To Feast or Not to Feast

It's not even a question, actually, just pass the potatoes.

Merry Christmas! I trust you all have begun a glorious week of gift-giving and eating slightly more than you should.

I thought about wandering over here to greet you all yesterday, but I kept falling asleep with my lovely cat on my lap who is doing so much better. I couldn’t be more relieved.

Matt pointed out to me that this is the first animal we have ever taken to the vet for an illness in the whole course of our marriage who has thereby been made well. Apart from routine visits, whenever we have had a critter get sick, the various vets to whom we have delivered up vast quantities of cash have been able to do nothing at all. Thus my sense of helpless doom when we took her in last week. This must be the end, I said to everyone, and just before Christmas, which makes it just a little bit unbearable.

Instead of dying, however, she is almost completely recovered—eating more every day and walking, though listing to one side. So anyway, all I did in between naps yesterday was thank God for his many gifts and contemplate the question of another spoonful of Trifle.

Oh, and I did reread this long wonderful piece about why there are so many feasts of martyrs packed into the first 8 days of Christmas. If you’re wondering if Christians are accidentally pagan adjacent by celebrating the birth of their Savior on December 25th, the author abundantly proves otherwise. In fact, our feast layers rich traditions with scriptural insights about who Jesus is. It’s worth reading more than once. Oh, and you can listen to Lessons and Carols here until Friday.

The trouble with being a Christian in a degenerate and fatuous age and having so many days to celebrate is that the Internet can’t be bothered to take even a few hours off of its wickedness. While I’m digging around in my boxes looking for some lost baby Jesus, the world rushes furiously along down the broad wide road that leads to perdition. Apparently, according to various postings on the X app, someone has produced a calendar full of scantily clad “conservative” women for the enjoyment of “conservative” men, if you’re that sort of “conservative” person who thinks that the incitement of lust for financial gain is totes fire (“fire,” I have been reliably informed, is the new way of saying “awesome.”) Allie Beth Stucky isn’t amused:

You can probably guess what I think about a calendar branded for “conservative dads” filled with pictures of women, many of them married and many of them very scantily clad. Hate it. I also find the discourse ridiculous, as if we’re all supposed to pretend we don’t understand the purpose of a calendar of posed, full-body pictures of women. You can call me a prude, puritanical, or jealous of these women’s beauty— whatever makes you feel better. I just don’t see the value in marketing what’s basically, in some photos, soft porn to married (or unmarried) men. Of course these women are gorgeous, and of course I’m all for celebrating true femininity in an age that can’t define “woman.” In my view, this doesn’t accomplish that at all. Not trying to cause drama with the participants, some of whom I think are doing great, courageous work. And I’m aware there may be bigger battles to fight than this. But I happen to know that there are many Christian conservatives who share this same perspective behind the scenes, and I wanted to give them a voice. The polarization between Christian and secular conservatism is only going to grow, my friends, so buckle up!

I had the dubious fortune of seeing all the posts about the calendar after reading this long and stupid article about polyamory. Someone wrote a memoir called More:

When the book opens, Roden Winter is the (monogamously) married stay-at-home mother of two small children, or, as she puts it, “the Wiper of Noses, the Doer of Dishes, the Nag in Residence.” She wants, well—more. One night, after her husband, Stewart, gets home late from work, yet again, she loses it. Out on a rage walk through the mean streets of Park Slope, she bumps into an old colleague from her teaching days who invites her out to a nearby bar, appropriately named the Gate, where she will first trespass the boundaries of monogamy.

I love how just a few minutes ago, being a single mother represented the highest form of virtue. Single mothers were the heroines of our time—the most hard-working and bravest people of all. But now, suddenly, having to do any mothering, even with the help of someone like a husband, is so intolerable it can only be borne by going out to bars and finding strangers to have sex with. Also, according to The New Yorker, it’s not that having sex with a lot of different people to whom one is not married is morally wicked, it’s that one’s personal dedication to promiscuity still hasn’t brought about the socialist utopia just over the horizon:

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of “More” is how closed-minded it feels about many things besides open marriage. Divorce, for instance. When the wife of one of Roden Winter’s lovers leaves him for another man, she derides the woman to her therapist: “I feel bad for him. Diana is being so impulsive. I mean, she’s planning on marrying this guy she met only a year ago.” It’s a startlingly judgmental pronouncement coming from someone who clearly thinks of herself as transgressive. But that kind of marital rupture is impossible in Roden Winter’s world. While I appreciated her lack of shame about desire (including the desire for validation), I couldn’t help wishing that she possessed the same candor around the economics of her marriage. Although she never directly addresses the matter in “More,” it is clear from her life style that Roden Winter and her husband are better off than most of their partners, who tend to be younger, single, and less financially secure than they are. One of their rules is that they cannot have sex in their home, and so, in the course of the book they spend untold amounts on New York City hotels, taxis, and co-working spaces. When Roden Winter first hooks up with Matt, she immediately notices his cramped living space: “There’s no foyer in his small studio apartment, no mudroom with four identical cubbies like I have in my house.” Who thinks about a mudroom during sex? Someone who writes a book called “More” is who.

The memoir takes a long time to finish, not unlike a bad Ashley Madison hookup, but not before Roden Winter offers closing remarks in defense of open marriage. She echoes the common refrain expressed by proponents of polyamory that the life style represents an abundance-oriented mind-set, whereas monogamy is a symptom of scarcity culture. “Because love is vast,” she tells us. “Abundant. Infinite, in fact. And the secret is this: love begets love. The more you love, the more love you have to give.” But there is no articulation of what that abundance might look like beyond her private life and the private spaces in which it unfolds. Ultimately, Roden Winter’s memoir represents a very specific, arguably very American version of polyamory—the extension of abundance culture to all corners of the bedroom, but nowhere beyond. I want more for polyamory than “More.” As ethical non-monogamy becomes the stuff of Park Slope marriages and luxury perfume ads, it’s worth remembering that revolutions don’t fail; they get co-opted—often by people who can afford co-ops.

What strikes me, whether it be the “family values” calendrical celebration of lust, or adultery and fornication masquerading as something special and serious, is how Satan promises delicious and wonderful gifts, but never can make good on his vows. The consummation of your desires will be all that, he says, neglecting to mention that your current desires are too dull and easily placated to even count as desire at all. You’re thinking about snot and mudrooms and staring at some deeply confused “conservative” women and all the while the true source of Life is right there to live with you forever, if only you would notice.

In a clever illustration of the wider point, Tim Challies posted a brilliant piece this week called “If Satan Took Up Marriage Counseling.” Pretty much everything that anyone says today about marriage is not from the mouth of God. Like:

If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage is a union between any two—or three or four—willing partners regardless of any factor related to their sex or maybe even their family relationship. He would also want to be clear that marriage can be easily dissolved when it is no longer satisfying or desirable—“’til death or dissatisfaction do us part.”

And:

If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that marriage is primarily a matter of an individual’s personal lifestyle, that before marriage is about giving oneself to another person to love and to serve, marriage is about a sense of personal well-being and fulfillment.

And:

If Satan took up marriage counseling, he would want people to believe that children are a hindrance to a happy marriage rather than a blessing to it and that people are happiest when dedicating themselves entirely to themselves rather than to others. And if they still insisted on having children, he would want them to think of those children as a lifestyle choice, as a kind of prop to be used to enhance a parent’s sense of personal satisfaction.

I think it is in Every Moment Holy that the writers declare that feasting—Christian Feasting—is an act of war. I probably have the phrasing wrong. I’m not sure about the metaphor of war at the end of such a literally war-torn year, but certainly, I accept that celebrating Christian Feasts is a rebellious and pugilistic act. The Feast can’t—and hasn’t ever—been haphazard. It isn’t something that the Moral Majority made up in the 80s because they were scared of the devil. It’s not a war on Christmas, it’s Christians thumbing their noses at Satan and all his dumb polyamory.

Certain elements are required to make it a success. It has to be a spiritual celebration rather than a mere consumption of goods. All the eating and drinking have to be contextualized by gratitude for the mercy of God. There can be no shadow of grievance-mongering or entitlement. The participants have to be grateful for everything that God has given them, including the loss, the suffering, the death, the shame, the contempt, the illness besetting them. They hobble to their chairs, poor and crushed in spirit, barely able to lift their heads, so humiliated by their sin and suffering that all they can apprehend is that small baby in the hollow of the stone manger-tomb. Their joy, then, at being accepted by God and given a place in his household is unalloyed. Having turned away from all the wreckage of rebellion and empty lust, the Light of the Savior grips them completely. They are satisfied with the truth and beauty and goodness of God, instead of being bored or confused about it.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go eat more chocolate. Have a nice third day of Christmas!