This year Christmas falls in the middle of Hanukkah. I think the overlap creates an opportunity to celebrate the deeper meaning that is shared between these overlapping religious traditions. Both holidays are celebrated near the winter solstice, a time characterized by darkness. Both holidays are rich with themes of light. Hanukkah celebrates the miracle that even though there was only enough oil to burn for one night in the newly dedicated temple, the lamp burned for eight days. Christianity celebrates the birth of the one who will be “a light unto the world” and in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:14), called upon his followers to “be lights” to the world.
Those of us who participate in the Christian faith are at the end of what we call Advent which is a time of anticipation. The idea is that the world has been waiting for the arrival of a promise which will be like light. As an adult, I can look back to the time when I was a child and confirm that back then I was living in anticipation. I was constantly anticipating what Santa might bring to me. The deeper themes of Advent that I appreciate as an adult are Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.
In my attempt to draw more similarities between the holidays than lights, presents, and gatherings with families and friends, I was doing some reading about Hanukkah on the Internet, and I came across President Trump’s “Presidential Message on Hanukkah 2019.” I was especially delighted to read the words I have bolded in the partial presentation of the message copied below.
Melania and I send our warmest wishes to Jewish people in the United States, Israel, and across the world as you commence the 8-day celebration of Hanukkah.
More than 2,000 years ago, the Maccabees boldly reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, securing a victory for the Jewish people and their faith. They proudly lit the menorah to rededicate the Second Temple. Even though there was only enough olive oil to burn for one day, through divine providence, the flames miraculously burned for eight nights.
As the Jewish community gathers together to celebrate this special and sacred time of year, we are reminded of God’s message of hope, mercy, and love. Throughout the coming eight days, each candle to be lit on the menorah will signal to the world that freedom and justice will always shine brighter than hate and oppression.
Today, the relationship between the United States and Israel, one of our most cherished allies and friends, is stronger than ever. We will continue to stand with the Jewish people in defending the God-given right to worship freely and openly…
I was impressed with the similarity of the President’s declaration that at Hanukkah we are reminded of God’s message of hope, mercy, and love which matched up nicely my minister’s theme for Advent: hope, peace, joy, love. I immediately looked to see if the president had issued a Christmas message, but so far nothing has arrived but Melania’s posts about the White House Christmas decorations.
As I pondered the Holiday Season, perhaps since this year so much of Advent was consumed by impeachment hearings, I also began to think about how quickly we evolve clichés. The Oxford Dictionary defines a cliché as “a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.” Can a season become a cliché? I think so. I think most clichés began as either an insightful observation or a meaningful experience, but then they gradually begin to be co opted, subverted, or just overused until their meaning is lost or distant. Now “Make America Great Again” has been shortened to its acronym, MAGA, and has become a cliché that is a shortcut to far right politics in the extreme, or to conservative thought in the most charitable interpretation. Likewise, “Medicare For All” is often immediately associated with the illiberal far left and socialism at the worst, and left of center Democratic politics in the most charitable interpretation of the phrase by those who consider it a dangerous idea.
As a Holiday Gift to all of us, I would like to offer a toned down concept of Medicare For All to all my friends who equate it with a slippery slope to the paternalism of socialism and an endless welfare state populated by zombies on the dole. Perhaps we should be explicit about the fact that a majority of Americans have come to embrace the idea that the government has the responsibility of improving the health of the nation, and that’s hard to do if everyone does not have access to care that is patient centric, safe, efficient, effective, timely and equitable. The issue is how are we going to operationalize this concept. The “what” seems to be settled. The “how,” “when,” and at “what cost” constitute the discussion that the cliché “Medicare For All” undermines.
Likewise, as a progressive Democrat I have real concerns about the trajectory of America’s greatness. Co opting me from the conversation by turning the phrase “Make America Great Again” into a cliché that is an equivalent of “Trumpism,” another cliché, seems unfair. First, the “Right” took the flag with lapel pins and bumper stickers, and now it seems that there are concerns that people who hold “progressive” ideas are not concerned about enduring patriotic values, and are dismissive of America’s greatness. What better thing to contemplate as we sit in darkness and light Hanukkah candles in a menorah, or turn on the lights of a Christmas Tree on the town green to the oohs and aahs of an excited crowd, or reach up to light the fourth candle of love in an Advent wreath?
