Eight years after having opened the first Catholic Worker "house of hospitality" to those in need on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Dorothy Day sent out an appeal in late 1941 to donors to support the community, which was "more hectic on account of the holidays."
Day reported in January 1942 of having been overwhelmed "with gifts, and there was plenty of food for the feast days, and also many gifts of clothes came in. If shelter were only as easy to get!" Catholic Worker houses were "always crowded" during Christmas time. Though her team struggled to keep up with the mail, they made an ardent effort to write personalized thank you notes to all of their donors. Eighty-one years later, numerous Catholic Worker houses around the world will continue to welcome those in need this Christmas season, providing food, lodging, gifts, and above all, the warm, hearty spirit of hospitality.
For many, the holiday season is an occasion to take a stand in polemical conflicts, whipping out "keep Christ in Christmas" signs and bringing attention to the "war on Christmas." Their displeasure does have some merit—one doesn't need to be a devout believer to recognize that the holiday season has morphed into an homage to our society's gods of consumerism and corporate power. Belief in a Creator born into flesh out of love for humanity, let alone in the values of spending time with loved ones and giving to those in need, is no longer the focal point of the season.
In my experience, worshiping a deity who loves me enough to descend to the level of my lowly humanity pays off more in the end than worshipping the sinister gods that elicit our consumption of endless ephemera, as well as the fuzzier, sentimental gods of "family values" and "altruism." Yet the campaign to keep Christ in Christmas—namely by refusing to utter the phrase "Happy Holidays"—seems to misunderstand the nature of the "battle" at hand.
The United States, some hold, is a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values. Those pushing to demonize the greeting of "Merry Christmas" in favor of "Happy Holidays"—the argument goes—are seeking to undermine that foundation and replace it with a secularist, atheistic one. Yet this narrative conflates Christianity with reactionary neoconservative politics, a political stance undergirded by a deeply individualistic, neoliberal worldview, whose economic platform and general philosophy whiffs more of Enlightenment ideals than religious ones.
Such shallow culture war battles have been characteristic of the Religious Right ever since the Reagan era, and have only proven to intensify America's exaltation of both moralistic sentimentality (think the "Christmas spirit" a la Love Actually, the Hallmark Channel, and Salvation Army dancing Santas) and hedonistic consumerism.
As Pope Benedict XVI once said, "being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." Christians would be more prudent to, in the words of Benedict's successor, invest themselves in spreading the "joy of the Gospel" through their way of living, rather than engaging in dour arguments and polemical battles. What is needed more than culture warriors fighting ideological battles is an army of "witnesses," exemplars who live out what they claim to believe in.
We can start by looking at the example set by Dorothy Day and the followers, past and present, of her Catholic Worker Movement, for whom the Christmas spirit is neither sentimental nor polemical. As their works of charity and hospitality demonstrate, the Christmas spirit is tangible, carnal—an "event" as concrete and dynamic as the first Christmas two millennia ago in Bethlehem. By entering the world as a helpless baby in a manger, surrounded by the support of a humble yet loving community, God revealed through the first Christmas that all human beings are designed to live in communion with him and with our neighbors.
Day's project placed this understanding of human dignity front and center. Taking her cues from the political and economic theories of figures like Pope Leo XIII and G.K. Chesterton, who set the precedent for contemporary "postliberal" discourses, Day's vision transcended the individualistic tropes of both the American Left and Right which—as neoliberalism solidified as an economic project—revealed themselves to be two sides of the same coin. Instead, it prioritized the individual's need for community and the agency of local entities before the interests and power of the state, of corporate elites, and of the abstraction of the atomized "individual."
Insisting on replying "Merry Christmas" to those who say "Happy Holidays" will do little to counter the prevailing American spirit. Something more powerful is needed than to sprinkle "Christian values" on top of the already existing neoliberal ones. The time has come for believers to develop a new narrative that—in the spirit of Christmas—is "incarnational," that takes belief in the Savior seriously as the most concrete of realities. More impactful than banking on culture war polemics to witness to our beliefs would be to bank on our example of hospitality, of welcoming both God and neighbor into our hearts and lives with gusto.
Instead of worrying about what to say to your neighbor, start by embracing them with the joy of the true Christmas spirit, and by refusing to settle for a political paradigm that compromises the fullness of their humanity.
Stephen G. Adubato is a journalism fellow at COMPACT Magazine and a professor of philosophy in NYC. He is also the curator of the Cracks in Postmodernity blog, podcast, and magazine. Follow him on Twitter @stephengadubato
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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