Merry Christmas. Seriously.

Last year, you may recall, there was a lot of angst about putting "Christ back in Christmas," especially on the Fox Network. I don't know if the anxiety has been as high this Christmas, but the presence of Christ in the season is not in doubt, whether we say "Happy Holidays" or "Seasons Greetings" or something more "religious."

One way to read the incarnation is that the divine, or the elemental life force that animates the universe, is manifest in our daily lives, whether we recognize it or not. The story of the birth of Jesus is clearly a myth designed to show us how we are children of this elemental force and that our arrival is an occasion of hope and joy. Jesus stands in for each of us, as do his beleaguered parents and the poor and rich alike who seek enlightenment. The star is not out there but within. We can re-enact the birth scene, as St. Francis did (and as we imitate each year in pageants and creches), but we are limiting our understanding of incarnation if we insist on the historical "truth" of this birth story. Too many details are simply wrong; the story is not consistently told. But the myth is powerful because it gives us hope in our own future. And that has value in our difficult times.

In the United States, the Christmas story is one of economic success. For most retailers--and publishers, as I well know from my own work history--without Christmas there is no profit. If we did not have Christmas, we would have to invent another holiday that encourages people to buy. Christmas is the engine of our economy, one could argue. In that sense, the holiday is wholly (and holy) one of the Christ event, in which the incarnation finds its ultimate validity by disappearing into our secular lives. The near disappearance of overt Christian observance in Europe and in the UK is a sign of the complete success of the incarnation. We can no longer tell the difference between secular and spiritual life. They are one.

In other words, the season is not about god coming in and taking over.

The devout might protest that the secular has taken over, that the spiritual is gone. But that is a perspective that claims for the spiritual a separate sphere and meaning. By the myth of the birth of Jesus we in fact are shown the opposite: that the spiritual inheres in the secular and the less we insist on separating the two, the better off we will be.

But be careful: the message is not that theocracy is the answer. We have seen too often that theocracy is a death-delivering system that crushes human spirit and creativity. I am talking about secularism, humanism, whatever word you want to use, in which the sacred is part of and subservient to daily life. The arrival of Jesus, as the myth clearly shows, is about how the elemental force of life that drives all things is not a Ruler. It opens a way and steps aside.

Do I like the commercialism of the season? No. In fact, we aren't buying gifts this year. But we actually take this time, even in spending sprees that are meaningless, to say the words that express the deepest longings of our hearts: that we might have peace, that we might be good to one another, that we might be free of our fears. It might take a new HDTV to make those wishes manifest. The makers of the televisions receive their wages, as do the workers who sell them. When the Wise Men in one version of the myth show up with gifts, no one complains, even though as gifts they are on a par with that tie you'll never wear.

As my parents always said, and probably meant, "it's the thought that counts." Having thoughts of comfort and joy at a given moment of every year is good, even if we do not explicitly connect them with mythic events or a religion that often seems out of touch with what's really going on.

Merry Christmas. Seriously.

PS: Last week I identified some trees in Oregon as Birches, thereby showing my east coast roots and ignorance of local flora. A friend wrote to say that I probably saw Alders. I know that Frost writes in his poem, "Birches," that boys might have been swinging on them; I think boys could swing from Alders too. It might be worth a try.