I feel like both the desire for America to be great, and a realization that for America to be great Americans must be healthy should values and positions that promote understanding and not divisiveness. This is not the first time our nation has faced problems that could have been taken to the far right or the far left, but eventually we found some middle ground upon which to build a collective effort. Within the last 90 years we have weathered a staggering depression, a world wide war against fascism, and the challenge of dehumanizing communism.
As I thought about the way in which we weathered some of these storms and preserved our greatness, I thought about my father and mother. My mother died in early January 2013 and I spent most of the 2012 holiday season at her bedside in a hospice facility. My father died last year at the end of September 2018. This is the second holiday season without him. I think about both of my parents everyday, and the values that they gave me. What is remarkable is that they would describe themselves as Evangelicals and conservative Republicans.
My father was at his core an evangelist who loved nothing more than standing in a pulpit to proclaim the eternal salvation that was available to anyone who would ask for it. My mother was diligently devoted to my father and our family. She was the best human example I know of hope, peace, joy, and love. My religious beliefs are “progressive” as are my political preferences, and both lie at the opposite ends of the political and religious spectrum from the firmly held opinions of my parents, but I loved them, and they loved me. I see our differences and our love for one another that enabled our harmonious relationship as totally consistent with the life that was advocated by Jesus in the Sermon On The Mount.
In matters of religion and politics, we followed our own consciences and ended up in diametrically opposite places. From diametrically opposed positions we still cared about one another. Can we also co exist with our fellow citizens who have different views by making our primary concern our shared hope, peace, joy and love rather then our differences? I think the only real difference between my parents and me was that we were born into different times when the expression of the same core values produced different outcomes. Let me try to explain.
My father tried hard to teach me the good work habits that he learned from his father. We would do mundane jobs together, and at times take on a more exciting projects than mowing the grass. While we worked, he would give me advice along the lines of “Do it right the first time.” He always emphasized the importance of using the right tool. I would always feel a little inadequate as he described to me the various work experiences that he had when he was growing up.
Since I adored and respected my Dad, I certainly followed the commandment to “honor thy father and mother.” I always tried to please him even though I often disagreed. Deep down I was afraid that I would not measure up to his example and expectations. My time was different than his. I had it easy. We always lived in something like a nice center entrance colonial house and had two or more cars, at least one TV, and all of the accoutrements of a solidly middle class family.
In my efforts to be like Dad, and with his suggestion, encouragement, and support, I bought a lawn more “on time” at Sears when I was eleven or twelve, and mowed grass, edged sidewalks, and raked leaves for “customers” in my neighborhood to finance my investment. I sacked groceries at the local A&P. When I was 13, I worked with my grandfather one summer for a while as a carpenter’s helper, and later I spent summers either working as a camp counselor, or carrying mortar, concrete blocks, and bricks, for masons. In high school I had a morning paper route that required getting up early, and taught me even more about “customer service.” People would get very annoyed and call in complaints that had financial consequences for me if they did not get their paper on time, or if it was wet or damaged. There is no question in my mind that all of these jobs contributed to the measure of success that I enjoyed in life, and gave me an appreciation for the value of work that is neither conservative or liberal.
I worked hard, but there were two major differences between Dad’s experience and mine. First, he was very poor. He was born in 1920 so his childhood occurred at the height of the depression. Second, I worked hard, but I never produced a product, like Dad did, for sale. Even in his childhood he was a strategic thinker with an eye for an opportunity that made him a bit of an entrepreneur. The “job” he described that impressed me the most, and was impossible for me to top, was his chicken coop business. In retrospect, I think the poverty of his childhood was something he was never able to shake so that even as a 90 year old minister he was always thinking about how to make a little more money.
Money was always scarce for my Dad’s family during the depression although my grandfather always had a job. He worked in a textile mill. The family lived in a “mill house” that was in the “mill village,” Dunean, which was on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina. Click on the link to read a little of the history of Dunean and see some pictures. The mill in Dunean was owned by the J.P. Stevens company. The company owned the store, which is pictured in today’s header. The photo was taken in 1929 when my Dad would have been in the fourth grade. The mill store and the church were the centers of community life in the mill village. Poverty and the mill were the ties that bound the community together.
I never celebrated Christmas in Dunean, but my Dad once described his remembrance of the celebration for me. I think that his story was meant to create a sense of gratitude for what I enjoyed. His father would cut down a little evergreen and bring it into the house and nail it to the floor. My grandmother would make popcorn which they would string on a long piece of thread to make garland. Dad and his sibs would cut out paper stars and snowflakes to hang on the limbs. My grandparents made handmade toys for the children.
