Happy Christmas
While the dough for the Riesling-Pear tart chills in the fridge, I thought I'd take some time to wish everyone who visits this lil' blog outpost a wonderful Christmas day tomorrow. We'll be joining some friends this evening with whom I've shared many a Christmas Eve dinner, and having a quiet, cozy Christmas Day (our first as an officially married couple). But before we get into the weekend holiday nesting, I thought I'd post a couple of items to mull over in the midst of the political and social climate of Holiday 2004, during which we've been told that the very idea of Christmas is under siege by a powerful, vocal minority of secularists (that's me) who have control of the media and is trying to eradicate its simple message of peace, love, and understanding.

First, Scrooge McBush is turning away from financial support for programs aimed at fighting global poverty (a story I saw a few days back but was reminded of it by my mother-in-law):

In one of the first signs of the effects of the ever tightening federal budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.

With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it was unable to honor some earlier promises and would have money to pay for food only in emergency crises like that in Darfur, in western Sudan. The cutbacks, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched.

As a result, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services and other charities have suspended or eliminated programs that were intended to help the poor feed themselves through improvements in farming, education and health.

[...]

Chad Kolton, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration "acknowledged the need for additional resources" in food aid, but said there was no way he could say whether more programs would be cut in the coming year. "The vast majority of resources available is going to emergency food aid," he said.

For the other programs that have been cut back, he said, "We are going to look at a couple of different things, such as the importance of the program and whether it is able to produce results."

One administration official involved in food aid voiced concern that putting such a high priority on emergency help might be short-sighted. The best way to avoid future famines is to help poor countries become self-sufficient with cash and food aid now, said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the continuing debate on the issue. "The fact is, the development programs are being shortchanged, and I'm not sure the administration is going to make up the money," the official said.

But this isn't just a hollow commitment to throw money to needy organizations from time to time; the NYTimes editorial from the 23rd reminds us of this UN agreement signed by the US:

It was with great fanfare that the United States and 188 other countries signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a manifesto to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and disease among the one billion people in the world who subsist on barely anything. The project set a deadline of 2015 to achieve its goals. Chief among them was the goal for developed countries, like America, Britain and France, to work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries.

Almost a third of the way into the program, the latest available figures show that the percentage of United States income going to poor countries remains near rock bottom: 0.14 percent. Britain is at 0.34 percent, and France at 0.41 percent. (Norway and Sweden, to no one's surprise, are already exceeding the goal, at 0.92 percent and 0.79 percent.)

[...]

Something's not right here. The United States is the world's richest nation. Washington is quick to say that it contributes more money to foreign aid than any other country. But no one is impressed when a billionaire writes a $50 check for a needy family. The test is the percentage of national income we give to the poor, and on that basis this country is the stingiest in the Group of Seven industrialized nations.

The administration has cited the federal budget deficit as the reason for its cutback in donations to help the hungry feed themselves. In fact, the amount involved is a pittance within the federal budget when compared with our $412 billion deficit, which has been fueled by war and tax cuts. The administration can conjure up $87 billion for the fighting in Iraq, but can it really not come up with more than $15.6 billion - our overall spending on development assistance in 2002 - to help stop an 8-year-old AIDS orphan in Cameroon from drinking sewer water or to buy a mosquito net for an infant in Sierra Leone?

[...]

Jeffrey Sachs, the economist appointed by Kofi Annan to direct the Millennium Project, puts the gap between what America is capable of doing and what it actually does into stark relief.

The government spends $450 billion annually on the military, and $15 billion on development help for poor countries, a 30-to-1 ratio that, as Mr. Sachs puts it, shows how the nation has become "all war and no peace in our foreign policy." Next month, he will present his report on how America and the world can actually cut global poverty in half by 2015. He says that if the Millennium Project has any chance of success, America must lead the donors.

Washington has to step up to the plate soon. At the risk of mixing metaphors, it is nowhere even near the table now, and the world knows it.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. But it was not as a child that JC made his impact; the Giles Fraser of the London Guardian reminds us that it was his teachings as an adult that should be focused on (something, I'm told--since I refused to see it--that was completely missing from Mell Gibson's The Passion of The Christ):

The adult Jesus described his mission as being to "preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and to set at liberty those who are oppressed". He insisted that the social outcast be loved and cared for, and that the rich have less chance of getting into heaven than a camel has of getting through the eye of a needle. Jesus set out to destroy the imprisoning obligations of debt, speaking instead of forgiveness and the redistribution of wealth. He was accused of blasphemy for attacking the religious authorities as self-serving and hypocritical.

In contrast, the Nicene religion of the baby and the cross gives us Christianity without the politics. The Posh and Becks nativity scene is the perfect tableau into which to place this Nicene baby, for like the much-lauded celebrity, this Christ is there to be gazed upon and adored - but not to be heard or heeded. In a similar vein, modern evangelical choruses offer wave upon wave of praise to the name of Jesus, but offer little political or economic content to trouble his adoring fans.

[...]

The story of Christmas, properly understood, asserts that God is not best imagined as an all-powerful despot but as a vulnerable and pathetic child. It's a statement about the nature of divine power. But in the hands of conservative theologians, the Nicene religion of the baby and the cross is a way of distracting attention away from the teachings of Christ. It's a form of religion that concentrates on things like belief in the virgin birth while ignoring the fact that the gospels are much more concerned about the treatment of the poor and the forgiveness of enemies.

Bush may have claimed that "Jesus Christ changed my life", but Jesus doesn't seem to have changed his politics. As the carol reminds us: "And man at war with man hears not the love song that they bring, O hush the noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing."

Finally, here's a nice (long) article from AlterNet about what's really at the root of the United Church of Christ's recent advertisement that was not accepted by either CBS or NBC:

At the surface, the UCC ad controversy looks like it's about a couple of broadcasting corporations holding up fat trembling fingers to see which way the political winds blow. But dig a little deeper, and you strike the gnarled roots of the Tree of Knowledge itself. This is the central religious conflict of our time: literal versus metaphorical understanding.

The religious denominations most outraged by the Night Club ad are those that believe religious teachings must be taken literally and remain unchanged through history. They see it as sinful, arrogant and self-indulgent to loosen our grip on our various sacred texts, placing them in cultural context and allowing our interpretations to evolve. And they're applying their method of Biblical understanding to another denomination's commercial.

[...]

Conservative churches insist that they welcome everyone to join them, condemning only homosexual behavior. Many cite the well-exercised distinction between sinners and their sins. Even a murderer can enter a church and beg forgiveness. But if he does not repent, and instead stretched out a bloodstained hand for Communion, he will be denied.

So what we have is a kind of rival-school chant across the gymnasium floor: "We've got welcome, how about YOU?" And no one wants to be seen as unwelcoming at the church door. At the communion rail or pulpit, perhaps. But not at the door.

[...]

UCC spokesperson Barb Powell, exhausted after weeks of insisting on statements she thought were obvious, says with deliberate patience that the opening of the ad was not meant literally. ... "To us, the ad is clearly allegorical."

"Allegory," in the Oxford English Dictionary: "A figurative sentence, discourse, or narrative, in which properties and circumstances attributed to the apparent subject really refer to the subject they are meant to suggest; an extended or continued metaphor." Medieval morality plays are allegories. So are Jesus's parables. So are sexy blondes in car ads. But metaphorical understandings are inimical to fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture. And to those who believe there is only one unchanging truth, identifying with another position, even implicitly, is a slap in the face.