Consider this/ Einfach zum Nachdenken

Während meiner frühen Kindheit waren die Wochen vor Weihnachten immer etwas Besonderes. Unsere Tante Lisa erschien jeden Samstag im Advent um, wie es mir schien, geradezu industrielle Mengen von Weihnachtsbäckerei herzustellen. Tante Lisa war eine liebe, große, grauhaarige Dame mit riesigen Händen. Sie kannte uns buchstäblich seit unserer Geburt, denn sie war die Hebamme, die bei der Geburt meiner Schwester half, und ihre Gegenwart vermittelte Frieden, Geborgenheit und Spaß. Deshalb war es immer ein besonderes Privileg ihr beim Backen zu „helfen“. Genauso besonders waren dann die Abende als Familie, an denen wir um den Adventskranz saßen, gemeinsam sangen oder etwas vorlasen, und unsere Mutter regelmäßig weinte. Wir waren einander in solchen Zeiten näher als sonst, und sie spürte das. Ich könnte noch viele andere Adventrituale erwähnen, und alle vermittelten sie das Gefühl einer heilen Welt. Mit anderen Worten, ich glaube an das Christkind, nicht nur als Bringer  von Geschenken, sondern als unsichtbare Macht, die mein Leben und jenes meiner  Lieben wohlwollend lenkte.

Natürlich war auch die Desillusion vorprogrammiert. Eine unachtsame Nebenbemerkung meines  Vaters verriet, dass er, und nicht das Christkind, die Handtasche meiner Mutter gekauft hatte. Es kam noch schlimmer: ein Onkel nahm sich das  Leben, meine erste Liebe blieb unerwidert, und besagte Tante Lisa wurde mit Multipler Sklerose diagnostiziert  und begann langsam zu verwelken. All das, angereichert durch ausgiebige Lektüre französischer Existentialisten, produzierte tiefe Verunsicherung und die Überzeugung, dass das Leben ein sinnloser Kampf und ein Tränental sei. Das Christkind war gestorben, und ebenso der Weihnachtsmann, und der liebe Gott.

Es dauerte vermutlich noch fünf oder sechs Jahre bis mir jemand erstmals die Christliche Story auf eine Weise erklärte, die Sinn machte. Der liebe Gott war nicht der Weihnachtsmann oder die gute Fee. Weder ließ er Schmerzen und Leiden nicht einfach durch seinen Zauberstab verschwinden, noch war er ein Sadist, der die Welt so eingerichtet hatte, damit Menschen unglücklich seien. Leiden und Verrat war das Produkt menschlicher Freiheit, wenn wir unsere eigenen Wege statt die Wege Gottes wählen. Aber Gott zeigte  sich solidarisch mit diesen Wesen, die er geschaffen hatte, und so sandte er seinen Sohn, der unser Los teilen würde. Das war die Weihnachtsgeschichte und sie brachte auf einmal Sinn in diese scheinbar sinnlose Welt. Gott wurde Mensch  und brachte  damit zum Ausdruck, wer er zutiefst  ist, Gott mit uns (Immanuel).

Es ist diesen Dezember vierzig Jahre her, dass man mir diese Geschichte erstmals erklärt hat, aber sie hat nichts von ihrer Kraft und Faszination verloren. Dementsprechend haben mich auch die Neuigkeiten des vergangenen Jahres nicht  aus der Bahn geworfen: weder die Vergewaltigung der Schwester einer Bekannten, noch der Krebs einer anderen Tante, noch die andauernde Plage von Ebola, Korruption und Unwettern in Afrika. Keines dieser Dinge ist  so mächtig wie die Liebe dessen, der sich zum Kind gemacht hat, und er macht sich in diesen Situationen gegenwärtig und verändert sie, ähnlich wie damals die Gegenwart meiner Tante Lisa, die die Adventsamstage veränderte. Und so kommt es, dass ich auf neue Weise an das Christkind glaube. Ich hoffe, ihr auch. Frohe Weihnachtsfeiertage!

