Fiction by Dennis Gruending

The school Christmas concert is on in the town hall tonight and Dale has a big part in it. When they pull back the curtain on the stage and fourteen kids stand there holding pieces of cardboard with block letters spelling the words “Merry Christmas”, he is going to be the letter M. He is also Joseph in the crib scene. His mother has made him a headpiece from an old orange dishtowel. He has a fake brown beard, and sandals borrowed especially for the concert from his cousin in Saskatoon

Miss Melanson, the principal, has overseen three weeks of happy rehearsals. She stands five feet eleven. The scent of her perfume sets fire to your nostrils and catches in your throat. Her hair is a shoe polish black but white at the roots, and she wears framed glasses with thick lenses that magnify her eyes in such a way that any student who catches her stern gaze freezes like rabbit in the headlights. The awe inspired by Miss Melanson’s presence, however, does not prevent students from poking fun behind her back. Her Christian names are Mary and Theresa — Mary Theresa Melanson. She signs report cards and notes home with the initials M.T., letters that loop and flow on the page. M. T. Melanson. So the students call Empty. Empty Melanson.

Miss Melanson’s Christmas program has a little bit of everything. There are carols sung by a thin-voiced children’s choir; actually, it’s mostly a girls’ choir because even fear of Miss Melanson doesn’t move boys over ten years of age to sing. Then there are the dramas. Miss Melanson has produced a coup this year with Dickens’s Christmas Carol because a girl who has a bone disease and actually wears a leg brace is playing Tiny Tim. Then there’s the crib scene which involves every child in the primary grades, with many of them being shepherds and others sheep.

There was a big winter storm on Thursday and it left drifts waist deep on the roads. It appeared for awhile as though only the people in town would be able to make it to the concert. But on Friday morning the telephone operator put out a general call, a long, long ring that brought everybody to the phone. She announced that the snowplough was coming through. It roars into town early in the afternoon, a big green tractor with a set of whirling and clanking blades mounted on the front. Benny Winkler sits in the cab, red-faced and bundled in layers clothing against the cold like some round old Father Christmas.

Benny had been a farmer on some rocky hills north of town but he could never get his work done in the busy seasons. At harvest time, when he took a sample of his wheat to the grain elevator in town to test for dry, he usually found the siren song of the Redlin Hotel on Main Street too much to resist. He sold the farm one day in a fit of disgust and started new career (well, not a career exactly because nobody in Redlin except the teachers and the manager of the Credit Union have careers). In summer Benny drives the municipal road grader and in winter the snowplough.

Benny also moonlights as janitor for the town hall and it’s that job he prefers. Like many bachelors he is a shy man, but he also loves company and commotion and attention. Of all the year’s events, he likes the Christmas concert best of all. He likes the kids, likes the way they can’t sit still and can’t control their enthusiasm and excitement; he likes the carols, although he’s too self-conscious to sing along; he likes the satisfaction that comes with his stoking the wood stove and the coal furnace, content in knowing that it is he who is keeping everybody warm. This is his hospitality. This is when he has everybody over for Christmas.

Tonight the hall is packed. All of the benches are filled to groaning by seven o’clock. The program is all a blur to Dale as he stands on the stage and looks out into the dark and cavernous void filled by his parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents and everyone else’s too. Dale runs into trouble early in the opening act featuring the cardboard letters. The boy holding the S in the word “Christmas” stands at the wrong side of the stage. Dale doesn’t notice and he stands at the end instead of the beginning of the line, so that the phrase reads “Serry Christam” instead of “Merry Christmas”.

The first carols are a bit tattered although you can’t blame Miss Melanson, who directs her young choir with gusto. They sing Silent Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Angels We Have Heard High, all the favourites. Most of these are performed while the crib scene is being played out. It takes such a long time that some of the sheep get frisky and it looks as though the cardboard stable might topple onto the Holy Family. During We Three Kings, a piece of wire from a wise man’s cape hooks Dale’s beard and pulls it off an event that draws applause from the audience.

Then the secular begins to take over. They sing Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Here Comes Santa Claus. Miss Melanson, who is also the emcee for the evening, reports several sightings of Santa. “He’s just been seen passing through Prince Albert and he’s headed this way.” Cheers from many small throats. And later, “Santa and Rudolph and the other reindeer have just flown over Birch Hills.” Bedlam.

A light jingling of bells announces his arrival and there he is, bursting through the double doors at the back of the hall. “Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas.” He leaps into the air and leaps again. “Merry Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho.” He drops his bulging white bag beside the wood stove, leans over and gives a big Santa bear hug to one of the women sitting there. “Merry Christmas.” He hops over one of the green benches and makes his way through the cluttered aisle to the front where Miss Melanson is standing below the stage. He sweeps her into his arms and tips her backwards. “Merry Christmas.” He gives her a big squeeze and a kiss full on the lips, then releases her and turns making as deep a bow as might be made by a stout man whose stomach is padded with pillows. Dale is standing there right by the tree, still trying to recover from the earlier indignity of losing his beard. He hears Miss Melanson say, “Why, why, Mr. Winkler, you surprise me. And Merry Christmas to you.”

“Ho! Ho! Ho!”

With that Santa settles down to his appointed task. Miss Melanson stands by the bright tree calling each child by name and passing that child’s gift to Santa. He hands out the packages to the children with a lot of hugs and “Ho Ho’s” and he digs deeply into his sack for little brown paper bags filled with candied nuts and oranges.

When it is over he skips to the back of the hall, turns and throws a kiss. “Ho, ho, see you next year,” he says. Then he flings open the door and an icy blast of air rushes in. He steps alone into the darkened street bordered by the town’s small houses with snow banked up around their foundations and smoke rising straight up from the chimneys.

