The word “nice” is a rotten term. Originally it meant “foolish,” being an English word composed of two Latin terms: “ne” (“not”) and “scire” (“to know”). Over time it developed in meaning to its current form meaning something like “kind” or “good” but without any of the substance of kindness or goodness (see the entry for “Nice” at the Online Etymology Dictionary).
One can think of a thousand situations in which a “nice person” would fail to do things Jesus did —things that are really kind (like casting out daemons in the synagogue) or really good (like turning over tables in the Temple). One can imagine the protests “Oh, I’d never do things like that —they’re not at all nice if you know what I mean… not polite at all.”
“Nice” is in fact a term that, upon closer inspection, not only means nothing (as in it is empty of real content) but actually delights in nothingness. It is a nihilistic word whose very strength comes from being un-real. It is one of the program directives that the military industrial complex inscribes into RoboCop’s programing in Robocop II: “Directive 245. If you haven’t got anything nice to say don’t talk.” RoboCop stops upholding the law becuase upholding the law requires telling people that they are not allowed to do things, like steal or vandalize, but telling people what to do is not nice.
It’s not without reason that C.S. Lewis chose “N.I.C.E” as the acronym for the organization through which the evil cabal in That Hideous Strength is working its deep and ugly malice. Everyone there is “nice” in professional and impersonal way, but not good. They are nice even as they ruin, torture, and desecrate rural England, scouring its landscape and abusing and criminalizing the inhabitants.
The author(s) of the “Nice” entry on Online Etymology Dictionary recalls a scene from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey which unveils the nothingness in the word:
"I am sure," cried Catherine, "I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should I not call it so?" "Very true," said Henry, "and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk; and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything."
But that’s just where Henry is wrong: it doesn’t do for anything except as a guise and an illusion to mask ulterior motives.
We are in a season in which the joy of Christmas is often easily manipulated for the purpose of niceness. “Be nice! It’s Christmas…” we enjoin our children or siblings. “Oh, look at those lights, aren’t they nice?…” we grasp, halting at words that intentionally soften our wonder and merriment. But nothing about Christmas is nice, in fact. Christmas is good, Christmas is wondrous, Christmas is a merry time, but it is not nice. It is the opposite. It is full of a terrible beauty, an awestruck wonder that leaves us gaping like madcap idiots, a merriment whose fit of laughter arises in the very darkest sorrows of the heart, a delight whose thrills wound us beyond any hope of recovery. Christmas does not call us to “be nice to others because God has been nice to us.” No. It is simultaneously better and worse: Christmas calls us to “be good because God has been wildly good to us; to be merciful because at Christmas God displayed the richness of his mercies; to be generous in response to the shattering generosity of the Triune God; to be courageous because the valor of the Holy Family in the face of dread makes us bold with love.”
A nice god would have left us, politely, alone. A good God did not leave us alone —did not leave us absent from the story we wrote ourselves out of. Charles Brown is right to exclaim "Good Grief!” Very right. Good Grief it was that cast a new-born babe into a frozen world below the poverty line int he face of a world at war with him. It is, therefore, with Good Grief, that we spend Christmastide singing haunting songs over the child, “nails thorns shall pierce him through / the Cross be born for me for you…” That is not a nice thing to cant over Mary’s slumbering infant. But it is a good thing. Scrooge Weeping at his past sins while he looks into the possible future of eternal loneliness and torment is not a nice thing —it is a great and salvific thing.
Marilyn Simon, summarized this sentiment in her own words recently in an essay over on UnHerd:
“I want to worship a God who puts the fear of God in me, who has enough faith in me to show me my own wickedness and the judgement that I deserve, and then who will give to me instead of punishment, a baby, soft and small and lying in a manger.”
Truly marvelous and truly lovely and truly terrible and altogether holy is the mystery of the Incarnation. It is not nice, it is glorious.