It’s A Trap! Rev. Catie Scudera

In the infamous “It’s a trap!” scene in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Admiral Ackbar—of the species Mon Calamari, who look exactly like how you think they would—Admiral Ackbar has brought the rebel fleet out of hyperspace to engage with the evil Empire’s Death Star, a battle station with the power to destroy an entire planet with one blast. The rebels have learned from Bothan spies that the battle station is not yet operational, and barely protected because its location was kept secret.

Unfortunately for the rebels, much of the intelligence brought to them was purposefully leaked to them by the Emperor’s right hand man, Darth Vader. In fact, by the time the rebels arrive, the Death Star is operational and quite capable of blowing up their cruisers, and the Empire has brought in a vast number of its fleet’s Star Destroyers to protect the battle station.

Admiral Ackbar cries out to his crew, “It’s a trap!”

You see, I really like Star Wars. I composed that entire summary from memory, because like my extensive knowledge of obscure Unitarian/Universalists, I know a lot about Star Wars. In my youth, I spent a lot of my time—and money—watching rereleased special edition and prequel films, reading Expanded Universe books, and visiting Star Wars exhibits at places like Disney World and the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. I already have tickets to see Episode Seven: The Force Awakens twice in the first twenty-four hours of its national release on December 17th.

My family was always pretty nerdy about science fiction, and some of my most intimate friendships were at least partly formed around a mutual love of Star Wars. I still have, somewhere, a little book my best friend Sara and I made in fourth grade together—the results of our scientific research about which of the Star Wars movies was our peers’ favorite, presented in various charts and graphs we had just learned to make on the computer. If memory serves, Empire and Jedi were about tied, and the graphic art we sketched onto the pages was stellar…

Oh, wait, my mother brought the book up from my childhood home in Virginia; looks like Jedi won!

It’s a Trap! Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 12/6/15

You see, I really like Star Wars, and thus could always expect to receive cool new Star Wars gear for every birthday and Christmas… And, I like it that way. For example:

• This frame with a picture from our wedding above a Princess Leia quote: “We have powerful friends!” Look, it lights up! • Two t-shirts, one of which was bought from the “youth” section of the store because they didn’t have it in “grown-up” sizes—but who could resist the Millennium Falcon? • Sandwich and cookie cutter molds of Star Wars ships and characters, which originally came in this Star Wars lunch box • This giant box set about C-3P0! • And, probably one of my favorite things, a vanity towel set with Han Solo and Princess Leia: “I love you!” “I know!” • Not to mention the box of Christmas ornaments I asked Irina to hide under the new piano because I couldn’t effectively hide them in the pulpit

And with Christmas coming, over the past few weeks, I’ve been inundated with more Star Wars stuff I could put on my Christmas list: the aforementioned CoverGirl make-up line, the PotteryBarn Millennium Falcon twin bed and bedding accessories, the Kay Jewelers Star Wars line, that includes, yes, a Death Star necklace in 10 karat yellow gold—despite the fact the Death Star is gray!— for just over $400. And those are just the gift items! I can get Star Wars mac and cheese, Star Wars ice cream, Star Wars soup, more Star Wars clothing and baking supplies and ornaments…!

Like Stephen Colbert, I am always excited to buy more things that say Star Wars on them, because I’m a super fan. I imagine he spoofed the branding with eggs because that’s practically the only thing not branded by Star Wars right now. And if there were Star Wars eggs, I’d consider buying them.

I want these things because they remind me of the feeling I get when that Star Wars main theme comes up. It reminds me of this great story of good and evil, of free will and fate, of redemption and loyalty, of family and even of faith through the Force, a blend of Western mythology and Eastern religion. When I open up a gift bag with a Star Wars item in it, I feel happy.

It’s a joy to give and receive gifts. Though, according to psychological research, the gifts themselves are only marginally involved in that joy. Studies have found

2 It’s a Trap! Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 12/6/15 that as countries and households become richer, they don’t become happier. Beyond a certain level of income or stuff, our happiness is unaffected by such material things. The joy in giving and receiving gifts is separate; it is uniquely thrilling knowing someone has thought of us and given us a token of their affection, and uniquely satisfying to watch someone light up with glee when they open a present we have carefully chosen for them.

What matters in the giving and receiving of gifts is the relationship of the people involved, that through a gift they are saying, “I care about you, I like you, I love you.”

Isn’t this exactly the message we hear coopted in holiday advertisements hawking Star Wars-branded jewelry and toys? It’s not just, “If you love Star Wars, then you’ll buy this mascara that says ‘you’re my only hope’ on it.” It’s, “If you care about your loved ones, then you’ll buy them this mascara” and “if you are cared for by your loved ones, then they’ll buy you this mascara.” Though it’s hard to hear it sometimes beneath the clever guises of holiday marketing, the underlying message from these big corporations is, “Buy this mascara!”

Suddenly, for Christmas, instead of relishing our relationships with our families and friends, we care more about the mascara that better darn be in our stocking if they really love us!

