“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me.” Tony Bennett’s voice wove its subtle magic throughout the shopping mall. “How appropriate,” I thought, as I watched the shoppers scurry from store to s tore. The advertisements promised “just the right gifts at just the right price,” allowing us to “give like Santa and save like Scrooge.”
Tim Pawlenty ended his campaign for the Republican nomination yesterday, the day after Pawlenty ended a distant third in the Ames Straw Poll. The poll is non-binding, but it is an early test of a candidate’s campaign strength. Pawlenty’s campaign was well-organized, but it did not have the excitement and dedicated following of Rep. Michele Bachmann or Rep. Ron Paul, each of whom finished far above him in the poll. The departure of Pawlenty is unlikely to shake up the GOP field, but it does raise the question about evangelicals in the Republican party. Pawlenty was the type of candidate that mainstream evangelical leaders would like. In June, 45 percent of the National Association of Evangelicals leadership said Pawlenty was their top-pick for the GOP candidacy. The next favorite pick—”no preference,” followed by former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.Pawlenty has evangelical bona fides. His pastor is Leith Anderson, president of the NAE who officiated Pawlenty’s marriage in 1987. Pawlenty also had the support of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Standing next to Pawlenty at an event at the Iowa State Fair, Huckabee said, “I’m endorsing the principles of people who will stand for a smaller, more efficient government, lower taxes, the sanctity of life. And I wouldn’t be on this stage if this guy didn’t stand for those things.”Dave Peterson, a political science professor at Iowa State University, told CT that Pawlenty was the only candidate that was acceptable to everyone, but he couldn’t inspire enough voters to be a viable candidate.“Pawlenty’s strategy was a decent one in theory,” said Peterson, who was at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday. “His hope was that there would be a deadlock between candidates who were unacceptable to sizable portions of the party. Social conservatives wouldn’t trust Romney, more establishment Republicans wouldn’t trust Bachman, and lots of folks wouldn’t trust Paul.”Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Pawlenty said the Republican voters this year were looking for a different kind of candidate. “What I brought forward I thought was a rational, established, credible, strong record of results, based on experience governing – a two-term governor of a blue state – but I think the audience, so to speak, was looking for something different,” Pawlenty said.This comment was considered to be a thinly veiled critique of Bachmann. Pawlenty focused on his fellow Minnesotan during last week’s Iowa debate where he suggested that she was:– irrational (“Her answer is illogical”)– unestablished (“It’s not her spine we’re worried about, it’s her record of results.”)– not credible (“She’s got a record of misstating and making false statements”)– with no record of results or experience (“In Congress, her record of accomplishment and results is nonexistent.”)But it was Bachmann who won the straw poll, even though her campaign was less organized than Pawlenty’s.In January, Pawlenty told CT that to build a viable campaign he needed to build name recognition and raise funds. Speaking yesterday, Pawlenty said he needed a stronger showing in the straw poll to keep raising funds.“We had some success raising money, but we needed to continue that and Ames was a benchmark for that, and if we didn’t do well in Ames, we weren’t going to have the fuel to keep the car going down the road,” Pawlenty said.Minnesota Public Radio suggests a Senate run could be Pawlenty’s future.Image via Pawlenty’s campaign.
The ancient Western church devised a rhythmic cycle for the celebration of Christ’s incarnation. At the center was Advent, the 20-plus days beginning on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day. By fasting and abstaining from public festivities, Christians were to prepare for the holy day by being drawn into the sense of longing for Messiah’s coming felt by generations of God’s faithful people.
This heightened sense of anticipation would, in turn, give way to overwhelming joy and festive celebration when Christmas Day finally came. Only then followed the 12 days of Christmas, climaxing on January 6 with Epiphany, the commemoration of the visit of the Magi.
As members of the fast-food generation, we have become so eager to get to Christmas that we bypass Advent. Whereas our forebears enjoined fasting and reflection, we try to enjoy days filled with more Christmas festivities than we can endure. Christmas has displaced Advent on our calendars.
But our bypassing of Advent runs deeper—altering our attitude to the story of Christ’s birth. We know how the story ends. Knowing the end of the story so well, we want to rush through the long and tortuous details of how God prepared a people—of how “God sent his Son … when the time had fully come” (Gal. 4:4). Rather than entering into the sense of expectation lying at the foundation of the narrative of Christ’s entrance into the human plotline, we read only the story’s glorious climax. Rather than savoring the plaintive mood of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” we immediately want to hear a robust version of “Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come.” In short, we have our Christmas early and create a drive-through Christmas.
The irony of our situation is that in our rush toward Christmas, we end up truncating the celebration. Once December 25 is past, so is the holiday. Stretching the 12 days of Christmas until January 6 seems entirely out of place. In fact, we have eliminated the need to do so by moving the adoration of the Magi to our early Christmas: we efficiently (and ahistorically) place the wise men at the manger next to the shepherds. We cannot even stretch Christmas to December 26, for Boxing Day entices us to take our unwanted, reboxed gifts back to the stores or to buy boxes of the sale goods that draw us out in droves for one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
So we have our 12-plus days of Christmas, just like the song says. But in our impatience born from the lure of instant gratification, we have transposed them. Christmas now precedes December 25. This may allow us to avoid the stressful waiting, the longing expectation and the forlorn cry of our forebears. But it also precludes us from sharing the exuberant joy of that first Christmas, for we cannot truly sing “Joy to the World” unless we have thoroughly rehearsed “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”
Stanley Grenz is professor of theology and ethics at Carey Hall/Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia.
Image by Mary Chambers.
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