And Joseph Bottum wants us to embrace it:
Tastefulness is just small-mindedness, pretending to be art. And Christmas isn’t tasteful, isn’t simple, isn’t clean, isn’t elegant. Give me the tacky and the exuberant and the wild, to represent the impossibly boisterous fact that God has intruded in this world. Give me churches thick with incense and green with pine-tree boughs, the approach to the altar that feels like running an obstacle course through the poinsettias, and a roar from the bell towers so ground-shaking that not even the deaf can sleep in. See these spires aspire to heaven, as I wrote in one of my new Christmas carols this year. Hear these bells rejoice to ring.
A follower once asked St. Francis—oh, so prissily—whether it was licit to eat meat on the Feast of Christmas, and he shouted in reply, “On a day like this, even the walls eat meat. And if they cannot, then let them be spread with meat.” Now there’s a picture that won’t make House Beautiful any time soon: the walls of the dining room dripping with smeared meat. Such an image will not be subsumed by any attempt to tidy up the holiday and make Christmas manageable. St. Francis points toward something about the wonder and the mess of the Incarnation: the shattering of ordinary life that the Nativity declares. …
In other words, embrace the madness of the season. Bellow out the off-key carols. Smile at the silly reindeer. Empty your pockets into the Salvation Army kettles as the Santas ring their bells. Slip on icy walks with your arms full of presents. Load the tree with lights. Pray not in despair or supplication but in wild thankfulness.
(Photo by Taber Andrew Bain)
The Dish 