The Twelve Days of Christmas... Till January 6th
So we're offering you this Christmas message from Pastor Larry Beane
The BEC welcomes the return of Pastor Larry Beane whose influence on this site cannot be overstated. His steadfast faith in Jesus Christ inspires many; his skill with the pen humbles the bec.
We are so pleased to welcome him back with a message of the season that has not hit its “sell-by date.” Not indeed. We celebrate the Birth of Christ not only on the 25th of December, but for Twelve Days! And we encourage everyone to jettison the way it seems to be celebrated now, as if the Christmas Season starts at Thanksgiving and ends on the 26th. Imagine how much fun we’d all have if Advent were set aside to prepare, and the 12 Days of Christmas were set aside for the celebrations!
Merry Christmas, everyone!
By: Rev. Larry Beane
I don't listen to the radio very much. But if I'm driving alone, I will sometimes turn it on. I'll usually listen to a classic rock station, or maybe talk radio - but this time I landed on the classical station and was listening.
The soft baritone voice of the announcer came on to wish me a happy first day of Kwanzaa, and told me that the theme of the day was Unity. They promised music by a black female composer later on.
It was very much the stuff of the Babylon Bee. One can only speculate the reasoning behind the announcement. It could be that the station is sensitive to charges of "elitism" (classical music, after all, is not pop, meaning "popular" music). It could be to deflect accusations of "racism" (most classical music suffers from the plague of "whiteness," being composed by people of that despised racial heritage). It could be to increase "inclusiveness" by attracting more minorities into the classical music community (one can just imagine young people excitedly announcing that they were going to download Lizzo and Cardi B, but thanks to that Kwanzaa announcement on the classical station, they're all going to get together for a Vivaldi and Chopin party). It may also be that the station is run by secularists who have a problem with Christians, and thus, their holiday, and wish to dilute its influence. It may also be a little of all of the above.
There is a lot of resentment among non-Christians about being confronted with lighted trees and fake snowmen. It is especially egregious to some to see nativity scenes. Oh the humanity! Every year, we are scolded and told to say "Happy Holidays," instead, and Christians naturally push back by saying "Merry Christmas." We are told that "Happy Holidays" is inclusive, and doesn't exclude non-Christians.
But there is nobody less inclusive than the Happy Holidays crowd. They want to exclude Christians from honoring one of their two high holy days, and insist that we use their secular greeting. But we don't do that with anything else.
When I used to visit Canada on July 1st, I was often greeted with "Happy Canada Day." And I reciprocated. Nobody was guilted into not saying it because there might be Americans like me present, or there might be people who hate Canada, and we need to be sensitive to them. No, it was just "Happy Canada Day." Nobody said, "Happy National Days" to accommodate me and other Americans who would be celebrating their own holiday on the 4th of July. No insult was given. No insult was taken
.
In fact, I appreciated the patriotism of my Canadian friends and relatives, and was honored to participate as an outsider. We went to Parliament Hill for fireworks, sang "O Canada," and imbibed Moose Head and Canadian. It was a great time of rejoicing, and I never once thought their celebration should be put on hold for me. It never occurred to me to be a Debbie Downer and scold the nation of Canada for its "cultural insensitivity" and "lack of inclusion" to Non-Canadians. Then again, that was in the last millennium, eons ago, in a culture far away. Maybe things are different now. Maybe Trudeau now celebrates Canada Day by throwing eggs at the statue of Queen Victoria, assuming that they haven't yet torn it down. It is 2022 after all.
Christmas and Easter are the two high holy feasts for Christians. There are, of course, places in the US with high concentrations of Non-Christians, such as Jews in New York City. As a way for Jews to have a holiday of their own to celebrate when their neighbors were singing Christmas carols, the minor festival of Hanukkah was elevated in importance in the US. Kwanzaa's use of lighting candles in a daily rotation is clearly an imitation of Hanukkah.
Some secularists also wanted to dilute Christmas's influence, and they came up with things like celebrating the Solstice. Seinfeld famously gave us Festivus. But the biggest watering-down is that Christmas itself has largely been secularized. Most modern Christmas songs are about Santa and reindeer and snowmen, warm feelings, chestnuts roasting, partying, and snow. Most modern Christmas music is actually written by non-Christians, and is more about the holiday itself and personal nostalgia than the birth of Jesus.
So Christmas has truly been diluted.
It has also been crippled by its commercialization - with the Christmas shopping season beginning the day after Halloween, and with Christmas abruptly ending on December 25. The next day begins either looking forward to Carnival (which begins January 6) or for those in colder and less fun regions of the country, Valentine's Day (February 14). Of course, both Carnival (reaching its pinnacle at Mardi Gras, the day of feasting before Ash Wednesday and Lent) and Valentine's Day (more properly St. Valentine's Day) are both Christian festivals as well that have also both been secularized, commercialized, and diluted.
