HOLIDAY WATCH : Spiritual Connection

Christmas is a secular holiday. Whatever actually happens, or originally happened, on Dec. 25 has long been swallowed up in the Christmas “season.” “Merry Christmas!” itself has yielded first place among seasonal greetings to “Happy Holidays!” The church campaign of bygone years to “put Christ back in Christmas” is a faded memory. Even the clergy send generic Christmas cards.

And yet some of the trappings of both pagan and Christian religion linger. The Christmas tree, green, defying death in the dark of winter, is brought indoors and festooned with our glass versions of the dried fruit and candles that once promised life and warmth on the longest, coldest night of the year.

As for the Christian religion, well, midnight Mass and the other Christian Christmas services attract worshipers (whether they really worship or not) who aren’t seen through the rest of the year. Some of them are in storefront churches like the ones described this week by Times reporter David Ferrell. Others in more comfortable churches may find themselves linked in spirit to those storefronts through the only institution simultaneously present at every level of our society.

For everyone, finally, there is the sudden silence, brief as it is, and the gathered hope:

Yet in thy dark streets

shineth, the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. Phillips Brooks wrote this of Bethlehem, many years ago, but on Christmas Bethlehem is everywhere. Even in Los Angeles.