In a book our administrator Susanna recommended to me, Unplugging the Christmas Machine, authors Jo Robinson and Jean Staeheli write, “The Christmas Machine has… power over us because it knows how to woo us; it speaks to the deepest, profoundest, and most sacred desires of the human heart. If it appeared as a monster, we would rise up and stop it. But the commercial messages of Christmas appear as promises that bring tears to our eyes. Look at the bounty we are promised by the December magazines and the glowing Christmas commercials:

Our families will be together and be happy. Our children will be well-behaved and grateful. Our [spouses] will be beautiful and nurturing… kind, generous, and appreciative. We will have enough money. We will have enough time. We will have fun.

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We will be warm. We will be safe. We will be truly loved.

No wonder we stop, we listen, and we want to believe.”

Marketing hooks us with emotion, preys on our vulnerabilities, and distracts us from our true desire, which is love and peace in our families and with our neighbors. We make an idol of material goods by believing this “gospel” of consumerism and letting presents become the center of the holidays. We become like the Grinch, believing that without boxes and tags and presents, there won’t be any Christmas at all.

Scholar Leigh Eric Schmidt has written an entire book, Consumer Rites, about how America’s holidays became merged with consumerism beginning in the 1800s. He writes about gift-giving at Christmas, “With the implanting of the Christmas tree in American culture…, Christmas had the perfect symbol for domestic celebration, hearthlike in its magnetic light and sparkling decorations… Christmas’s gradual eclipse of New Year’s as a gift-giving occasion was built on its greater potential for consecration… There emerged… an increasingly close fit, however incongruous and paradoxical, between Christmas shopping and Christian symbols. At Christmas… there would be no clear line between church and mart, between the sacred and secular.”

It became a religious experience to go shopping. Department stores became like churches, with Christmas hymns sung live or piped through the sound systems, and scenes of the baby Jesus receiving gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the Three Wise Men. St. Nicholas transformed into Santa Claus, a distorted-religious figure whose only purpose was to bring toys to the good children of the world.

Aren’t you good? Don’t you deserve a lot of presents from Santa this year?

Christian environmentalist Bill McKibben writes in his book, Hundred Dollar Holiday, “Sure, advertising works its powerful dark magic year-round. But on Christmas morning, with everyone piling downstairs to mounds of presents, consumption is made literally sacred. Here, under a tree with roots going far back into prehistory, here next to a crèche with a figure of the infant child of God, we press stuff on each other, stuff that becomes powerfully connected in our heads to love, to family, and even to salvation. The 12 days of Christmas—

4 It’s a Trap! Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 12/6/15 and in many homes the eight nights of Hanukkah—are a cram course in consumption, a kind of brainwashing.”

Indeed, it is quite incongruous and paradoxical that the religious story of a baby, from a marginalized family and a marginalized faith, born in the barn out back, who would become a great religious and political prophet… It is incongruous that this baby’s birthday would become merged with the empire of consumption. And yet, our emotions of faith, familial affection, and love of home are successfully coopted by corporations. We replace spending time with family and friends and giving charitably to those in need with spending money on shopping sprees.

As Admiral Ackbar says, “It’s a trap!” Consumerism is a trap. The corporations have lured us in with promises of Christmas cheer, but when we come out of hyperspace, all they’ve done is stressed us out and taken our money. Instead of honoring the birth of Jesus or the return of the Sun or the miracle of reclaiming one’s religious home from a powerful Empire, consumerism becomes the forefront of our winter holidays. It even usurps the meaning of gift giving, of offering a token of affection and acknowledgement to our loved ones; instead we care more about the gifts themselves instead of the person giving or receiving them.

I am a Star Wars fan, but I don’t need to prove that—not to you all, not to anybody. And that is far from the most crucial part of my identity, even though mass media would love to convince me otherwise. They want me to become a loyal consumer, constantly proving my devotion through stuff, when I already own what I really love, which are the Star Wars movies—both the original releases and the Special Editions, obviously. And, corporations want to trick my family members into believing that without giving me stuff, I won’t know that they love me. Though I do like all of this stuff, very much so, what I enjoy most about my birthday and the holidays is spending time with the people I love, my family and friends and now, for the winter holidays, all of you. These relationships are more important to my identity than Star Wars is, believe it or not.

Unitarian Universalist eco-activist Tim DeChristopher writes, “Part of the role of the church is to remind us that we are more than consumers. Like many organizations, churches can bring to life our role as citizens, community members, and family members. In addition, churches are uniquely suited to

5 It’s a Trap! Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 12/6/15 develop our identities as children of God, pieces of an interdependent web of existence, or bearers of divine sparks of creativity.”

So, consider this your holiday season reminder: you are all children of the Divine, essential and unique parts of the interconnected web of all existence. You are more than what you wear, what you own, what you consume—that is nothing compared to who you are as part of your family, of this church, of the world; what you consume is nothing compared to your beautiful essence.

We must remember that the Grinch can’t steal real Christmas; real Christmas is a birthday party, celebrating freedom from oppression, the universal love of God, and the hope of family unity, even amidst complications like poverty, injustice, and premarital pregnancy. Extravagance is hardly necessary for such a celebration.

We can bring the center of the holidays back to religious stories that inspire us to love our neighbor and fight for justice, back to family taking a day off together to enjoy cider and cocoa and winter games together, back to simple gift-giving between our loved ones and more extravagant giving to those in need.

To “unplug the Christmas machine” is a choice we can make when we recognize, like the Grinch did, that “Christmas doesn’t come from a store… Christmas… means a little bit more!”

Blessed be, and amen.

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