Kwanzaa is the recent invention of a man named Ronald McKinley Everett (who changed his name first to Ron Karenga, then to Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga). Dr. Karenga is an angry man. He would probably not appreciate being greeted with "Happy Canada Day." He started a black nationalist group that used to get into fistfights with the Black Panthers. According to the Wikipedia article (hardly a conservative bastion of anti-black propaganda):
"During the early years of Kwanzaa, Karenga said it was meant to be a black alternative to Christmas. Karenga, a secular humanist, challenged the sanity of Jesus and declared Christianity a 'White religion' that black people should shun. However, Karenga later changed his opinion, stating that Kwanzaa was not meant to provide people with an alternative to 'their own religion or religious holiday.'“
While he might have "changed his mind," his intention was clearly to dilute Christmas. It is no accident that this made-up holiday coincides with the Christian Christmas holiday. There is no historical or cultural reason to have a pan-African celebration at the very end of December.
And although very few people actually celebrate it, politicians and celebrities, with a straight face, wish people Happy Kwanzaa - and some even claim to have been raised celebrating it. Nancy Pelosi gave it a comical twist by wishing us all a "Happy Schwanza" - using a Yiddish euphemism for the male genitalia, often used as an insult. Nan is ever the life of the party. There are Kwanzaa cards, and yes, the classical music station pays homage to the faux-African holiday.
WVUE FOX 8's Facebook account announced the coming of Kwanzaa and explained: "Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by author and activist Maulana Karenga." They didn't mention Karenga's other claim to fame: that he and his wife stripped two women naked and tortured them with electrical cable and a soldering iron. This is the testimony of one of the women (cited in Wikipedia):
"Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US [meaning "Us black people"], also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said. They also were hit on the heads with toasters."
Harvey Weinstein is serving a 23-year prison sentence for abusing women. Karenga was sentenced to 1-10 years, and only served four years before being released "after he petitioned several black state officials to support his parole on fair sentencing grounds" (again from the Wiki article). He is today a government employee, a professor specializing in "Africana Studies" at California State University - Long Beach.
In the spirit of Paul Harvey, now you know the rest of the story! I wonder what candle corresponds to the torture of women. Well, at least it's a replacement for Christmas.
Meanwhile, Christmas continues, as it is a twelve day festival (having nothing to do with partridges and pear trees). The second day of Christmas, December 26, was the feast of St. Stephen, the Christian deacon who was brutally tortured to death because his own countrymen did not approve of his beliefs about Jesus. Ironically, the classical radio station chose to mention, in the mellifluous classical music announcer voice, the fake holiday made up by the guy who tortured women instead of the Christian holiday of St. Stephen the Martyr.
Other Christian feasts that fall within the Twelve Days include:
December 27 - St. John the Apostle and Evangelist
December 28 - the Holy Innocents murdered by King Herod
January 1 - the Circumcision and Name of Jesus
Christmas ends with the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, which begins the season of Carnival, which concludes on the high note of Mardi Gras (or Shrove Tuesday as it is known in some places). The next cycle of the Christian calendar gives us Lent and Easter (which is also not merely a day, but a forty day celebration).
There is a delicious irony regarding Christmas and Kwanzaa. I am a Christian from the Lutheran tradition, which began during the Reformation movement in the sixteenth century in what is today Germany. This is a tradition within historic catholic Christianity that developed its own rich heritage of confessional theology, dignified liturgy and rich and beautiful hymnody. Johann Sebastian Bach is one of ours, and his greatest works are Lutheran chorales sung in our churches. Although the Reformation movement began in Germany, it quickly spread to other parts of Europe, including the Nordic countries. In time, Scandinavian missionaries brought the Christian faith and the Lutheran tradition to Africa.
And so today, the vast majority of my fellow Lutherans are neither European nor American. Lutherans in Germany and Sweden are a small minority of Lutherans around the world. The vast majority of Lutherans are black, and live in sub-saharan Africa. There are more Lutherans in Madagascar than in North America.
These Africans celebrate Christmas, not Kwanzaa.
So wherever you are, to my fellow Christians, Merry Christmas! And thank you to my Jewish, Muslim, and Atheist friends who likewise say, "Merry Christmas." And to my Canadian friends, let me be the first to wish you all a Happy Canada Day six months from now!
Rev. Larry Beane
Pastor, Salem Lutheran Church
Gretna, LA
The BEC extends our gratitude to Pastor Beane.