At the very time of year when principles of peace, brotherhood, goodwill and joy are supposed to infuse religious and secular worlds alike, many people are finding that news events–the bombing of Iraq and the Clinton impeachment–are casting an almost surreal cloud over the holiday season.
The reactions range from a desire to escape–another planet perhaps?–to anger with the president to revulsion over efforts to boot him from office, even as choirs are singing, “Silent night . . . All is calm, all is bright.”
Indeed, as three of the great religions–Christianity, Islam and Judaism–plunge into celebrations of Christmas, Ramadan and Hanukkah, some leaders and congregants alike are wondering how to mesh the country’s problems with the traditional message of the season.
More than a few people say they simply don’t care–that it wouldn’t be right to let politicians spoil their holidays, particularly if children might pick up the anxiety.
At the Midtown Center for boys in Bucktown on Saturday, volunteers preparing food baskets for the poor and elderly seemed to block out the events going on in Washington and Iraq, focusing instead on the Christmas spirit.
“How am I handling it? I’m ignoring it,” said Debbie Moreland, who planned to deliver baskets with her 13-year-old son, Donald. “I’m not letting it interfere with how my normal Christmas holiday would go.”
But others say it is their duty to focus on the tumult. Rev. Eugene Winkler, pastor of the Chicago Temple First United Methodist Church in the Loop, recalled Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s injunction that preachers hold the Bible in one hand and the day’s newspaper in the other.
“If you’re going to be true to your vocation, you’ve got to bring the two together,” Winkler said.
Last week Winkler was leading a demonstration of Chicago clergy opposed to President Clinton’s impeachment. By that evening, he was tearing up his Christmas sermon to take into account the U.S. bombing of Iraq.
“I think it’s going to be very hard to preach this season,” said Winkler, who like many pastors was expecting an extra-large congregation on the Sunday before Christmas. But even then, he was pulling out threads that connected the impeachment and the bombing, and figuring out how they fit into his “light in the dark” message of Christmas.
“It’s vengeance rather than grace; it’s war rather than peace; it’s trying to force someone to live by your own expectations,” Winkler said of the international developments. In the face of that, he plans to ask people to look for the light of Christ in the darkness of the world.
“And if they can’t see it, they must trust that God is in charge, and people like Madeleine Albright and Saddam Hussein are not in charge,” he said.
The sense of gloom isn’t limited to houses of worship. From those who deliver services to the needy to the traditional power shopper at the local mall to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, many people seemed distracted by all the news.
As if talking about the Grinch who stole Christmas, Daley said “a meanness” had permeated the nation’s capital. “The thing that bothers me is when people falter in their lives somebody was there to help you up,” he said Saturday morning during a brief stop at the Hale Park fieldhouse on the Southwest Side. “Today, they want to kick you.”
It’s hard to be cheerful when cruise missiles are leveling Baghdad, said officials at an agency that gives toys to needy children and provides runaway girls with Christmas celebrations.
“It has added an unnecessary amount of anxiety to the holiday,” said Mary Eichling-Wilson, executive director of Park Ridge-based Harbour Inc., which provides shelter for adolescent girls.
“Our staff wrestle with their own moral and ethical feelings concerning what’s happening here and around the world,” she said. “It’s only normal for that to happen.”
Several of the dozen girls the agency houses were near tears, on the eve of the agency’s holiday party last week, when they heard news reports about the bombing.
“The girls wanted to know if that meant we were going to be bombed in retaliation,” Eichling-Wilson said. “We are trying to establish a stable environment for them, and this makes it that much more difficult.”
Rev. Keith Lee Russell, pastor of Destiny Church in Hoffman Estates, said, “There’s a great tension with what is going on at home and abroad. This is a real crisis, and people are turning to their religious leaders for guidance.”
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Russell, who has a 700-member, non-denominational flock, said he feels obligated to preach about Clinton’s impeachment and the unrest in the Middle East, along with the meaning of Jesus Christ’s birth.
“I want to tell them that God is forgiving,” he said. “But I also want to say that this does not mean there are not consequences for one’s bad actions. At times, we have to pay the piper.”
The annual toy distribution held by CEDA Northwest Self-Help Center in Arlington Heights concluded without a hitch Friday. But it wasn’t easy for staffers to maintain their enthusiastic disposition amid long lines of needy children asking for help.
They handed out wrapped gifts to about 550 kids, many of whom may not receive other presents for Christmas.
“We felt like we have to be cheerful because our clients don’t have a lot to be happy about,” said Mike Martinez, the agency’s development manager. “Our people know what’s going on, but you have to be professional about it. We have to put a good face on this.”
In festively decorated shopping malls, some shoppers and sales clerks said that they were disturbed by the goings-on in the world, but were still trying to observe a normal holiday.
“People are still shopping and doing their normal routine,” said Alyce Razzano, 31, of Lisle, as she browsed in a Downers Grove jewelry store.
“It feels–well, you’re out shopping for a new razor and it feels so trivial,” said Alyce Razzano, 31, of Lisle, as she browsed in a Downers Grove jewelry store. “You could have been born in Baghdad. There are people being hurt that happened to be born there.”
