Out Our Way: Stalin's Christmas trees

“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate teachers for themselves teachers to suit their own desires.” 2 Tim 4:3.

Out our way, folks pretty much leave each other alone when it comes to religion, but back east and in some other areas Christmas season is the annual season of intolerance. 

Out in Whitefish, the skiers who have appreciated the statue of Jesus erected in honor of WWII Alpine troops who trained there have been subjected to the intolerance of some folks in Wisconsin who are offended that a religious image should be allowed to remain on public lands — even if the public likes it there. Christmas is the season for the annual complaints by various so called “progressives” who will fight to the death against censorship of pornography in public schools and in city libraries, but are just as quick to condemn the public singing of Christmas carols.   

Of course, we Americans are still a free people and therefore we believe these folks have the right to hold such opinions and denounce the faith, and while some of us might wish they would have the same tolerance for us, the truth is, even at its worst, we can hardly complain about persecution, unlike our fellow believers in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Firing squads, imprisonment, beheadings of believers continue unabated while our media largely remains silent, and protests against persecution of religious minorities is tacitly ignored, so long as those minorities are Christian.

Today, we rightly condemn the murder of 6 million people, largely Jewish who were put to death by Hitler for the crime of being Jewish, but who remembers the 12 million or more who died under Stalin — many for the crime of being Christian? Yet, despite the concentration camps of the Nazis and the silence of the world at home and abroad, Israel survived and continues to do so to this day. So, too, despite the gulags of the Communists and the continuing slaughter of innocents by extremists — as the world continues to look the other way — the New Israel, the church, survives and even grows.

This Advent season I have been reading about the persecution of the church in the hey day of the Soviet Union in a book called “Everyday Saints and Other Stories,” written by a Russian monk who came to know many of the great men and women who survived Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and others who used the power of the government, the media and the universities in their attempt to stamp out the faith once and for all.

In the end, after 70 years of propaganda, censorship, and outright persecution, the church remained.

One of the stories told is of Stalin’s Christmas Trees. As some of you may know, Stalin was actually raised in a religious family and despite his fervent support of the atheist philosophy of the Communist Party, he actually spent several years in a seminary studying for the priesthood. Obviously, there came a point where he not only rejected the faith, but also became a leader in the movement to destroy it, but he could not — not even within himself.

Although we Montanans know about long and cold winters, they are nothing compared to the winters of Russia. Like Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch, the official government position was to do all it could to ban Christmas as a “ humbug.” But even Stalin missed the joyous displays of light and hope that had once been such a part of the season.  He especially missed the Christmas tree with all its light and hope and joyful festive celebration of Christ’s birth. So he determined to reinstate Christmas without Christ. Christmas became the Winter Celebration and was held on New Year’s Day. The Christmas tree was returned with the Star of Bethlehem replaced by the Red Star of Communism, angels and shepherds replaced with the hammer and sickle. But everyone knew it was still a Christmas tree no matter what the official government name for it was. And Father Winter was still Saint Nicholas, despite the removal of his Bishop’s miter and crozier. So, to the dismay of Stalin and his ilk, both past and present, he learned, as did the Grinch that despite all his efforts Christmas came anyway.  

Herod and Caesar, even the progressive Sadducees and fundamentalist Pharisees all tried to stop Christ and the Good News of the Gospel in their day and failed. Their modern equivalents still do — and with the same results.

The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5.

(John Bruington is pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Havre. Copies of the “Out Our Way” column and cartoon, as well as his weekly cartoon and children’s message series “Bruin-Town Tales,” can be viewed at the church website: http://www.havrepres.org. The book “Out Our Way: Theology Under Saddle” is available at http://www.amazon.com.)