Margot Adler once implied that Christianity was joyless. That was chief among the reasons she gave for the neopagan resurgence of the past century: “the Pagan community is one of the only spiritual communities that is exploring humor, joy, abandonment, even silliness and outrageousness as valid parts of spiritual experience” (Adler, 1979).
While I do not necessarily question her critique of the vacuity and vapidity of a certain brand of mid-century American protestant Christianity, I do believe her assessment of the Christian Faith, taken as a catholic and historical whole, was either blind or willingly ignorant. She obviously had never read, among many other things, the poetry of Robert Herrick.
Christianity, you see, is chock-full of foolery, one might even say we invented it: from at least as early as the Flood, God has thrown the folly of our wisdom into boisterous relief against the wisdom of his (seeming) foolishness. For the flood was the one of the first moments in scripture where a pattern emerges that is neither tragic nor epic, but comedic: the strong with all of their seriousness (so miserably serious) try to drown-out the voice of God, but are themselves drowned-out. It is a kind of dark-comedy waaaay before dark comedy was a thing. One arrives at Genesis 9 shaking and a little overwhelmed, and yet filled with a kind of hopeful wonder: “Oh my, it worked… the Ark worked… I didn’t think it would, but it did… perhaps… perhaps this whole human-story thing might actually turn-out okay in the end afterall.”
And what does God’s victory produce in his people? Noah offers sacrifice and plants a vineyard. He has a festival —a celebration that God’s strength is made perfect in his weakness. (And no, for those wondering, I do NOT think Noah got “drunk” nor do I think it a sin to get sleepy after drinking wine at a festival, nor do I think it a sin to be improperly covered in one’s own tent [like we all do in the bathroom], and I think this is clearly why Noah is not punished in the narrative but why the son who exposed him to ridicule is… all about which I can write at another time).
In the act of “the feast” God calls a fallen world to receive his salvation, to hear his word, and to be ordered by it. The result is naturally joyful and clangorous —joyful to the point of goofiness (like when people sing us happy birthday) and clangorous to the point of cacophony (like the end of any good singing of “happy birthday”). In Christ the music of this “gospel-feasting” reaches a new octave. Feasting is very much bound-up with the proclamation of the Gospel: God came-down to eat with sinners; in eating with sinners he made saints of us; we must now do this feasting in remembrance of Him; and He will come again in glory to feast with us.
And so now, like I did at Christmas, I offer a few theses (much fewer than the Christmas 40 —only 12) in which I hope to frame “Christian feasting” for us as we approach Twelfth Night— a night historically observed by Christians with all of the wildness of those who have been legitimately born-again:
Christian feasting raises-up the blessings and the hopes of the present moment to the God who gave them to us: “Thank you Lord for these things / Please continue your provision in the coming year.” In this act we unify past (the blessings given), present (our enjoyment of them), and future (our hope for their continuance) —a triune mode of dwelling in time.
Christian feasting raises-up the world of food and drink to the Lord who fills the hungry with good things (Ps. 107.9; Lk. 1.53).
Christian feasting brings the order of the cosmological year into rhythm with the liturgical story.
Christian feasting boundaries and hallows silliness; disciplining silliness, making silliness good.
Christian feasting is about the outrageousness of the Gospel whereby sinners are redeemed; Christian feasting is therefore outrageous (go and read about twelfth night traditions in pre-modern England). Christian feasting in this way makes us all little Davids dancing before the Lord (2 Sam. 6.21-22).
Christian feasting affects our life in common, it is a public thing, only Denethor and kings like him feast in private. Christian feasting unites kings and commoners under one roof (Matt. 2.1-12).
Christian feasting, reminding us of our folly in light of the Cross, makes fools of us all (Is. 6.5, 64.6; 1 Cor. 4.10; Phil. 3.8).
Christian feasting, reminding us of our inheritance in the Kingdom of Light, makes kings and queens of us all.
Insofar as Christian feasting makes us simultaneously fools and kings, it fixes our eyes on Christ standing before Pilate who also was simultaneously mocked as a fool and hailed as a king.
Christian feasting redeems the jest. Jokes are raised from the level of satire (coming at someone else’s cost) to the level of the revelrie (freely given at total cost to ourselves).
Christian feasting resolves Bataille’s problem of “surplus”: for instead of producing envy or transgression, Christian feasting spends our communal surplus in the interest of the community (2 Sam. 6.19; Acts 4.33-37)
Christian feasting, far from “fiddling on the edge of a burning Rome”, is a harmony of the truth of the Resurrection: we who feast now shall one day die, and then, one day, we shall rise again in Christ to feast with Him forever.
The Feast of Epiphany, curiously expunged from our cultural memory in the past century, also has an "Eve”. Historically known in the English-speaking world as “Twelfth Night” (yes, this is the festal mode into which Shakespeare set his famous play… and yes I have seen “She’s the Man” and no I do not think it a meaningful adaptation nor a particularly brilliant film, sorry). Twelfth Night was a grand night of merry-making and joyfulness preceding a festival which “[i]n its character as a popular festival” in historic Britain stood “only inferior to Christmas” (Thistleton-Dyer, 1875: 24). It was a great Christian charivari; a mess of redemption; a festival for redeemed sinners; an embodiment of the Gladdening Light hymned by Christians at every vespers.
It remembered the arrival of the Magi at the home of Christ —and the message in that arrival that Jesus was not merely the king of the Jews (though that too) but also the king of the gentiles. Twelfth Night is a riotous party that concludes the Christmas festival with the proclamation that Jesus is King (full of “humor, joy, abandonment, even silliness and outrageousness”). And perhaps I can close by modestly suggesting that there is probably a link (to be fully enunciated by someone far superior to me) between the decline of Christian riotousness of the Twelfth Night kind and the rise of the secular riotousness in the, well, straight-up riot kind. Both events aim to make the kings of the earth dizzy by reminding them of their place before Christ the true king: one with bricks and burned-up-buildings, the other with great bowls of wassail.