Thoughts on Christmas

Today, I want to champion the celebration of Christmas.  Even among Christians, the festivities have lost some of their sparkle.  People complain of being bored with the ancient carols and unfamiliar with the new ones.  The decidedly rural emphasis of the nativity narrative with references to shepherds, flocks and mangers seems out of place in our urbanized world.  The supernatural element introduced with angelic messengers doesn’t fit well in a culture which prefers to celebrate the physical and the material.  The healthy concept of the miraculous demanded by a virgin conception and birth is out of reach for 21st Century sophisticates.

So poor old Christmas faces an uphill battle these days.  Why not forget it and instead celebrate the solstice–that wonderful day when the hours of light begin to increase. Something that works equally well in the city and the country and has a comfortable scientific explanation completely understandable to even grade school children?

Much as I appreciate the solstice (being, most emphatically, not a “winter person”) I see value in celebrating Christmas, especially because many of those who benefit from it most find their physical lives closely representing the human spiritual condition.

Christmas is great because it often includes acts of uncharacteristic charity.  Those with ample resources share them with the poor.  To consider tests of merit at such a time is repugnant.  The mobile soup kitchens, the distributors of dry socks and warm blankets, the hosts of great Christmas feasts in church basements, the organizers of toy drives and the preparers of food hampers are eager to share with all – even those who at other times might be considered unworthy of help because of their abuse of “the system.”

This generosity of spirit reflects the gracious love of God who reached out of eternity into time to offer the gift of life to the walking dead.  He is willing to share His life even with those whose repeated rejection or abuse of His love would prompt onlookers to see them as entirely unworthy.  Indeed, we all are.

Christmas is great because it is all about hope for the future.  The six weeks or so leading up to the big day are full of hope.  Looking back to my childhood, much of that hope was ill-founded.  It would have required resources far beyond my parents’ means.  But even though many of those expectations were unmet, I don’t ever remember being disappointed with the reality of Christmas morning.  More often than not the most desired gift was there under the tree, but whether or not it was, the intangibles–the love, the care, the dreams–were in abundant supply.  Though I don’t remember ever being consciously aware of them at the time.

All Christ could offer to those who first recognized Him was hope, not deliverance.  He came as a baby not as a Roman-trampling warrior-king.  More important than any political aspirations He might have fulfilled, He offered spiritual hope for deliverance from a far more pervasive kind of bondage.  He offered Himself as the King of life, truth, love and the like to those who found themselves in subjugation to the king of death, lies and hate.

Christmas is great because it stimulates connection.  For some families, it is the only time their members get together.  For those who can’t travel, the upsurge in mail and phone calls suggests that somehow, this season of celebration promotes relationships.  A whole subset of Christmas literature is devoted to stories of estranged family members rekindling relationships.  Only some of them are fiction.  Hard hearts are softened.   Bitter resolve is eroded.  Grace is unleashed.  And love’s restorative power goes to work.

We see all this in the coming of Emmanuel.  The God of Heaven became “God with us.”  The Unapproachable came near to us.  The Unimaginable became real to us.  The Pure and Holy touched our diseased, broken selves and healed us.  Those who know this Emmanuel can never be the same.  Anyone who connects with God, no matter how tenuously is plunged into a process of relating which defies description.

Christmas is great because it reminds us of who we are and who God is.  It is great because it has provoked the most touching stories and the most transcendent music.  It is great because of its settling effect on troubled souls.  It is great because it serves as a reference point to which we can return year after year and remind ourselves that regardless of how much things change, some things don’t change.

For these and other reasons, I’m celebrating Christmas this year–not just with gifts and decorations, music and programs, family and friends.  I’m celebrating Christmas with a new sense of Emmanuel–the God who is with me as I move through my crazily busy days, the God who is with me as I speak peace into the lives of others all the while needing His peace spoken to me, the God who is with me as the circumstances of life strip away the trappings and confront me with the essential, the God who is with me whether the tears express pain or joy.