One of the readings in our hymn book begins, "We come together to celebrate the seasons of life," and that of course includes the seasonal holidays. Unfortunately, we religious liberals tend to be rather mixed up about them, or perhaps a bit over-enthusiastic in celebrating them all. There's a not-too serious list of ways you can identify a Unitarian, and part of it goes like this:

You may be a Unitarian if unleavened bread is part of your Easter Brunch.
You may be a Unitarian if Santa Claus was the last entity in which you believed.
You may be a Unitarian if you find yourself lighting a chalice before brushing your teeth.
You may be a Unitarian you explain the Pagan meaning of everyone's Hallowe'en costumes.
You may be a Unitarian if your Christmas tree has seven symbols on its top.
You may be a Unitarian if you know at least five ways to say - Happy holidays!

In an attempt (also not-too serious) to help clarify just a couple of seasonal celebrations, I'm going to look at the Roman Catholic feast of the Immaculate Conception and the Jewish festival of Hannukah, celebrated respectively yesterday and beginning tomorrow. Both observances are based on legend, and I'll begin with those legends, those stories.

First, Hannukah, because it's much older in origin. Every year, at a variable time between the end of November and the end of December, Jewish people around the world celebrate this holiday, also known as the Festival of Lights. It celebrates events which took place over 2,300 years ago in Judea, now Israel. The Syrian king then in power ordered the Jewish people to reject their God, their religion, their customs and their beliefs and to worship the Greek gods. There were some who did as they were told, but many refused, one being Judah Maccabee. With his four brothers he formed an army which, after three years of fighting, was finally successful in driving the Syrians out of Israel and reclaiming the Temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabees then wanted to clean the building, remove the hated Greek symbols and statues and rededicate the Temple. Part of the rededication was the kindling of the eternal light, which is present in every Jewish house of worship. Once lit, the lamp should never be extinguished.

Only a tiny jug of oil was found with only enough for a single day. The oil lamp was filled and lit. Then, the story goes, a miracle occurred as the tiny amount of oil stayed lit not for one day, nor for two or three, but for eight days. Ever since then, Hannukah (which means "rededication"), lasts for eight days to commemorate the miracle of the oil.

Good story; good meaning, too - do the right thing, keep fighting for what's right, and eventually evil will be overcome and miracles will occur. What I find specially interesting, in addition to the story itself, is the way Hannukah, which has always been a rather minor though meaningful Jewish festival has become so much more important over the past century or so. I think of a moment in the Canadian Unitarian Council's video, "Sharing Our Vision" which I and a few others here watched recently. A Unitarian Sunday School class is learning about Passover, a really major Jewish festival, and the teacher asks if any of them know anything about it. A little girl pipes up, "No, but I know the song O Hannukah!" You can probably guess why Hannukah has come to prominence - yes, it's the Jewish answer to Christmas, which comes at about the same time of year, rather as Christmas itself was the Christian answer to Solstice and Yuletide celebrations. I think it's especially congenial to Unitarians, too, because of the light imagery.

That's Hannukah in a nutshell. Then, the also rather minor feast of the Immaculate Conception, observed by the Catholic Church yesterday, December 8, and perhaps the least-understood of all the Catholic special days, and not nearly so attractive to Unitarians. By the way, if you know the difference between the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception, you're part of a very small, elite group of people. No, it's not just that the Immaculate Conception, like all conceptions, took place before the Virgin Birth. The Virgin Birth was the birth of Jesus; the Immaculate Conception is about Mary's conception! They're not the same thing at all, although they're related.

According to legend, which eventually became an official doctrine of the Church, Mary (who was to become the mother of Jesus) was born to an ordinary married couple (St.Anne and St. Joachim) through the ordinary means of sexual reproduction, but with one extraordinary feature - from the moment of her conception she was without original sin, that fatal flaw which all other human beings inherit from Adam and Eve. After all, it would not have been fitting for the mother of the divine Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, to have been stained with sin, original or actual, so Mary had to be an exception to the universal rule: she was conceived, and born, and lived and died and was taken up to heaven, entirely without sin, "a virgin unspotted".

The Virgin Birth of Jesus was something else again, although the two doctrines have become totally mixed up in most people's minds, probably because they are mixed up - the Immaculate Conception had to be true so that the Virgin Birth could take place. Add to that the fact that the Immaculate Conception is celebrated in December, and it all becomes part of the general Christmas idea - that miracles can happen and babies can be perfect in absolutely every way!

