Harris Riordan's sermon condensed and published in the Sun-Sentinel December 8, 2006
Last year, at the beginning of December, a note came home with my daughter's homework: "We are making holiday crafts in Kindergarten, please check which craft your child should be given -- Christmas tree or Menorah." And underneath, a handwritten message: "Maggie says she should get both!"
This school does a good job of being respectful of diversity, sensitive and supportive of parents' needs. The teacher just wasn't quite ready for the Unitarian Universalist perspective. For most of the world one of these holidays is the real one and the other is the extra. One is rooted in who you are, who your people were, what you believe or struggle with; and the other is the property of neighbors or strangers. Necessity or a spirit of openness may lead you to become familiar with the other tradition. Over time some even become expert translators, speaking, greeting, singing and cooking in the language of both holidays. But even in America, where we treasure religious freedom and have made such strides towards pluralism, most adults have something of an either/or, "mine and your" attitude towards the holidays.
The children here in our Sunday School are growing up in a different world. Unless the world teaches them otherwise, they will assume that their birthright embraces all the wisdom of the season. When they are told well, kids don't confuse the stories. While we UU's don't celebrate any holiday the way our neighbors do, we do take them seriously. Because we are free in faith, we sift through the myths and metaphors of the generations to find those that make the essential truths alive, filled with sustaining power. What is lost, what the kids in our Sunday School are never given, is a feeling of exclusivity. They know nothing of the walls the world is accustomed to.
Hanukkah has become a crucial element in my holiday season, because it reminds me of the human scale of faith. Solstice and Christmas have always served to urge my soul to soar up toward the heavens, but Hanukkah says leave the stars where they are, look for the light that comes through the work of your days. It is Hanukkah that says to me "what in the world needs repair?" What place of sacredness needs to be renewed? What light do I bring to life? What light can I tend that will evoke a cosmic YES?
This is the season of light that no darkness can contain. May we help each other make it so in our lives.