Article for The Page 11-02
This year the American Ethical Union's Religious Education Committee hosted a weekend conference on the topic of festivals and I was asked to speak on the topic Saturday morning. In order to prepare for my workshop I visited the AEU archives in New York City and, with the help of archivist, Marc Bernstein, found some interesting materials from the early days of Ethical Culture. Among the items were two addresses, one from W. Edwin Collier and the other from Felix Adler, that provided very helpful guidelines for understanding the function of festivals for Ethical Societies.
W. Edwin Collier was the Leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society in 1906 when he wrote "The Abiding Value of the Christmas Myth." He makes the distinction between "myths" and "legends" and notes that both legends and myths refer to stories whose origins have been forgotten, but legends have no deeper significance while myths serve to explain some practice, belief, institution or natural phenomenon of religious significance. Further, myths have, according to Collier, two main ingredients: the poetic imagination which personifies aspects of Nature and "the moral consciousness which changes the subject from Nature to human nature and the facts of moral experience."
Collier's point about myths is that they help us locate ourselves within the history of human culture and within the tradition of ethical evolution. Myths provide narratives that call attention to our presence in the natural world and to our human experience of the natural world. When we share myths we generate opportunities to appreciate the deeper meanings implicit in our experiences and opportunities to explore the ethical ideals that respond to our experiences.
The second address was given by Felix Adler on Christmas day in 1910 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture as part of their "Children's Sunday" program. (Fortunately, for the children, John L. Elliott gave a warm-up address that included a good deal of humor!) Adler's address was aimed at offering a distinctively ethical interpretation of Christmas, which he did by looking at the historical evolution of Christmas festivals.
The earliest Christmas festivals, according to Adler, were pagan-inspired festivals of good-will that grew out of the ancient celebrations of the lengthening of days following the winter solstice. These ancient festivals celebrated the uniformity and dependability of Nature and the appreciation of life that continues.
Added to the ancient festivals was the Christian interpretation of the birth of Jesus, signifying the intervention of God in human affairs -- "there was one light that came into the world, one child 'made the light, the spiritual light, increase in all other children of men'" Here there was a celebration of the possibility of moral improvement -- that God had shown a way for humans to transcend mere survival.
The ethical interpretation, according to Adler, builds upon the other two interpretations. Where the first festivals were celebrations of events over which we have no control, and the second were festivals that celebrated the assistance of external forces in moral growth, the ethical interpretation focuses attention on the possibility for human beings making ethics happen. We don't have to "merely watch the heavens and see the physical increase" of light, nor do we have to limit ourselves to celebrating the past inclusion of the divine in human culture. The ethical interpretation adds the call to "yourself be the kindler of the sun," to make the good thing happen, to celebrate the possibility that right here, right now we can increase the presence of light in our lives and in the lives of others.
As we enter into our festivals at our local Ethical Societies let's remember to celebrate the ethical significance of myths and the opportunities we have to bring the meaning of ethics to light in the world we live in.
Bart Worden, Leader
Ethical Culture Society of Westchester