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My Pagan Yule Sounded A Lot Like Christmas

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Pagans sang Christmas carols at the Yule ritual, and it totally caught me off guard.

The song sheets handed out to the attendees contained three classic, Christian favorites, re-written with Pagan, mostly Wiccan-themed lyrics. We Three Kings, Away in a Manger, and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen were retitled and reworked as Moon of Silver, Away From The Harvest, and God Rest Ye Merry Paganfolk, respectively.

Perhaps Pagan re-adaptations of Christian hymns are not big news to my readership, but I was completely taken aback. Shocked, even. After all of this discussion about needing to keep Pagan traditions distinct from Christian traditions, and hearing Pagans emphasize the importance of defining ourselves outside of the Christian paradigm, it seemed bizarre–almost absurd–to hear Pagans sing these melodies as though there was no Christianity attached to them.

When I lived in Nashville, the Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) capital of the nation, there was nothing that made my skin crawl more than to hear a Christian band assume a style, a look, or sometimes an entire genre of music that had been originated in the secular, “non-Christian” world. The tactic was rampant in the CCM industry. It happened all the time.

If a secular rock band topped the charts with a new, unique sound, you could bet good money that there would be a Christian look-alike band performing a similar song within six months. But their song would be sprinkled with Christian theology and dogma. Instead of being in love with a lady, for example, the singer would be in love with the Lord. Or, there would be a subtle mention of salvation, or heaven, or how great it felt to be saved.

No matter how well styled the recordings were, the songs ended up sounding, to me (a liberal, Episcopalian Christian at the time), like little more than generic-brand, Christian propaganda. It bothered me to think that my fellow Christians, by and large, were not producing music that would stand up on its own, while at the same time being theologically relevant. So, Christian or not, I preferred to listen to the music of an original sinner over a saved sinner rip-off.

With all that in mind, imagine how strange it felt to stand within a circle of Pagans, candles in hand, incense burning in the cauldron, and to hear everyone sing, to the tune of We Three Kings,

Maiden, Mother, Ancient Crone

Queen of Heaven on your throne,

Praise we sing Thee, Love we bring Thee

For all that you have shown.

It was like Nashville all over again.

The CCM performers lacked a genuine, authentic, artistic identity; something which made them distinct, gave credence to their message, and was thoroughly memorable. After my experience at the Yule ritual, I question whether Pagans are experiencing a similar absence of definitive and relevant identity.

If we are not clear about what we are, on what we believe, and on how those beliefs inform our actions, we borrow. We borrow because it’s easier than doing the hard, creative, introspective work. We borrow We Three Kings instead of actually writing Maiden, Mother, Ancient Crone. We borrow instead of innovating.

But if we don’t have enough fire and passion for our religious traditions to create something new, to fashion something from nothing in order to express exactly what it is that we’ve encountered in the quietest, darkest, deepest recesses of our soul, then why are we doing this? Have we encountered something worth writing a new melody for? Or, are we just performing ritual theater? Are we just engaged in religion role-play?

I need something more than that.

Pagans can make a different choice than the CCM artists did. We can take the spiritual, ecstatic experiences and encounters with nature, with our Gods, Goddesses, Spirits and Ancestors, and channel those experiences into new, thoroughly original and relevant songs — songs that don’t sound like Medieval dirges or Protestant hymns — and breathe some much-needed life into Pagan ritual, Pagan worship, and Pagan celebration.

Religion can lead to beautiful, brilliant art. If it isn’t doing that, there’s reason to pause and take a closer look at what the religion is truly offering its adherents. The creation of art is, after all, very much connected to the experience of worship and unity with the Sacred. The two are closely related.

Are our traditions inspiring us to create? To sing out loud? To rejoice at being alive? If the answer is “no,” or if we are in any way ambivalent, what does that mean for the future of Paganism? And, what can we do to ignite a creative fire within our circles and groves?

