James T. Cleland - "Getting Ready for Christmas" (December 3, 1961)

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-	Let us pray.	0:09
	Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts	0:13
	be acceptable in thy sight,	0:19
	oh Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.	0:23
	Amen.	0:28
	Last Friday, there arrived in the mail,	0:38
	a letter from an old, young friend,	0:43
	written in a beauty parlor.	0:47
	It begins, "With the dragon's breath of the hairdryer	0:52
	giving me an enforced moment of peace,	0:58
	I'm propping the paper on my knee,	1:03
	and attempting to communicate.	1:05
	This is my Thanksgiving letter,	1:09
	Christmas letter and long overdue letter, all in one.	1:12
	Since previous Christmases have left us	1:19
	in our most exhausted and unchristian mood,	1:22
	we are turning a bunk feast this year,	1:27
	and celebrating without cards, without parties,	1:30
	and without expensive gifts.	1:36
	We'll have our tree, Christmas cookies,	1:40
	the children's tree for the birds, and the family crash,	1:45
	which we'll all help to make.	1:51
	But we'll cut out every commercial and tiring extra	1:55
	to create something simple and fitting."	2:00
	So she writes, "And I can hear the merchants in this city	2:06
	of exciting stores saying boo to you, young lady.	2:13
	For if enough people will do as she suggests,	2:23
	then the stock market will nose dive.	2:28
	This letter points out,	2:33
	then points up the confusion in the hearts of many people	2:35
	as they enter Advent, which in one of its aspects	2:41
	is the period of preparation for the feast of the nativity,	2:47
	the birth of Jesus, the Christ in Bethlehem.	2:54
	Advent is a time of getting ready.	3:00
	Let us ask and answer one question,	3:05
	who is getting ready for what?	3:10
	There will be many angry sermons preached this December,	3:16
	and next December, and for the Decembers to come,	3:23
	on how the world prepares for Christmas.	3:29
	There will be references to main street decorations being	3:35
	stocked it as early as October, to Christmas parades	3:39
	on Thanksgiving, or the day after,	3:45
	to Santa Claus bottom out of due season."	3:51
	According to Sinned,	3:58
	the most read column of the Durham Morning Herald,	4:00
	one local salesmen suggests that the city decorations be	4:06
	left suspended over our streets permanently.	4:12
	He would have slipped covers made for them	4:21
	(congregation laughing)	4:25
	to conceal their identity for 11 months in a year.	4:27
	Now, let me reflect with you	4:33
	on the world's preparation for Christmas.	4:35
	This gaudy, merchandising approach has a long	4:40
	and legitimate ancestry.	4:46
	It is the continuation of the ancient festival	4:50
	of the winter solstice, when people rejoice that the sun	4:55
	had ceased to slide down the Southern sky,	5:00
	and had made the turn, which would bring it back again	5:05
	to the Northern Hemisphere.	5:10
	Thus, it was a time of rejoicing, of good fellowship,	5:13
	because of renewed hope in nature.	5:19
	It was marked by goodie king,	5:24
	and by the giving and receiving of presence.	5:27
	Europe and America have adopted	5:33
	this Saturnalia with enthusiasm.	5:37
	It is the manufacturers and the advertisers, Eldorado.	5:41
	Here is one of its cuddles.	5:49
	It is the season of Christmas,	5:53
	and all through the house, St. Nick	5:55
	and his helpers begin their carols.	5:58
	The closets are stuffed and the drawers overflowing	6:02
	with gift wrap remembrances coming and going,	6:05
	"What a joyous abandon of Christmas glow,	6:10
	what a making of lists, what a spending of dough,	6:14
	so much for the bedroom, so much for the bar,	6:19
	so much for the kitchen, too little by her.	6:22
	Come Westinghouse Philco, come Hotpoint GE,	6:27
	come Sunbeam Mixmaster, all come to the tree.	6:32
	So much for the wardrobe, how shine daddy's eyes	6:37
	as he reaps his year-all harvest of slippers and ties.	6:42
	So much for the family, so much for the friends,	6:48
	so much for the neighbors, the list never ends.	6:51
	A contingency fund for the givers belated,	6:56
	whose gifts must be hastily reciprocated.	7:00
