kids.

“Lord build me just a cabin in the corner of gloryland, where I can just hear the angels sing and shake Jesus’ hand. No I don’t want a fine mansion, on earth’s sinking sand. Just build me a cabin in the corner of gloryland.”

Our foremost privilege was living in a place where family and friends weren’t being erased from existence. Appalachian culture was being stripped, yes, along with much of the native landscape. I surely knew hill folks who suffered at the base of wealth’s pyramid. But our kith and kin weren’t being systematically assaulted, removed from their homes, or starved by the armed force of empire.

For a while Christ’s followers rejected this force worshipped as Mars, god of war. Christian resistance posed a challenge for the beneficiaries of conquest, and contributed to our persecution.

Then Constantine had a famous dream, heaven-sent according to his clergy. The vainglorious emperor was told in the dream that his warriors would be victorious in battle if they put Christ’s name on their shields. Empire thus re-presented Jesus for martial deployment.

Here’s a revelation that came while writing this testimony, a Christmas mystery I’d like to solve. Records show the first celebrations of Candlemas occurred on February 14th. They were held in Jerusalem, 40 days after Old Christmas, Epiphany.

Why was the holiday season moved and ultimately shortened? Did empire tweak tradition to shift mass behavior away from celebrations that threatened the supply-chain of conquest?

We don’t know much about the original Candlemas ceremonies, celebrated in Jerusalem on what is now Valentine’s Day. We also don’t know much about the murdered priest by that name. Was his ministry connected with Candlemas services, later moved by decree to another date populated by hedgehogs?

Bits and pieces provide enough to begin an inquiry. According to one strand of folklore, preacher Valentine was executed because he defied a particular imperial order. He officiated the marriages of young couples, solemnizing their love after being strictly forbidden from doing so.

Apparently empire’s ranking authorities observed that family men made less effective conquistadores. I reckon that martial force would be further weakened if family values were directly linked with the holy couple and their son. Even more so if a gifted preacher consoled his persecuted congregation with sermons about how marriage overcame social stigmas surrounding Mary’s pregnancy.

This would be a wonderful way to extend Christmas, emphasize how the parenthood of a loving couple was chosen by God to incarnate peace in every community. However, it might make young martial recruits and conscripts less focused on subjugation, distract them with feelings of empathy, turn them into pussies.

“What Would Jesus Do,” isn’t a question emperors want running through the heads of their mercenaries. Better some mantra to stay on top of the task of weaponized manhood, something like “This is my rifle, this is my gun. This is for fighting, this is for fun.”


Today, on February 14th, the Christkindl has been replaced by Cupid. This bugger signals a very different kind of holiday zeal, despite his similar cherubic appearance. Cupid is the mythical son of Mars. His arrows are tipped with an intoxicant that induces the passionate desire to possess. The word “cupidity,” meaning lust for wealth, casts a hard shadow on the words “be mine.”

My first childhood memory of February 14th involved the circulation of cards among kindergarten classmates. Everybody received one. The word “valentine” signified brotherly love, an ideal that’s as subject to ridicule today as the ideals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I reflect on this when I walk past the large nativity scene displayed at mom’s care facility. She rarely sees it, because the poliovirus she contracted as a girl returned with a vengeance and has left her bedfast.

My siblings and I try to maintain mom’s comfort. We help her with meals, navigate confusion, keep her company. There’s a little artificial tree in her room decorated with different ornaments according to each time of year. A caregiver friend recently trimmed mom’s tree with red hearts and ribbons that say love. This carries the spirit of Christmas forward.

Of course these are just little rituals, ways of treading rough waters. Mom and dad also raised us for the deep dive, helped us make friends with Christ. They modeled the profound love of a holy family, taught that Jesus can soften souls, even unfreeze our collective conscience.

Love keeps shining during dark times.

Stay holy. Be valentines forever.

Merry Christmas, again and again.