I mentioned Bill Cavanaugh's boon on "Migrations of the Holy" -- how secularization is not a genuine emptying of God and the significance of the church. We can see how life is organized comes from networks that run through nation-states. Thus the transference and transformation of "Advent" to the nation-state and to the market in my last post in November (could it really have been that long ago?!) via "Thanksgiving"'s establishment as a pre-Advent economic stimulus.

I was interviewed by a local Christian newspaper about the "controversy" on the practice that some large Protestant churches have adopted to cancel worship services on Christmas morning when Christmas falls on Sunday -- of course, Catholic congregations could not fathom this as intelligible, a practice made easier by the mid-night services that cover both the evening and the morning! But in that mass is held every day, of course, what a wonderful time to gather in worship to hear the completion of the Christmas passages. What is interesting to me is that the same people who run the "keep Christ in Christmas" campaigns overlap with the congregations that cancel worship on Christmas morning. I would find it interesting to see how many Churches of the Nazarene will cancel churches on Christmas, and the comparative nature of their demographics.

Of course this is part of the "migration of the holy" -- the transformation of Christmas from a church festival to a "public festival" of consumption. This then has generated its only "counter-consumption" transformations. For instance, the Spanish/Mexican tradition of "La Posada" in which Mary and Joseph's wanderings before the birth of Christ has been taken up by organizations like "La Posada Sin Frontier" to protest United States immigration policy. In its inversion of the commercialization of Christmas, it participates in the same "migration of the holy" through de-ecclesializing the event. Whereas the traditional rite ended at the local church on Christmas eve, the "La Posada Sin Frontier" has ended in at a public park around the border fence between Imperial Beach and Tijuana. As the mainstream culture transfers Christmas into a family festival of consumption for the sake of the national economy, the Christian ecclesial re-enactment of the journey of Joseph and Mary becomes an act of protest to bring about a different economic order. The "La Posada Sin Frontier" seeks to allow a freer movement of human beings to join the free transference of goods across national borders to bring about the completion of the neo-liberal program. In such acts one sees how the libertarian right and the post-Marxist left come together as the same thing-- and how the "migration of Christmas" continues to move outside of the church.

Perhaps, however, the most explicit sign of where we are came in a routine phrase in USA Today this past week. On December 14th, Christina Rexrode of the Associated Press wrote an article entitled, "Christmas Can Wait? Economy Intrudes On Holiday for Some". Picking up from evangelical Protestant practices like "Christmas in July," Rexrode notes howthe celebration of Christmas is becoming unhinged from the church's calendar, and celebrated at a time that is "more convenient" and "economically viable." But what struck me was Rexrode's description of Christmas: "Postponing Christmas Day, originally a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ, is almost unheard of in some circles."

"Christmas Day, originally a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ". What it "originally" was, but is no more?!

If one does not recognize here that we have entered a post-Christian setting, we have eyes that will not see -- a post-Christianization often driven by Christians themselves as they "de-church" the faith given to the saints as their practices are absorbed into the state and the market" via its collapse into the dialectic of consumerist capitalism and its inverse -- the antithesis of protest of the excesses of nationally controlled globalization to enhance the promised "freedom" of individuals to bring about the end of history.

As Christmas eve approaches, I hope that God will gather you with a congregation. Of course, the saints will gather at Mid-City -- the English-speaking congregation Saturday at 5:00 (the French-speaking congregation gathers later and will spend much more time in worship, thank God!). Sunday morning things will go a pace as usual -- except that the Cambodian congregation has purchased gifts for the children from all congregations -- whereas but the church can you find persons from Cambodia buying gifts for poor children from the Congo, Burundi, and Haiti. Here is a re-enactment of the Magi from the east, coming and offering gifts to the young Jewish messiah. No headlines in the paper; no grand directives from above. Just the faithful response of a congregation whose live has been pulled into the wonderful mystery of the body of Christ.

You see, even as "the holy" migrates according to the policies of the nation-state and its economic advisers, God still brings forth signs, in out of the way places, that it is God, not the powers, that unto us is born a Savior who shall be for all people, named Christ, the Lord.