	And out of the shops, how they spring with a clatter,	7:05
	the gifts and appliances words cannot flatter,	7:08
	the robot dishwasher, the new Frigidaire,	7:12
	the doll with the deity and curlable hair,	7:17
	the electrified hairbrush, the black lingerie,	7:20
	the full color stereoscopic TV.	7:24
	Come credit department, come personal loan,	7:28
	come mortgage, come Christmas club, come one, and come all.	7:32
	We know what some people are getting ready for.	7:39
	Now, this pagan festival was baptized by the church	7:44
	when Christianity was imperially accepted	7:53
	as the official religion of the Roman empire.	7:57
	No one knows exactly when Jesus was born,	8:02
	and December seemed as good as time as any,	8:07
	and the winter solstice, a better period than most,	8:11
	so the ancient rights were naturalized	8:16
	into the Christian faith, with many	8:21
	of the old trappings accepted as valid.	8:24
	Thus, the Merchants' Festival	8:30
	is not wholly a secular fiesta.	8:33
	I recall in Marburg in Germany,	8:40
	that all stores willingly closed at 5:00 PM	8:43
	on Christmas Eve, so that everyone could go to church.	8:49
	Carols used to be sung in Grand Central Station in New York	8:57
	at commuter time on the evenings before December 25th.	9:03
	Someone was heard to remark	9:11
	in one of Philadelphia's great stores	9:13
	after a superb concert of Christmas music,	9:16
	"What denomination is Wanamaker's?"	9:21
	(congregation laughing)	9:25
	Many folk make the Sunday before December 25th,	9:32
	one of the two annual occasions	9:36
	on which they worship in church.	9:40
	The world's Advent hustle and bustle	9:44
	is not entirely pagan.	9:49
	And yet this semi sacred season of preparation	9:53
	is falling away from its baptism.	9:59
	Advent is observed by only a minority	10:04
	as the anticipation of the Christ mass	10:10
	to give it its old Catholic name.	10:15
	A perfume labeled My Sin, is hardly a fitting present	10:20
	for a Christian to give or to receive.	10:26
	For the most part, the world we know is getting ready	10:32
	for an American Saturnalia.	10:37
	Well, so much for the world.	10:42
	Let us swing to the opposite pole and ask,	10:45
	how did God get ready for Christmas?	10:49
	How did God get ready for Christmas?	10:55
	Now, the moment we ask this question,	11:00
	we realize the difficulty in answering it,	11:04
	as the Bible constantly warns.	11:09
	2 Isaiah has written these cautionary words,	11:14
	"For my thoughts are not your thoughts.	11:19
	Neither are your ways, my ways, except the Lord.	11:25
	Or as the heavens are higher than the earth,	11:31
	so are my ways higher than your ways,	11:36
	and my thoughts than your thoughts."	11:42
	And St. Paul adds his caveat, "Oh, the debt of the riches,	11:47
	both of the wisdom and knowledge of God,	11:54
	how unsearchable are His judgments	11:58
	and His ways past finding out, for who has known	12:03
	the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor.	12:11
	We cannot probe this mystery by the techniques	12:20
	of scientific research or historical analysis.	12:24
	It's in the realm of (indistinct)	12:32
	that is over the history of salvation.	12:36
	We have to tell them to men of competence	12:41
	in the realm of the spirit for an answer.	12:43
	St. Paul in his Galician letter, says this	12:48
	about the first Christmas.	12:52
	"But when the fullness of the time was come,	12:56
	God sent forth His son made of a woman."	13:01
	Now, that phrase, the fullness of the time,	13:09
	has fascinated the interpreters.	13:13
	It has been suggested that God's choice	13:17
	of this particular period for the revealing	13:20
	of His nature and purpose, was because at the time	13:23
	of the birth of Jesus, Rome had given	13:28
	the world one government.	13:31
	Greece had supplied one common language,	13:36
	and Judaism had offered a worthy monotheistic faith.	13:42
	Now, if that is what Paul intended us to deduce	13:51
	from the fullness of time, we do not know.	13:54
	But he did believe that the timing was perfect.	14:01
	It had to be, for it was God's timing.	14:07
	However, God did two surprising things at the nativity.	14:13
	First, He chose a most unlikely vehicle of revelation,	14:20
