Reclaiming a Culturally-Specific Christmas

By David Chase, Reeve Klatt, and Joshua Wu

Advent is the time that most of our churches are most likely to display art or iconography from the Nativity scene to graphic inserts in bulletins for special Christmas services. But what does the art and aesthetic of Christmas reveal and reflect about our cultural belongings and experiences? To help us think through Christmas art, I talk with two of our editors, David and Reeve, about how we can intentionally and thoughtfully engage the art and culture of Christmas.

David, before we talk about Christmas art, can you describe the role that art plays in our daily lives and culture? 

David: When I teach Art Appreciation at my college, I push people to understand how much of life is filtered through art. When we think of art, we often envision silent galleries of paintings and sculpture. Or we might think of an auditorium of well-dressed people watching some incomprehensible play, opera, or film before going off to socialize. We may not think of the meme we saw or the show we binge-watched as art, let alone the decorations in our homes, places of worship, or communities. Yet, these are the kinds of art we most routinely interact with. Most likely, we are not turning to a painting of the annunciation to Mary for our concept of the Christmas story, but rather to the songs, decorations, and performances at churches and in the community. I probably have stronger feelings about my kid learning a Hanukkah song at school than I do about what hangs on the wall at the Art Institute in Chicago. 

I like what you said David about how art is not just what is in museums but what is lived and experienced. Reeve, how would you define what art is and how it may both reflect and mold our cultural location and experiences? 

Reeve: At its core, art is an expression that is meant to make us feel. Some art is intended to make us laugh or cry;  art might direct us to reach out, build community, or cause us to feel anger or frustration; and some art presents a blank surface that reflects ourselves back to us, causing us to turn inward. 

Artists and art critics have been debating for hundreds of years what qualifies as “real art.” Some spread their arms wide to include the vast expressions of art, be it professional or amateur, purposeful or accidental. Others prefer a highly curated art canon that meets specific criteria. Regardless of what you view as art, the art in our lives is reflective of the culture we are in. North American art often portrays a historical view of art that has been whitewashed and colonized, reflecting a white culture that sought to assimilate every other culture into its own.

Because art by nature invokes a response by the viewer, art holds the important power of being able to speak directly to people and is often used to spark change and amplify voices. In Minneapolis, MN, over the past year and a half, dozens of artists have used the plywood from boarded-up windows (the result of protests) to create beautiful and heartbreaking images of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement, and police brutality. While Euro-centric art has traditionally portrayed the views of the elite Europeans, more and more, art is used to give voice to the people unheard and pushed aside. In this way, art both reflects the current culture as well as seeks to impact and change the culture.

David, how can art help us consider how we both celebrate our own specific culture while creating a space for shared experience with those with different cultural experiences and belongings? 

David: Art invites someone else into a different way of understanding the world. Most art asks about some aspect of life: "What if we look at this closer or see it differently?" Art that raises questions invites people with different backgrounds to explore their own cultural and personal response to those questions.

For example, the movie "Departures" from Japan has a cellist-turned-funeral-officiant in the office with his coworkers at Christmas. They ask him to play something for Christmas. He asks if there are any problems with religious affiliation, and his boss says "we serve everyone." This idea that people of any or no religion have to deal with the reality of death, and that this thought allows people to appreciate each other's backgrounds is poignant. Watching this film prompted reflection on my belief that Jesus was born to take away the sting of death. I don't think the film agrees with my understanding of the world, but it created a space where I could dialogue with its ideas and explore my own in a new light.

Can you talk about some of the ways that you grew up embracing culturally-specific art and traditions during Christmas? 

David: I attended a German Lutheran grade school as a kid, and there were traditions brought with them from Germany and instituted at the founding of the school.  On Christmas Eve, we put on scratchy cotton robes that I felt must have been the result of some tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. I felt like a little Martin Luther, practically. We carried battery-powered candles instead of live flames to reduce the risk of fire, but we still carried them and sung carols in German and English, standing in front of a massive Christmas tree that would later have the branches cut off and itself would be made into a cross for Lent. The pine needles would be burned and the ashes put on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. 

After the Christmas Eve service, my family would return home for a Swedish Smorgasbord, with straw Julbock (Christmas goat). No one growing up ever questioned why we brought in these German or Swedish traditions for our holidays. None of the cultural trappings of a European everyday art created a stir among family, friends, or acquaintances. In fact, people went to great lengths to dissociate these traditions from any possible pagan antecedent, such as rumored sacred trees among pre-Christian Germanic tribes.