So, Hannukah has risen to prominence as a festival because of Christmas, and the Immaculate Conception is confused with baby Jesus and Christmas - it's hardly surprising that it's all given birth to another legend - an urban myth, one might say, known as the Major Merger. Here's how that story goes:

MAJOR MERGER ANNOUNCED

Continuing the latest trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions, it was announced today at a press conference that Christmas and Hannukah would merge. While details were not available at press time, it is believed that the overhead cost of having twelve days of Christmas and eight days of Hannukah was becoming prohibitive for both sides.

We're told the combined forces will enable the world to enjoy high quality service consistently during the Fifteen Days of Christnukah, as the new holiday is being called. Massive layoffs are expected, however, with lords a-leaping and maids a-milking being the hardest hit.

As part of the conditions of the agreement, the letters on the dreydl, currently in Hebrew, will be replaced by Latin, thus becoming unintelligible to a wider audience. Also, instead of translating to "A great miracle happened there," the message on the dreydl will be more generic: "Miraculous stuff happens." In exchange, it is believed that Jews will be encouraged to use Santa Claus and his vast merchandising resources for buying and delivering gifts.

In fact, one of the sticking points holding up the agreement for at least three hundred years was the question of whether Jewish children could leave milk and cookies for Santa even after having eaten meat for dinner. A breakthrough came last year, when Oreos were finally declared to be Kosher. All sides appeared to be happy about this.

The spokesperson then closed the press conference by leading all present in a rousing rendition of "Oy, Come All Ye Faithful".

Well, would there actually be anything wrong with conflating the two festivals into one and, as that piece suggested, giving everyone a longer and perhaps more enjoyable holiday? Probably it's just that a melting pot of any kind doesn't, for most of us, have quite the same appeal as a mosaic. Losing our distinctness and our differences - the differences between religions as much as between ethnic groups or regions - is a REAL loss if we believe, as Unitarians usually profess to believe, that diversity is to be celebrated, not ironed out. I suggest that a far better approach than merger or religious globalization is to make an honest attempt to understand the unique contributions that our various traditions make to the world's collective consciousness. Let's try that for the two festivals we're looking at today, and see why it might be important to remember the stories and tell them.

I've already suggested that one of the reasons Hannukah appeals to Unitarians is that it's a Festival of Light, and since our own symbol is a light, the flaming chalice, we immediately feel a connection. In fact, light as a symbol of goodness, light overcoming the darkness of ignorance and other evils, is almost universal, from the A of Atheism to the Z of Zoroastrianism - and the Star of Bethlehem and the rebirth of the Sun in between! With universal appeal AND a particular story, Hannukah is obviously a winner. What's more, I'm inclined to think that however much it's been inflated in importance to compete with Christmas, that's not altogether a bad thing. Keep all the stories alive and guard against religious monopolies!

A deeper reason for remembering and telling the stories may be the bond that's created by a shared story, the sense of identity that's strengthened by a tradition. The enactment of familiar rituals may be at least as important as the content of the rituals. In the reading about the Rabbis who gradually forgot, over time, where to go and what to do when they got there, eventually all that mattered was the memory that a ritual was to take place, the bare bones of a story about it. And it was sufficient - sufficient to bind the community together. Perhaps the Catholic story of the Immaculate Conception is like that.

I doubt that very many Catholics these days spend much time thinking about the doctrine of Mary's freedom from original sin, or even know what it means, but knowing that the calendar is full of holy days which come around with total reliability and are observed by the hierarchy of the Church just as reliably is oddly reassuring. It's part of what it means to be a Catholic. My ex-Catholic and now very Unitarian friend Elizabeth told me last night when we were discussing this that she's still always aware on her August 14 birthday that it's the eve of the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, celebrated on August 15. She doesn't believe the stories as fact, but she remembers the safe sense that came from observing the dates, like celebrating the birthdays of family members.

And just in case you think that the Immaculate Conception is too absurd an idea to make even metaphorical sense, consider this little snippet from a very different tradition, a liberal religious one. There's a phrase that's used among some of us Unitarians, mainly Ministers perhaps, "the Beloved Community," by which is meant the congregation to which we give our loyalty and commitment. At one time, when Unitarians were Christians, it was believed that one had to have a conversion experience in order to be part of the Beloved Community, the communing body of church members. After a while, though, numbers were dwindling, and someone came up with what was called "the Halfway Covenant," which held that if your parents were communicants in good standing (that is, they had had the conversion experience) you would be too! I don't know if it was ever extended more than one generation, but it reflects a sense, not entirely unknown to us I think, that you can inherit spiritual health or disease from your parents, in the same way that you can inherit physical predispositions. If Jesus was divine, his mother must have been really special too - sinless, in fact - immaculately so! And perhaps, as I suggested earlier, it's worth celebrating that miracles can happen and babies can be perfect in absolutely every way, even those who're not the Virgin Mother of God!

