Nearly Merry Christmas! This year, I find myself yearning to sit on Santa's lap, that big, husky, generous daddy bear who wants to debate whether I've been naughty or nice before he decides to shower me with gifts. I want to go South on his North pole and ride his sleigh till he screams Ho Ho Ho!
From my perspective, of course, Dec 25, like any other day of the year, can have as much meaning as we choose to infuse it with. For many non-Christians, Christmas period is a time for family get-togethers, for shopping and presents, for bitter disappointment at not getting the gifts we wanted, and for incurring massive amounts of debt for spending too much on ungrateful nephews and nieces. For many Christians, Christmas period… is basically the same. Plus the Jesus bit.
Which is a bit farcical, considering that Jesus Christ was not likely actually born on Dec 25, 0000. For the first few hundred years after Christianity was founded as a religion separate from the dominant Jewish tradition of his time, Jesus' birthday was celebrated around Mar 25, the Spring Equinox. It was only around the height of the early Roman Empire that a shift began to happen, making Jesus' birthday coincide with the Winter Solstice, on Dec 25, likely as a way to lessen the antagonism between the indigenous pagan/polytheistic cultures and the impact of the new evangelical monotheistic Christian religion.
And so it was that the beginning of Christmas as we know it emerged.
This, of course, does not immediately have much to do with being gay, until we start to delve in deeper into the origins of the worship of Jesus Christ himself, in particular about the issues surrounding his birth. I want to contrast the original intent behind Christmas with the tragic, consumerist shell of a supposedly spiritual holiday that it has become.
This year, a Dutch gay group has planned a "Pink Christmas" in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. "Pink Christmas" is supposed to be a 10-day long festival which goes on all the way until Dec 25, which features a manger with two Josephs and two Marys, to "increase the choices for homosexual men and women during the Christmas holiday week." ProGay group chairman Frank van Dalen has also added that the festival will "encourage people to think about homosexuality and religion." Effectively, this helps deconstruct the heterosexual myth of Jesus' parentage, and demonstrates the plausibility of gay and lesbian sexuality in birthing the Divine (to put it more simply, would it be so bad if Jesus had two daddies and two mommies?).
There have, of course, been some protests by Christian groups, such as Christians for Truth, who believe that this event "mocks the core concepts of Evangelism" and that by "putting Joseph and Mary down as homosexuals, a cracked human fantasy is being tacked on to history from the Bible." Which would all make sense... If we agreed that sexualising the sacred is to be considered sacrilegious or a "put down" in the first place.
All too often these days, for Christians and non-Christians alike, the holiness of Christianity only makes sense when it is devoid of sexuality. Part of how Jesus is esteemed as holy is because His mother Mary was a virgin at the time He was conceived. In other words, the sacred (Jesus) and the profane (sex) are thought of as separate, dualistic, not to be regarded together. Many Christians today, consider any correlation of the profane with Jesus to be blasphemous.
In 1996, the US Postal service released a stamp that featured an image of the Madonna and the naked baby Jesus with fully exposed genitals, which caused a public outcry. The featured piece was called "Madonna and Child," and it was originally a painting by 17th century Italian Baroque painter Paolo de Matteis. Apparently, in response to this image, a postal worker was so embarrassed that they airbrushed Jesus' penis away. This, to me, is artistic sacrilege, and it is a direct testament to how Puritanical, anti-sex Christianity has itself created a cracked human fantasy that has been tacked on to the history of Jesus!
In his 1997 book The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, American art historian Leo Steinberg makes visible thousands of images that he has uncovered from the European Renaissance period (14th - 17th century), images which depict Jesus' sexuality, in particular, his penis. These pieces were not intended to be sacrilegious art, but they were all art that were actually very intentionally about worship and honour of and reverence for the power and Divinity of the Almighty as made flesh in Jesus Christ.
Which is precisely Steinberg's argument in his book. Part of the significance of both the birth and death of Jesus is in the very fact that He was the Divine made flesh. He was a human Incarnation of God. God's human son, of flesh and blood, guts and gore, sweat, tears, piss and shit. Significantly, art during this period in the form of sculpture and paintings tend to portray Jesus' radical humanity by prominently featuring His genitals. And His penis is hardly simply incidental to the works; often it is held (as a baby by His mother), pointed to, or else in a visible semi-erect state (under the folds of His loincloth during His crucifixion).
It is certainly not my intent to be blasphemous here. These are historically existent pieces of holy art created during the European Renaissance. It may be difficult to imagine or believe, but for a period of history during the Western Christian Empire, Jesus' sexuality was not seen to be separate from His holiness. The sacred and the profane were not distinct, and it was precisely in embodying their unity that Jesus was esteemed as Holy. He was a man, with sexual desires and needs that he had channeled into a pursuit of transcendent love for all humankind. He had never personally denounced sexuality nor had He ever denied that He Himself had had sexual desires, though it is assumed that He remained chaste His whole life. These pieces of art reveal that His holiness was precisely in the form of a man who had the reality of living in a sexual incarnation (as a human male) while at the same time being a manifestation of the holy (as God). Sexual embodiment and Godliness. Death and Eternal Life. Jesus represented the collapse of these distinctions.
Christianity today has metamorphed from its more earthy past as an homage to the human-ness of the Divine. It has turned, instead into a religion that denies the human-ness of sexuality, the Divine potential within humanity, and the sexuality inherent in it all! This Christmas, I want to remind us that the significance of Dec 25 had originally been a reconciliatory move between pagans and Evangelicals in the Roman Empire, as well as an opportunity specifically to worship and revere a Christ figure who was human flesh of the Divine spirit with all of its lurid, naked bodily connotations. Therefore, this Christmas, I am going to pay homage to Jesus as the incredible saint that He was, from the lens of the Renaissance artists, who saw the beauty of a man who was both sexual and Divine, who endured the hatred of a community who ostracised Him for preaching His radical doctrines of love, acceptance and embracing of the outcasts that went against social order. Jesus is arguably my gay hero.
So when I say I want to sit in Santa's lap, I am not, in truth, attempting to mock the birth of Christ (as, indeed, the inane traditions of Santa Claus, and shopping, and snow-covered pine trees in Singapore and the Southern hemisphere are all mockery enough to a religion that had originally been steeped in more authentic holiness). This year, I will sit on Santa's lap as my private protest against the bastardisation of Christ's holy birth by sexual shame, excessive stressful shopping binges, and the globalisation of a now overly Americanised holiday, and in Santa's ear I will sing my private hymn…
"Dear Santa, I've been a naughty boy."
Malaysia-born and Singapore-bred Shinen Wong is currently getting settled in Sydney, Australia after moving from the United States, having attended college in Hanover, New Hampshire, and working in San Francisco for a year after. In this new fortnightly "Been Queer. Done That" column, Wong will explore gender, sexuality, and queer cultures based on personal anecdotes, sweeping generalisations and his incomprehensible libido.