The weeks before Christmas were always very special in my early childhood. Aunt Lisa would appear on Saturdays in order to bake what seemed like industrial quantities of Christmas cookies. Aunt Lisa was a sweet, tall, grey-haired woman with enormous hands. She had looked after us from when we were babies (in fact she had been my mother’s midwife and delivered my sister), and her presence conveyed peace, security and fun. Therefore working with her in my mother’s kitchen on those Advent Saturdays was something very special. So were our family evenings around the Advent wreath during which we sang, read Bible passages and Advent stories, while mom invariably cried: we rarely were so close to each other than on such occasions, and my mother knew it. Many other Advent rituals could be mentioned, but they all contributed to the feeling that “all will be well and all manner of thing shall we well”. In other words, I believed in Santa Claus, not only in the sense that he was bringing the Christmas gifts, but that somehow forces for good were directing my little life and that of my loved ones.

Disillusion was sure to come, and it did: a casual remark of my dad gave away that he had indeed bought my mother’s travel bag, not a white-bearded man on the North Pole. Worse: an uncle committed suicide, my love for a school sweetheart remained unreciprocated, and Aunt Lisa was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and started to wilt away. All this, together with copious amounts of required existentialist reading in my French school, produced deep angst and a conviction that life was a struggle and a valley of tears. Santa was well dead.

It probably took another five or six years before I first heard the Christian story explained to me in a way that made sense: God was not a fairy queen or a benevolent, yet distant ruler. He did not wave his magic wand to make pain and suffering disappear; nor was he a sadist who had set up this world in a way that made human beings miserable. Suffering and betrayal were of man’s making, when in his free-will he chose his own way rather than the ways of the Lord. But God decided to show solidarity with those beings he created and to send his own son into this world to share our fate. That was the Christmas story and it suddenly made sense of this seemingly sense-less world. God became man, and in so doing expressed who he truly was, God with us (Emmanuel).

It will have been forty years this December that I first heard this story explained to me, but it has not lost any of its power. As a result, this year’s news has not phased me: not the fact that a friend’s sister was raped, or that another aunt has a malignant tumour in her pelvis, or that Africa continues to be plagued by Ebola, corruption and droughts. None of these things are as strong as the love of him who made himself a little child: and he enters all those situations and transforms them, just like Tante Lisa’s presence transformed my otherwise drab December. So, in a new way, I do believe in Santa Claus: I hope you can too! Happy Christmas!

One of Paul Gauguin’s last pictures is called “Where Do We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?” Even without this title it would be a perfect Advent picture, even though it is not set in snowy France or Germany, but in brilliantly sunny Tahiti, Gauguin’s second home. On this wide canvas the painter asks some of the most fundamental questions of human existence: How is it that we are alive? What makes us who we are? And what is our destiny, especially after death? We don’t have records of what Gauguin thought of all these matters, beyond the painting itself, but we know that when he set off for Tahiti he had arsenic in his pocket and intended to kill himself. Over the course of a few weeks he changed his mind, and painted this piece instead.

On the right, we see three women, and next to them a baby. They are contemplating, but also participating, in what many people consider the most religious experience of human existence, childbirth. An agnostic friend of mine once told me that he knew there was a God when he saw his wife giving birth.

Further toward the middle you see women chatting, a man pensive, and a youth plucking the fruit of a tree. A child sits in the ground, also eating a fruit, surrounded by a goat and cats. It is an almost pastoral scene of harmony and peace, all bathed in tropical light. Somehow Gauguin captures the atmosphere of Eden, and seems to imply that this is really “who we are”: beings longing for shalom, peace, the good life. Finally, on the far left, an old woman, pale and grey-haired, prepares to die. The cycle of life seems complete, and death is the end of it, or is it? The white puffin bird seems to indicate an afterlife, however vague and ill-described. We also see a blue deity, gently over-viewing the whole scene, as if all that we are and do happens under the watchful eye of God.

Whether or not you like post-impressionistic art, the question Gauguin asks is of deep import, and Advent is traditionally a season when Christians ponder it actively. November was the month to remember those we have lost, our loved ones, and during the few weeks before Christmas we ask ourselves: what really makes us happy? What makes us human? I death and decay our final destiny? And where is this world headed? Maybe you also want to draw a picture?