Jim Fleming, 30, jewelry manager for the store, said he found the impeachment process more depressing than the bombings.
“The bombing in Baghdad–as sick as it sounds–brings more of a sense of pride. We’re stomping out evil in the world. Either way, it’s the wrong message for Christmas.”
This isn’t the first time current events have threatened to overshadow the joys of Christmas.
Just five days after Christmas in 1903, a devastating fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago killed 602 people.
In early December 1930, New York’s giant Bank of the United States closed, setting off a chain reaction of bank failures across the nation that reached its climax in the days immediately before and after Christmas.
Shocking blows on both ends of World War II–Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the Battle of the Bulge in 1944–pulled Americans’ attention away from ancient Bethlehem and into the present. In 1972, war intruded on Christmas again, as the United States launched the two-week blitz intended to bomb North Vietnam into submission.
In recent years, the early days of the Persian Gulf war in January 1991 have come the closest to matching the gloom that’s so pervasive today.
In churches, mixing Christmas and current events is not always popular, however. Two years ago on Christmas Eve, Winkler preached about the hate that pervaded talk radio.
“People come to the Christmas Eve service looking for a nice, gooey, mushy sermon,” he told his congregation. “But that is divorced from the reality of the world.”
For weeks afterward, he was deluged with angry calls and letters from people who felt his sermon was not appropriate to the holiday.
David Ho and Felix Amerasinghe, first-year law students at the University of Chicago, were chilling out after finals in Chicago on Friday, before heading home for the holidays–Ho to Los Angeles and Amerasinghe to Washington, D.C. They seemed less disturbed by the week’s dramatic events.
They observed that there’s always something bad happening around the world and that impeaching Clinton doesn’t signal the end of democracy.
“As a Christian, I believe in mercy but also righteousness,” Ho said as he stood in the shadow of a lighted Christmas tree. “Maybe (impeaching Clinton) is the only thing that will save the presidency.”
As for the bombing of Iraq, Ho said there is little reason to allow conflict in one small part of the world to spoil the holidays at home. “To do that, you would have to be blind to other parts of the world. There is always poverty and war.”
Amerasinghe, originally from Sri Lanka, said his island nation has suffered through 16 years of civil war. But that hasn’t affected America’s holidays, he said, because the conflict hasn’t played itself out on the front pages.
A few miles away, on the West Side, young mothers attended a Christmas party with their families at a cheerfully decorated gymnasium inside the Rockwell Gardens housing development. There was scant talk about Clinton’s impeachment or the Middle East.
As a Temptations rendition of “Silent Night” blasted from a sound system and rambunctious children played with toys on the floor of the West Side facility, Monique Moman, 18, sat quietly rocking her 3-month-old son, Marqueal.
“It’s my baby’s first Christmas. That’s the only thing I’m concerned about,” said Moman, who makes $6 an hour as a Salvation Army bell ringer.
Meanwhile, a celebration on the third floor of a building at 920 N. Franklin St. seemed unaffected by events outside.
About 50 people of Jewish descent lifted their voices in song and feasted on golden potato pancakes and brisket during a combination Shabbat service and Hanukkah celebration hosted by the Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living in Highland Park.
“Everyone grab a piece of the bread (the traditional egg bread eaten at a Shabbat dinner) or hold on to someone holding a piece of it so we can make a human food chain,” yelled Ruth Durschlag, who organized the gathering.
Richard Rubin, an attorney who lives on the North Side, said the celebration had nothing to do with political turmoil.
“Everything here is symbolic. This is something that is thousands of years old,” he said. “Sure, fighting and destruction is occurring on a daily basis throughout much of the world. But this represents a joyous time in Jewish history. It’s about hope, peace, faith and dedication.”
He added, “None of what is going on can dampen our spirits about Hanukkah.”
Joel Harlib of Lincoln Park expressed similar sentiments. “Certainly, I’d like to see freedom and justice all over the world,” he said. “We want people to have peace internally and the world to be at peace externally. But our gathering is a reflective time. It’s a time of joy and a time to remind ourselves of the possibility of a brighter day.”
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For members of the Muslim faith, the observance of Ramadan began this weekend. At the Muslim Community Center, 4380 N. Elston Ave., Chicago, barefoot boys scampered off to Koran classes as adult men shouted angrily about the killing of Iraqis who have nothing to do with Saddam Hussein.
Ramadan requires Muslims to fast during the daylight hours for a month. It is meant to teach empathy and to show how the poor live. Many people said their thoughts and prayers now will be with the people of Iraq.
“Saddam is a dictator, and everybody knows that,” one member of the Muslim center said. “We are against the killing of innocent people and children.”
For those of the Muslim faith, the observance of Ramadan is expected to begin this weekend. The sighting of the new moon will signal the first day of a monthlong observation that’s marked by fasting from dawn until dusk.
This year, many prayers will be said for Muslim brothers and sisters who are suffering in Iraq, said Asad Husain, president of the American Islamic College who also teaches at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.
“There will be sadness,” Husain said. “Mr. Saddam Hussein should not have created this kind of problem. Saddam Hussein should have tried to settle this.”