A Pagan’s Christmas Message

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I’m in Nashville, home of the Christian Contemporary Music Industry, home of LifeWay Christian Stores, and home of the Southern Baptist Convention. This week, in a kind of radical re-immersion into Christian culture, I’m going to spread the message about Jesus to Jesus-people, and I’m doing so in the most subversively effective way imaginable: through catchy melodies and rhyming lyrics.

Caroling. This Pagan is going to sing Christmas carols to Christians.

I’m going to sing songs about the Virgin Birth, the upbringing of a Messiah, and the ascension of their Lord and Savior into the cloudy realms of Heaven (which is really a theme more suitable for Easter, but which often shows up in the more Jesus-y Christmas songs). I’m also going to sing about snow, which wasn’t a part of the original Jesus birth-narrative, but which is pretty, and white, and threatening to fall at any given moment from the cloudy, Tennessee skies.

Why am I doing this?

Don’t think I haven’t asked myself that question a few times.

I feel like this is my karma; I am called to engage with what feels uncomfortable or unreconcilable, both in the world and within myself, so that I might find ways to bring those disparate parts into a state of peaceful balance.

It’s kinda my thing.

I’m hoping to create harmony even while experiencing internal dissonance. This is a radical approach to reconciling my personal conflicts, I know.

It would be easier for me to dismiss Christianity altogether, as some of my fellow Pagans have done, and in the process negate all it teaches about compassion, forgiveness, and kindness, focussing on instead on the faults of its adherents and the limitations of its theology.

It would be easier to proclaim that my current expression of Paganism is superior to my former experience of being Christian. Anyone can claim superiority, and many do. I could say–quoting some new, scholarly, archeological tome–that mine is a more historically accurate, perhaps even culturally relevant religion. Mine is older, rooted deeper in the sacred dirt of human history, and therefore I have greater insight into the inner workings of the spiritual world.

But, I’m not taking the easy route. Instead, I’m going to have a hand at being a Pagan who helps Christians be Christian.

I’m kind of obsessed with interfaith dialogue, and the thing I’m discovering is that the real challenge in it is not what happens when you are in conversation with others; it’s what happens when you are in conversation with yourself.

Can you hold up your current beliefs and practices against seemingly contrary ideas without feeling threatened, or broken, or like you made some mistake in becoming who you’ve become? Can you sing about Jesus to people who believe something different about him than you do and still remember who you are?

These are the question I’m asking myself as I’m rehearsing songs about Little Baby Jesus in a manger.

Before we can have any kind of meaningful dialogue with another person, we must first spend time reflecting on our own ideas and beliefs. For me, a convert of sorts, this act of reflection can feel quite conflicted. The term I used to describe the process in my post, On Converting a Christian to Paganism, was inner-interfaith, and I think there may be no better two words to explain what’s going on with me right now.

But rather than letting this dialogue only take place in my head (or on this blog), I’m bringing it out into the open. I’m allowing my inner conflicts to become incarnate in the world, and I’m doing so in a way that forces me to be a little kinder to them. Perhaps, too, I’m working through a new understanding of the Christian narrative and what it offers Christians and Pagans alike.

We forget about the Divine, about our sense of wonder, mystery and magic, and through that act of forgetting we experience an absence of the Sacred. It was always there: immanent, ever-present, ever-willing to be known and experienced. But we forget, and when we do we feel alone.

Transcendence, then, means less that the God of these Christmas carols is distant from His creation, and more that the very idea of “distance from the Divine” is illusory. With that in mind, Christmas, and my singing of Jesus songs to small crowds of Christians, becomes an affirmation of a value that Pagans can and do affirm; that in the moments when we’ve forgotten that the world is holy, that our lives are sacred, and that the Great Mystery is woven into the fabric of all things, it still is.

It is, it always was, and it always will blessedly be.

So I say, “Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas, Jesus folk. The Sacred is as close to you as it is to me. Call on it, and welcome it into your hearts. Let it come to you through the melody of your favorite Christmas song, and inspire you to be a kinder, gentler, more compassionate human being.”

Then, when the singing is done, I’ll return to my little hotel room, light my candle, close my eyes and experience the sanctity of my own breath. I will worship in the Temple of the Gods, which is this body: this house of Spirit.