The song, “Sixteen Tons” by “Tennessee” Ernie Ford was about coal miners, but the sentiment in one of the verses was also true for Southern Textile workers, “lint heads” as they were known by their “betters,” people who were a little more affluent. My grandfather started working in a mill in Anderson, South Carolina in 1905, when he was nine, and probably could relate to the sentiment of the song.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Everyone shopped at the company store. The mill essentially controlled life in the community, including its baseball team. For all I know J.P. Stevens might have even owned the building of the Baptist church that sat next to the mill. If you click on the link to see a few pictures, and read a little of the history, you will learn that the company provided the water and sewage for the several hundred houses that it owned for its employees and their families.
It was the church, the utilities and the houses that became my father’s family’s way out of working in the mill. My grandfather first began to repair the looms in the mill. He then got the job of running the pumps in the sewage system. Finally he moved on to working on the repair crew for the mill houses. After the war when Greenville began to grow rapidly, he was able to work as a carpenter building new homes in the blossoming suburbs of Greenville, and move out of the mill village to his own small home. My Dad eventually worked in the mill to earn money to go to college. Even though they all eventually worked hard and found a way to move away from the mill to a better life, they maintained ties to the community. I well remember Sunday trips to Dunean with my father to visit his aunt and uncle and old friends when we would make our yearly pilgrimage back to the Carolinas from where we lived in Oklahoma or Texas.
When we visited Dunean, or as we were working in the yard or on some other household project, my Dad would often tell me about the value of work, and he would begin with the chicken coops. During the depression, people in the mill village kept chickens and had vegetable gardens. He was always looking for things that he could do to “make a little money.” He learned how to make chicken coops that were portable and could be used to move the chickens around. He made about 25 cents on each one he sold.
As my father was declining, about a month before he died, he asked me if we could take a ride to Greenville. He wanted to visit his old neighborhood. Even though one of his grandsons lives in Greenville, and he lived only about a hundred miles away, near Charlotte, North Carolina, he had not been there for several years. As we rode around town and his old neighborhood around the Dunean MIll, it was obvious that he was confused. Time had moved on and things had changed, just as he had, just as we all do. What I wanted to tell him was that he had carried values from that village that were a gift to him and a gift to me that had not changed. They were enduring values. They had served us both well.
I believe that my story is not unique. I think that there are stories like mine in every little town and every city in America. The values have been passed down from generation to generation for several hundred years. Those values include hope, peace, joy, and love. Our values and sense of community, not fear, greed, or racism, are the foundation of America’s greatness. Those values are somewhere in the experience of every American. Those values are often best seen in the efforts of our healthcare professionals who are more than willing to extend themselves far beyond reasonable expectations for the benefit of someone they don’t really know, but in a larger sense are their neighbor, their sister, or their brother.
We just need to be reminded from time to time by holidays and other shared events of what is really important. There is much more that should unite us than the political issues that can divide us. Those values of work, honesty, inventiveness, a desire to improve the lot of your own family while still being a member of a larger community are some of the values and traits at have brought us into leadership of the free world and have sustained us through trying times. The world is a smaller place now then my father knew in Dunean, and our community is not as easily defined as Dunean once was, but I believe the same principles will still work. Those principles are not clichés.
When I moved to New England in the late sixties, I realized that the Southern mills were just reproductions of the mills in places like Lowell, Springfield, Manchester, and Pawtucket. For years, many of them, North and South stood empty as a reminder of a time gone and never to return. The mills may have closed, but now, North and South, it is encouraging to see many of these former sources of steady employment and community life becoming something new and different like upscale housing or the home of some new business. That suggests to me that Making America Great Again has been a continuous cycle that has happened over and over again through many generations as many of the same values are applied to evolving circumstances and challenging external events.
For me, the idea of a continuously regenerating and evolving America that is becoming great, again and again, is a message that we own collectively across our political differences, varied regional origins, and different cultural traditions and religions. That America has been trying again and again for almost 250 years and will do so again this year is a message that is consistent with the spirit and lessons of Advent and Hanukkah. Contemplating hope, peace, joy and love, or if you prefer listening to a message of hope, mercy, and love seem like the activities that will move us away from the conversations about what divides us and closer to the vision of the Triple Aim and America’s sustained greatness.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
