Why I hate Christmas and Easter

Ok. The heading is intentionally clickbait. I don’t hate Christmas or Easter. However, I do hate Christmas and Easter at church.

As someone who has endured a massive amount religious abuse, Christmas and Easter are particularly difficult.

In the church growing up, people referred to CE Christians. This was a derogatory term used to refer to people who only showed up to church twice a year. They were the epitome of the fringe Christians. Cultural Christians. Lukewarm Christians. Or, if we were speaking honestly, non-Christians.

Services on these days were full of pomp and circumstance. It was performative. Seeker sensitive… sort of. Sermons were typically watered down, focused on visitors. Pastors dressed differently. There were lots of “He is risen — He is risen indeeds.” I’m still not sure how such a clearly in-group call and response was supposed to make people feel welcome, but I digress.

In a healthy church, such things are — maybe — ok.

As one being actively traumatized, the duplicity of the abusers was on full display. While the pastor was smiling and gladhanding everyone who had never before darkened the door of our church, I could see the lying snake for what he was. Elders, taking cues from the pastor, were also out chatting up newcomers over bad coffee. Ok, credit where it’s due… our coffee was pretty good for the time.

But those were the same people gleefully declaring “submit to authority” just last week. They were the same ones demanding submission without thought. That same pastor told my mom in a conversation about me “He’s right, but I’ll never tell him that.” The same pastor whose sermons and bible studies were typified by confirmation bias, lazy research, and no preparation (unless one can consider pressing play on “The God Makers” video prep work). These were the same people asking for perfection from a 17 year old in an environment devoid of love, discipleship, intellectual stimulation. It was an environment devoid of the Holy Spirit.

Seeing those leaders behaving so duplicitously left me wanting to scream, “Go somewhere else!”

Wait. It didn’t. You see, I saw all of those things. I knew that the pastor was an abusive liar. But I was constantly told by everyone around me, including my parents, that he was my pastor and to submit. I smiled and performed like everyone else. And it makes me sick.

In fact, it took decades for me to realize why Easter and Christmas were so hard for me. I remember being in an Ash Wednesday service at a Catholic church a thousand miles from home. This was a far cry from the tradition in which I was raised, which never discussed lent let alone practice it. Yet there I sat having a full blown panic attack. Heart racing. Palms soaking wet and cold. Face ashen. Shaking. Difficulty breathing. Panic attack. I left, and was fine within a couple of minutes. What triggered my panic attack? I don’t know. A song, perhaps. Something was similar enough to church that I grew up in that even being in that environment left me incapacitated.

It has been years since I have had a panic attack in church. But Christmas and Easter are still hard. I still see glad handing and forked tongues. I still want to run out of the building screaming. All of those negative emotions are still there.

Perhaps this is because the church in America has lost the message. Church is a place for the sin sick. For the lost, the broken, the hurting. It is a place to come as you are. To confess under seal of privilege.

Instead, most churches are places to put on a happy face. To pretend to be the most holy. A place where personal struggles become gossip under the guise of “praying for one another.” I still remember the hushed whispers about my first grade Sunday School teacher’s pending divorce after her husband left her for his mistress. Gossip instead of love. Judgement instead of support. Abuse instead of restoration.

Of course, those same churches are happy to cover the egregious sins of their pastors.

Alvin Plantinga reminds us of the Catholic idea of felix culpa — happy or blessed sin. He speculates that the best possible world is one in which the creator of the universe can come into that world and sacrifice himself to save his creation. Christmas and Easter. The start and end of that story. Love, Grace, and Mercy personified.

Perhaps Christmas and Easter at church would be easier for me to stomach if churches started with authenticity, demonstrating the Love, Grace, and Mercy that are the Good News, the fulfillment of the promises of the Torah in the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Eh, maybe not. Maybe we should keep trying bad suits, worse music, smoke machines, and preachers with sneakers instead.