	the child of two very ordinary people	14:27
	in a third rate part of the Mediterranean world.	14:32
	Jesus was bottomed both awkwardly and obscurely.	14:38
	If it hadn't been for angels and the star,	14:45
	no one would have known about His Advent.	14:49
	Second, God gave a surprising message,	14:54
	peace on earth to men of goodwill,	14:59
	at a time when there was tension.	15:07
	Tension between Herod and the Jews,	15:11
	tension between the Pharisee and the Sadducee.	15:15
	God prepared for Christmas	15:20
	by deciding to give men hope,	15:23
	because it is by hope that men live.	15:28
	He would give them the hope,	15:34
	which comes from renewed confidence that He cares for them.	15:36
	Oh, He had told them that so often before,	15:43
	but He'd do it again.	15:48
	In a man whose demeanor, whose conduct,	15:51
	whose teaching, would bring to his haters,	15:56
	the conclusion that God must be something like this child	16:00
	of Bethlehem who had become the prophet of Galilee.	16:06
	Now, one can put this in abstract terms	16:12
	and say that the eternal broke into time again	16:14
	in that manger cradle.	16:21
	Perhaps it's more easily grasped	16:25
	if we say that the first Christmas marks	16:26
	the beginning of God's new attempt to give man hope.	16:31
	A hope that was all wrapped up in a person.	16:39
	God got ready for Christmas by planning to reveal Himself	16:46
	to man in a man.	16:51
	But being a man, He had to be born as a child.	16:56
	Well, let's catch our breath	17:08
	and ask our question in one more way.	17:09
	In the light of what has been said,	17:15
	how does the Christian get ready for Christmas?	17:19
	On the one hand, we must remember that he is in the world.	17:27
	We are in the world, therefore,	17:33
	we share in the culture,	17:38
	in the semi-Christian observance	17:42
	of the solar turn of the year.	17:45
	And we recognize it with joy and with enthusiasm.	17:50
	Santa Claus parades stockings hung	17:57
	by the fireplace, decorated trees,	18:03
	and the exchange of gifts	18:08
	have all a valid place each December.	18:10
	On the other hand, we are also in the church.	18:18
	Therefore, we seek to understand what God was trying to do	18:25
	about 2000 years ago,	18:31
	so that we may prepare ourselves properly	18:34
	for a proper Christmas observance.	18:39
	God loved the world, not just the church, the world.	18:46
	Oh, man.	18:55
	That is why He sent the one who we call His son.	18:57
	God sent Him specially to the poor,	19:05
	to the poor in spirit, to those who had little hope,	19:10
	so that hope might possess their lives.	19:17
	Hope of spiritual health.	19:21
	Now, to know what that spiritual health is,	19:26
	we have to come to understand Jesus, in His teaching	19:28
	and in His acting, in His willingness to accept death	19:32
	at the hands of men who weren't as good	19:40
	as they thought they were,	19:43
	but who were as good as most of us normally are.	19:47
	We have to comprehend the insight of the resurrection,	19:54
	when God put His imprimatur on this man,	19:58
	as the revelation of God's character and will.	20:03
	He is no longer a day absconded us, a hidden God.	20:09
	We agree with the little Italian boy	20:17
	who ungrammatically said,	20:20
	"Jesus is the best picture God ever had took."	20:23
	So we shall prepare ourselves to worship this Christmas,	20:33
	especially as Christmas Eve occurs this year	20:37
	on the Lord's day.	20:41
	We shall send Christmas cards	20:44
	that are really cards for Christmas.	20:47
	We shall do unusual acts of service,	20:53
	each of us like a 20th century, "Good King Wenceslas".	20:57
	We shall give gifts to those who can make no return,	21:03
	except thank you.	21:08
	Rather than exchanging presents only	21:13
	with our families and friends,	21:16
	we shall do so in the spirit of the offertory prayer	21:19
	in the midnight mass, "Accept Lord,	21:24
	this day's festal offering,	21:29
	and in my gracious bounty, grant that	21:33
	through this interchange of sacred gifts,	21:37
	we may grow to be like him in whom our human nature	21:43
	is made one with thine.	21:49
	I like that phrase, this interchange of sacred gifts.	21:52