Reeve: My childhood often featured the white Evangelical art and customs that were common in our church in Minnesota. My family was not strongly tied to its Swedish roots, and we usually “rebelled” by skipping all the traditional foods and celebrations, instead opting for a Christmas meal of steak or pot roast. The two traditions we did annually were to drive around our suburban neighborhood looking at Christmas lights, then come home and warm up with hot cocoa and watch “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

When I married my husband, who is half Korean, a quarter Black and a quarter White, I was introduced to collard greens, Korean barbecue, and holiday movies that didn’t feature White people. We’re only three years into our marriage, so we are still figuring out how to celebrate Christmas in a way that reflects both of us, but something that we have done from the beginning is to purposefully approach the Christmas story in a historically accurate way. We focus on art that shows Jesus and his family, the shepherds and wise men, not with white skin and blue eyes but of Middle Eastern and Egyptian features.

Frustratingly, there is very little mainstream Christmas art, be it music, paintings, traditions, that celebrate and represent Koreans, or even mixed families. We’re still searching for that.

Much of the art at Christmas in most churches seems generic, as if it was from a similar artbook or cultural lens. I remember growing up in a Chinese church and seeing mass-produced graphic inserts in the bulletin with a fair-skinned baby Jesus or a church in a snow-capped forest in the woods that seemed so foreign from my own culture. What do you think we miss or lose when there is such uniformity and cultural homogeneity with the art we engage during Christmas?

David: As a church, I wonder if we remain frozen in time after a certain set of traditions come in and dominate the everyday art surrounding various holidays. Are there new insights, new practices that can enrich our experience of gratitude or of the God who left heaven to live with us? Many times, I see this framed as an either-or decision: out with the old, in with the new. Yet, if the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 has room for “the glory and the honor of the nations” (Revelation 21:26), then surely the church does, as well. I am intrigued by what that might look like, and we are going to explore that this month.

Reeve: As we are Christ’s body, a fuller representation of Jesus better reflects the diversity of His creation! I think to truly see the beauty and truth of God’s love, especially at Christmastime, we have to look at all of His children and all of their cultures. By having representational art, we inform ourselves, and educate future generations, about the beautiful diversity of all people - made in the image of God.

Thank you Reeve and David for sharing! As we close our conversation today, can you provide suggestions or practical ways that we can better engage art this Christmas season so that we can bring and see more of our authentic cultural self? 

Reeve: Research what other cultures do to celebrate Christmas! There are some great children's books that showcase the different traditions of different cultures around the world. The internet is a great place to start. Learn the how and the why of what other cultures do (this will help you avoid culturally appropriating their customs for your own entertainment). Appreciating art and customs that are not your own is the first step in recognizing the value in others - and in de-centerizing yourself in the story. Also, look at the events happening in the city nearest to you. Many communities put on shows, markets, and celebrations that are open to the public.

David: Try one thing from your ethnic heritage and one thing that's not. Even if you're not typically engaged with your background. I don't do much with Swedish Christmas traditions, but last year, I watched a video from a Swedish filmmaker living to the far north, where she only saw the sun for less than an hour a day. She talked about loneliness and the cold, but also how the experience distilled life to its raw elements, which matched my experience at the beginning of the pandemic.

My family and I also watched the New Year's fireworks display from the United Arab Emirates at the Burj Khalifa and we talked a bit about the country and the architecture. It was a way to expand the concept of a familiar holiday by bringing something culturally new to us that the culture had put out for everyone to engage with.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

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David Chase is an adjunct professor of art appreciation and art history. He is also a stay-at-home-dad of two kids. As such, he reads story books, cooks, cleans, chauffeurs, and more! In his spare time, he likes to read, draw, and go for runs or hikes. Weather permitting, camping and kayaking with the family are also fun. Weather not permitting, a museum or a library will do just fine.

Reeve Klatt is a writer from Minneapolis who regularly drinks too much coffee and accidentally kills her plants. She writes at The Girl on the Verge about women's lifestyle (and occasionally about her obsession with cats). Forever a book addict, Reeve enjoys teaching yoga, creating pottery, and letting her husband do the dishes.