THE FACTS OF CHRISTMAS: I drove past a Roman Catholic church on Friday evening, Christmas Eve, and had to slow down because of all the people getting out of their cars and going to mass. In the back of my mind, deep within my imagination, I started having a Woody Allen movie dialog with all of those good Catholics. In the movie going on within my head, everything stopped and everyone just stood there in the street looking at me. Because I’m a renegade from the Holy Roman Church and from establishment religion in general, I started explaining why I wasn’t going to mass with them that evening (or the next day either, or any other day for that matter). I told them that I respected their desire to provide their children with positive values, and that I believed in basically the same kind of God that they did. But we live in the 21st Century, and our society is supposed to be committed to facts (although we’ve still got a long way to go on that one). We’re not supposed to give in to stories that twist the truth, stories like the one about how the world would be much better off if all Jews were exterminated (circa 1935 – 1945), or how much freer the Arab world would be if the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were destroyed (circa 2001).

Christianity does not have enough respect for the facts. Take Christmas, for example; there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus of Nazareth was born on Dec. 25. It could have been any day of the year; the late December date was simply the Church’s co-option of pagan solstice festivals in the Roman Empire. And that’s not a bad thing; I’m not at all opposed to solstice festivals, nor to celebrating Jesus’s birth, whenever it was. I just don’t like the way that the Church uses peer pressure to make its members believe and profess that Jesus was born on Dec. 25. If the Church had more respect for the facts, it could still have a Christmas –- but it would teach the difference between fact and myth, stressing the importance of each. Unfortunately, the Church lets the facts get buried beneath the myth. And when facts start getting buried beneath myths, it’s a sure sign of trouble. It’s bad precedent, even when the myth seems pretty tame. (OK then, but what about Santa Claus? Should we deny kids of an innocent fantasy? Good question, but with the high level of cynicism that kids have today, it’s becoming moot.)

So, back to the street scene in my dream sequence. I just finished explaining myself to all of those moms and dads and children who should otherwise be in the warm pews getting their missals and songbooks ready. They all gave me a thoughtful if slightly dubious look. Someone smileed a little, then looked down. Then a man broke the silence and asked me, “just what would you replace it with?” A woman stepped out from behind a family van and asked, “how would you protect our children and warm our hearts and souls?”

Ah, yes. That’s indeed the problem. Over the Church’s 20 centuries, all kinds of factual alternatives have been proposed. And they’ve all come up lacking. The fact is that fact worship leaves the soul hungry; the Unitarians and the Ethical Society people prove that every Sunday. It also has a problem giving kids a strong moral foundation.

Are there any new options? Sure. Today there are all kinds of new religions developing throughout the world; one of the more successful ones, at least in the Far East, is the Falun Gong phenomenon. There’s an informative list of new religions on the University of Virginia web site at religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu. These movements mix various elements of traditional religion from both east and west together with astrology, New Age, UFOs, pop psychology, occult, yoga, you name it. They’re finding all sorts of ways to touch people’s hearts and souls in ways that protect their homes and families. But what about protecting the truth? Reverence for the facts doesn’t seem to be out on the forefront of the new wave of religions (or of the old). (Hmm, that might be a bad way of putting it after what just happened out in the Indian Ocean. Sorry about that.)

Yea, it’s a hard problem, and I don’t know what the answer is. I’m hoping that some day, a prophet of both fact and spirit will come along and will inspire people to find a way to be close to God and yet fulfill the promise of the Enlightenment in the 21st century (with technology and 24 hour media coverage and all that). I’m hoping that this prophet won’t turn out to be another charlatan out to make a buck. In other words, I’m hoping for a miracle. That’s what the world truly needs for Christmas right now, and for a Happy New Year.