Where do you keep them? The things you use to make your home ready for Christmas, that is. My family kept ours under the basement stairs, because they came out only once a year. Ah, the long Philco radio box full of decorations! It was ancient even then. Now, here at the parish, we have rectory decorations and church decorations in the respective boiler rooms. There are all those trees that arrived on the truck from Quebec last Sunday, that will move from our front lot into homes around the region. These are things that help all of us enjoy Advent and Christmas. I don’t know about you, but for me, Christmas wouldn’t be the same without things.
One of the features I enjoy about Frederick, Maryland, is the antique shops there that are filled with all sorts of household goods and furnishings from eras recent to revolutionary. The sheer amount and quality of the goods there is indicative of one of the observed characteristics of the rising generations: they don’t want their parents’ things.
This may be a sign of a new asceticism, but I doubt it; the same generations are Olympically self-indulgent of consumables, entertainments, and experiences such as vacations and adventures. They are also intensely engaged with technology, of which they like to possess the latest iterations. I think, rather, it is a symptom of a disdain for things: stuff.
This is weird, I know, but bear with me. There is an old joke about “There are two kinds of people in the world: People who separate everybody into two types of people, and people who don’t.” Well, it is human nature to simplify everything into an either/or, perhaps because making something simpler should make it easier. One of these great “divides” was the old Manichaean division of everything into material (bad) and spiritual (good), which can sound authentic at first, but leads quickly to body (bad), soul (good).
How do we know that’s a problem? Well, God has a body. So it can’t be all bad! When the eternal Son took flesh in the womb of His Virgin Mother, He was NOT mixing bad with His good. No, He manifested the goodness of human flesh by taking it to Himself, and that same flesh was raised from the dead and assumed into heaven. Body, good!
So working back, if the body is good, then material can be and is good too, because the body needs material to survive and thrive. You know, food and hygiene, shelter and medicine and the like. Stuff.
Jesus, Who is good, needed stuff, and you and I need stuff. Jesus utilizes our universal need by using things, material objects and items, to give us spiritual and even divine gifts. We call these sacraments. Bread and wine become His body and blood for our spiritual nourishments. Water, oil, and other basics all have a role to play in restoring, repairing, and fortifying our immortality. Body + soul, material + spiritual. That is us!
This reveals something about the role of things in our lives. Things have connections and connotations; things connect us to other things, and other non-material realities. Things present and re-present experiences and effects that would otherwise be impossible to manage. A dinner plate from your grandmother’s china can initiate a flood of memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, and arouse an authentic surge of love and affection. Love and affection are both stubbornly immaterial, yet material objects play an indispensable role in our experience and understanding of both.
Objects can and in fact should be good in their own right, too, by being whole and unspoiled, by being beautiful and well crafted. Even then, they manifest the goodness of human genius and labor and craft, of artisanship and artistry.
Yet humble material, too, can accomplish a noble, even holy purpose. There was hay in a manger once, and it gave comfort to the newborn King. For years that Philco radio box meant to me Christmas with all its festivity and family fun, and the memory of it erupting unbidden just now, something I had not thought of in thirty years or more, awakens a gratitude for an experience and understanding of life where love of family and the love of God were tangible and delighted in, in actions, words, smells and tastes, and yes, things.
In the digital age when anything, including beauty and truth, can be digitally simulated, the flawless sheen of virtual reality is your first clue that it is anything but reality. Things, simple things like food and drink, lights, trees, and boxes, connect us one to another, and to the living God. Where do you keep them?