We probably shouldn't forget that we can overdo our openness to the value of rituals and observances, so that they become superstitious. A ritual can mean more or less what we want it to mean and doesn't really have a life of its own apart from our intention, I think. The meaning of the Immaculate Conception, or of the miraculous Hannukah oil, if there is any meaning, has to reflect something within us, surely. That's where we'd mostly part company with those who repeat prayers over and over, or spin prayer wheels or do other unthinking ceremonial actions. And yet . . . who knows what actually matters most, our conscious and individual intention in an observance, or our simple participation in the rituals of a community. I try not to prejudge how the world works on the basis of how I think it should but on what the evidence shows. Here's an example which some of you may have read about, relating to the effects of prayer. I invite you to be aware of your own reaction as I read this article.

Prayer seems to almost double the success rate of in vitro fertilization procedures that lead to pregnancy, according to surprising results from a study carefully designed to eliminate bias. The controversial findings, published in the September issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, reveal that a group of women who had people praying for them had a 50 percent pregnancy rate compared to a 26 percent rate in the group of women who did not have people praying for them. None of the women undergoing the IVF procedures knew about the praying.

The researchers acknowledge the results seem incredible and say unknown biological factors may be playing a role in the difference between the two groups. "We could have ignored the findings, but that would not help to advance the field," says Dr.Rogerio Lobo, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and lead author of the study.

The study, which had several safeguards in place to eliminate bias, involved 199 women in Seoul, Korea, between December 1998 and March 1999. A statistician randomly assigned the prospective mothers to either a prayer group (100 women) or a non-prayer group (99). The people praying for the women lived in the United States, Canada, and Australia and were incapable of knowing or contacting the women undergoing the procedures. Which women were in which group was not revealed until the pregnancy data became available at the completion of the study.

The researchers analyzed their data several ways to see if they could find other variables that would have accounted for the differences between the two groups. However, no adjustments altered the results. None of the researchers are employed by religious organizations and were not asked by religious groups to perform the study.

Does "free-thinking" ask that along with our scepticism we stay open to such possibilities?

I think it does. I think that there's a very delicate and precious balance implied in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning - a balance between a spirit of rational inquiry conducted by rules of reproducible results and so on, and a willingness to acknowledge that there may be values in some religious behaviours that we simply do not understand - a balance between a condescending tolerance which lumps all religious myths together as outgrown and primitive, and a respectful recognition that there are varying levels of value and meaning in them. Ultimately, perhaps, we need something of the attitude of the Bishop in this last little story:

The ship on which a Bishop was sailing in the South Seas stopped off on an island to take on provisions. The Bishop wanted to make productive use of the time ashore, and he walked slowly around the island. On his walk he saw three fishermen mending their nets. They saw him, too, and were very excited. "We Christians!" they shouted. The Bishop asked if they knew the Lord's prayer.

"Yes, yes,"they said. "We lift our eyes to heaven and say: 'We are three and you are three, have mercy upon us.'" Now this is not the wording of the prayer which begins, "Our Father Who art in Heaven . . . " so the Bishop felt it was his duty to teach them the proper wording until he was satisfied they knew it. Then he departed with the ship feeling that the day had been well used.

Months later, the Bishop was again on a ship sailing past the island. It was dusk and the Bishop gazed at the island's shoreline against the dimming sunset. Then he noticed a small light near the shore. It was moving, toward the ship. The ship's captain noticed and slowed the boat to a stop. The light came closer and closer. Finally to his amazement, the Bishop saw the light was carried by the three fishermen who were walking across the water in a great hurry to meet the boat.

"We hear boat and come hurry to meet you," they cried. The shocked Bishop asked what they wanted.

"We forget lovely prayer. We say, 'Our father in heaven, holy your name ... and then, we forget. Tell us again so we can pray." The Bishop closed his eyes and said, "Go back to your homes, my friends and each time you pray say, 'We are three and you are three, have mercy upon us.'"

As we participate in our chosen rituals and celebrations this December, whether they have to do with Hannukah, with Solstice, with Christmas or with secular shopping, may we pause now and then to look for and appreciate the value of what we are doing. And may we find blessings in all that we do, in our families, in our solitude, and in the Beloved Community of this congregation.