By Dennis Gruending

I have been posting to my Pulpit and Politics blog for just over a year now, 31 stories in all about the intersection between faith and public life. I was pleased to learn recently that Pulpit and Politics is a finalist for a 2008 Canadian Blog Award in the category of Best Religious-Philosophy blog. I would recommend a number of these blogs as well worth reading. The winners will be announced on December 16. As Pulpit and Politics observes an anniversary, I have reviewed stories written over the past year (they remain posted on the site) in a search for some patterns.

One of my consistent interests is the impact that the religious right is having upon political life in Canada. An Ipsos-Reid exit poll following the election in 2006 indicated that the vote of evangelical Christians and Catholics who attend church weekly had been a deciding factor in the election of a Conservative minority government. The question is whether that pronounced religious vote is a blip or an emerging reality in Canadian political life. That question led me to look more closely into the relationship between the religious and the political right. I presented an academic paper on the topic at a conference at The University of Western Ontario in May 2008, and it will comprise one chapter in a book of conference proceedings to be published in 2009.

We had an election in Canada in October 2008 and there was another exit poll. I have yet to write about its results but I will. I have, however, written two pieces on the American election and how Barrack Obama made inroads into the Republican’s mighty fortress among churchgoers. Obama was able to make only modest gains among white evangelicals, who continue to be a bedrock for the Republicans. He did not win among white Catholics either but he was much more successful than the Republicans among Hispanic Catholics and blacks of every faith.

My interest in the religious right also led me to examine a growing network of think tanks and advocacy groups in Canada, such as the Work Research Centre, the Institute for Marriage and the Family, the Manning Centre, the National House of Prayer in Ottawa, and religiously conservative youth group 4MyCanada. These organizations constitute a conservative matrix whose personnel attend each other’s conferences, write for each other’s newsletters and appear as spokespersons on sympathetic media to discuss the latest budgets, elections and court cases. They share a deep suspicion of government, an antagonism toward public social programs and a dislike for the labour movement. They have taken ideas once considered to be on the fringe right and moved them into the mainstream debate. Stephen Harper and the Conservatives court them assiduously.

I was challenged gently by some readers to focus less on the religious right and more upon the progressives who have been struggling to have their voices heard in all churches and in Canadian society. There exists a deep frustration among some, like Rev. Bill Blaikie, the recently retired NDP member of Parliament. They say that the religious impulse was essential to the formation of progressive political movements, but that today when people hear the word “religion” they think immediately of right wing politics and intolerance. I did not have to look far to find many examples of religious progressives who promote peace, work to improve Medicare, question the environmental impact of tar sands development, and argue that governments must engage in a national poverty reduction strategy. Those topics arose in public events featuring people such as Most Rev. Lois Wilson, a former moderator of the United Church of Canada and later an Independent member of the Senate; Murray Thomson, who remains at age 85 an energetic and indefatigable promoter of peace and an opponent of militarism; and Douglas Roche, former MP, Senator and Canadian disarmament ambassador to the United Nations. They are all people who are truly extraordinary in their commitment, energy and integrity. All of them are respected elders but I will also be interested in future to seek out younger people who are in the process of accepting the baton to continue the good race.

About nine months into my first year of writing Pulpit and Politics, I had a counter installed to tally the visits that I am receiving. They number about 3,000 per month, a modest amount but also instructive when I place them into the context of book publishing. Most Canadian writers are pleased if their book sells 5,000 copies. So 9,000 visits to a blog over three months is most satisfactory, although I admit there is a difference between reading an 800 word blog posting and an 80,000 word book. Still, the numbers do suggest that digital technology is creating an opportunity for writers to reach readers directly, bypassing the conservative gatekeepers who dominate increasingly in media and publishing.

The counting device also provides some insight about what people are searching for when they come to the blog site. I wrote five pieces about religion and the Canadian election leading up to voting day on October 14th and it is those articles that have received the most traffic. I wrote about the positions that churches and religious organizations were taking on the issues; about Stephen Harper and evangelical voters; and about the leaders’ debates that were broadcast on television and radio. Many readers came to the blog using search phrases such as: “Stephen Harper and religion”, “Harper 2008 election”, and “election debate 2008”. Another way of judging reader interest is the Comments section that is available at the end of each blog posting. The piece that drew the most comments was one that I wrote about the leaders’ debates. I posed the questions that I would ask if I were the debate’s moderator and I invited readers to post their own questions in the Comments section. A number of people did so and their questions were both penetrating and thoughtful.

Another item that drew numerous comments was my report on a rally called The Cry, which was staged by a religiously conservative youth group on Parliament Hill in August. I reported how the rally’s speakers denounced pretty well everything about contemporary Canada while they offered praise for the Harper Conservatives and the government of Israel. I received comments, both pro and con. As a footnote here, The Cry’s organizers predicted a turnout of thousands, but the RCMP and media organizations estimated the attendance at only 400. Some religiously conservative reporters were prepared to fudge the numbers, implying that up to a thousand had attended.

Another popular piece was one that I wrote about Mahatma Gandhi following a trip that I made to India early in 2008. The article drew a number of comments and it was a favoured destination for readers visiting the blog. Gandhi’s non-violent resistance to British colonial rule and his fervent work on behalf of peace, particularly between Hindus and Muslims, remain an inspiration, and an appropriate reminder about the significance that accompanies the Christian feast of Christmas. As we approach that feast, may peace be with you, your loved ones and all who share our planet.