	God gave us Jesus.	22:01
	We gift to him, and to the least of these,	22:06
	his brother, our acts of love.	22:12
	Yep, what is the most precious gift we can offer Him?	22:20
	Christina Rossetti has told us in very simple language,	22:29
	"What can I give Him, poor as I am?	22:38
	If I were a shepherd, I would bring Him a lamb.	22:44
	If I were a wise man, I would do my part,	22:51
	yet what I can, I give Him,	22:59
	give my heart.	23:05
	So we, Christians, enter through Advent into Christmas	23:11
	as men and women in the world, and in the church.	23:19
	Here is a very homey illustration of that fact.	23:29
	For many years now, Brown House on East Campus	23:37
	has adopted me as Santa Claus.	23:43
	Though, for a reason, which I shall not divulge,	23:47
	they call me Sandy McCloskey.	23:51
	Now, late over a December evening,	23:58
	before Duke breaks up for the vacation,	24:01
	Sandy and Mrs. McCloskey arrive	24:05
	for the Brown House festivities.	24:08
	There is a gay tree, much singing.	24:11
	The house's letter to Father Christmas,	24:18
	asking for fraternity pins and engagement rings.	24:21
	The giving of presence.	24:28
	Toward the close of the evening, the mood changes.	24:32
	The nativity stories are read from Matthew and Luke.	24:38
	Prayers are offered,	24:43
	with the Lord's Prayer said very quietly.	24:46
	In unison, the benediction is pronounced.	24:49
	Now, one year I decided that the religious aspect	24:55
	of the evening was perhaps observed, only	24:59
	because Sandy McCloskey was dean of the chapel,	25:04
	so I omitted it.	25:09
	But that night, before we broke up,	25:13
	a senior, who was editor of The Duke Chronicle,	25:19
	raised her hand and asked,	25:25
	"If I get my Bible, will you read the Christmas stories?"	25:29
	I sat rebuked,	25:37
	gladly and rightly rebuked.	25:41
	We had family worship together.	25:48
	Now, the ongoing of that evening never varies.	25:53
	Saturnalia?	26:00
	Oh, yes (chuckles)	26:01
	and the nativity.	26:04
	The world and the church.	26:07
	I am validly accepted by Brown House	26:13
	as a cross between a mascot and a father in God,	26:16
	which is as it should be.	26:21
	For the Christian, there is a cultural	26:25
	and a religious observance of this season	26:29
	with the secular and the sacred intertwined	26:33
	in the same occasion.	26:38
	So at this Advent season,	26:41
	we prepare for both the Yuletide	26:45
	and the Christ Mass, recognizing the place	26:51
	of each in our heritage, yet knowing which	26:56
	is the more important emphasis	27:07
	if we are truly Christian.	27:11
	Amen, let us pray.	27:18
	Oh God, who in the fullness of time,	27:27
	(indistinct) revealed thyself in Jesus of Bethlehem	27:30
	and Nazareth, help us in this Lenten season,	27:35
	so to meditate on the revelation of thyself,	27:41
	that thy love may become known to us,	27:46
	and through us, may be revealed to others	27:50
	in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.	27:56
	And may the blessing of the Lord come upon you abundantly.	28:00
	May it keep you strong and tranquil in the truth	28:06
	of His promises through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord.	28:12

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "Getting Ready for Christmas" (December 3, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4nk3b62r

Date:

December 3, 1961

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0165
ref5534_1vt
uachapelsermaud
duke:628255
dcrau002179
ark:/87924/r4nk3b62r
76749106-9a6f-4639-9f2a-2c075adcae85

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

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In Copyright

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This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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James T. Cleland - "Getting Ready for Christmas" (December 3, 1961)

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1. James T. Cleland - "Getting Ready for Christmas" (December 3, 1961)

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James T. Cleland - "Getting Ready for Christmas" (December 3, 1961)

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