Shut Up and Carol

Christmas Instructions for the Family Skeptic

Are you celebrating Christmas with a “none”?

They’re your family member, friend, or even spouse who’s not a church attender – let alone a member. Yet, here they are beside you for the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service. You’ll watch in amazement as they sing with strangers, “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” They’ll expertly light their candle and pass that little flame to others during “Silent Night.” And, while they can’t recall if there’s a Bible at home, they may whisper along with the reader, “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room at the inn.”

Up to half of the Christmas Eve congregation is composed of such folks – skeptics. The angels, shepherds, the paradoxical claim that God came among us as a baby – they don’t believe in any of this, so why are they here this evening?

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What’s behind this moving ritual of readings, candles, and song that draws both the devout and skeptic?

The candlelight service harks back to the 1700’s when Moravian Protestants combined their traditions of hymn-singing gatherings and candlelight services. Then, in the late 1800’s, this format was adopted and developed by a clergyman for his Anglican congregation in Truro, England. Edward Benson White started the delightful tradition of scripture readers, ranging from young choir boys to the local bishop. They took turns reading nine short Christmas lessons, separated by nine hymns and carols.[1] Thus, the service came to be known as, “Lessons and Carols,” and grew in popularity. Today, it is heard around the world through the annual broadcast of its performance by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. (Check your NPR schedule!)

Developed over centuries of biblical reflection, holy ritual, and sacred music, this service continues to be refined and widely adopted by congregations—even Evangelicals who are usually allergic to “smells and bells.”

Why its popularity?

It works. It envisions an alternative world that addresses the hopes and fears of all. We see ourselves in its actors and emotions: an anxious family desperate for shelter, humble shepherds with a message of joy, and wise men seeking to glimpse the divine in a human face.

They and we have pressing questions. For what can we hope? How should we live? What is the character of this mysterious world that sustains our lives?

The Christmas Eve service answers all those questions with Jesus, born this night.

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But what about the reality behind this compelling vision? A census that drives the family to Bethlehem? A brilliant, new star? Angels in the sky? Mary, a virgin? Is any of that real?

What can you say to the “none” next to you in the pew?

Here’s some help from those who certainly study what’s real: quantum physicists, who work with the smallest building blocks of matter. Quantum physicists face this kind of question every day — and solve it by putting it aside.

These scientists accept that they will never see the realities behind the sketches, diagrams, and mathematical equations that represent quantum objects. For example, sometimes quantum objects behave like a particle, and other times, a wave. What are they really? We just don’t know. “No one really understands quantum mechanics,” admitted Richard Feynman, who won a Noble Prize for his work in this field.

Yet, these limits to knowledge are accepted because quantum mechanics works so well. It has solved celestial riddles and practical challenges, such as telecommunications encryption and high-speed computing.

Quantum mechanics, a construction of the human mind, proves itself by solving real problems.

So, too, our Christmas Eve service. Like the quantum world, it’s a construction of the mind – from those Moravians down to your minister’s version. And it proves itself by solving real problems. It inspires our vision of a world, suffused with wonder, hope, and human worth – that we see in Jesus.

It works.

But, if you enter this service, asking, “What’s behind this ritual?” “What’s historical here?” you’ll be disappointed. But if you come, asking questions about how to live, you’ll be equipped and inspired.

Now, when someone complains, “The world is ruled by violence, death frustrates all human progress, our lives are short and brutish,” the Christian can say, “That’s not the world I know. My world is governed by greater powers of love, justice, and healing – that we see in Jesus. That’s the world I embrace tonight.”

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Just as our quantum models work, the Christmas Eve vision also works. Yet, neither can answer the question, “What’s behind these pictures?” “What’s the underlying reality?”

But to those who want to pursue such questions, Cornell University’s David Mermin advises his fellow physicists to, “Shut up and calculate.”

Let’s do the same this Christmas Eve. Let’s all just, “Shut up and carol.”

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[1] Arthur Christopher Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1899), 1:484.