The “KAFUFFLE” of the ExMas Rush
Posted by: richman in harold sala, tags: christmas, Jesus“The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.” -Genesis 49:10
In 1954 C.S. Lewis, the late professor of Medieval English at Cambridge University, published a satire on Christmas which he called, “Exmas and Christmas.” In this essay he talked about a strange island called “Niatrib” which is really Britain, his home country spelled backwards.
In Niatrib a festival evolved which became known as Exmas, one that filled the markets with crowds of people who wore themselves out with shopping, festivities, and the weariness of sending cards and gifts. All of this rush and weariness, Lewis described as “Kafuffle”—a word which he invented.
The whole process was further complicated by the fact that the residents of Niatrib kept careful records of the value of each gift which was received so that they, in turn, could return a gift of equal value the following Exmas. Kathryn Lindskoog describes it, saying, “Everyone becomes so pale and weary that it looks as if calamity has struck. Exhausted with the rush, most citizens lie in bed until noon on the day of the festival.
Later that day they eat far too much and get intoxicated. On the day after Exmas they are very grave because they feel unwell and begin to calculate how much they have spent on Exmas and the Rush.”
Lewis believed that a few people in Niatrib really know about the true meaning of Exmas which they Crissmas, c-r-i-s-s-m-a-s, but they are so overwhelmed by the “kafuffle” of the season that the real significance does not mean much.
Unfortunately, Lewis’s “Niatrib” has become “Everytown,” and many of us are citizens who become so overwhelmed with the season, we have little time to grasp the reality of the event. C.S. Lewis was not a cynic who was down on celebrating Christmas, but he was death on prostituting a sacred event, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, into an occasion for celebration and commercialization.
In an article Lewis wrote a couple of years later, he denounced the commercial racket, saying that it causes more pain to people than pleasure. He asked the question, “Can it really be my duty to buy and receive masses of junk every winter?”
This may be too late this year, for perhaps you have already worn yourself out with the “kafuffle” of the Exmas Rush, as Lewis described it; but it is not too late to stop everything, pour yourself a cup of coffee, find your Bible and turn to Luke, chapter two. The story of Christmas, the real, authentic version, is so simple that for centuries men have embellished it with make-believe additions.
It is the story of God’s reaching down to touch earth with the presence of His Son, and earth’s reaching above our passionate failure and sinful degradation to become God’s children. Lewis put it so succinctly: “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become the sons of God.” That is it, precisely!
Are you a descendant of Lewis’s mythical tribe of Niatrib, wounded by the festivities and perplexed with the doubt of unbelief? Christmas means HOPE, hope that there is ultimate meaning to existence, hope that there is God’s forgiveness, hope that we are not forsaken in a world of spiritual pygmies and ethical infants.
Long ago the aged Apostle John recaptured the essence of the incarnation as he wrote, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning…The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).
Yes, let us discover the reality of Christmas.
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“The preceding material was written by Dr. Harold J. Sala, and is copyrighted. Reproduction for sale or financial profit is prohibited. Permission to reproduce this article was granted by Guidelines, Inc.”
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