I started writing the below before Christmas, but didn't get a chance to go through and edit it until today, So, the time setting is a little off, but, at the same time, it's technically only the third day of Christmas, so I suppose it can still be accurate. If you don't want to look at it that way, that's fine – I leave it to you, then, to adjust the time references accordingly in your head.
Christmas is, to my eyes, a somewhat vexing holiday. In our popular culture, there's a “holiday spirit” we're all supposed to be in, and which I can never seem to catch. It's perhaps best exemplified by the many TV and movie scenes involving dancing elves. Unfortunately, I'm too tall to be an elf. So, as I look at the upcoming holiday, and enjoy the decorations and the gift-getting and especially the music, there's a feeling that it's incomplete. And, in fact, it is.
At this point, one expects to see the nativity brought up. And this is rightly so, for the Christ-child is the reason this whole celebration happens. But what's come to me, perhaps just as a flaw in my own understanding, or perhaps as a flaw in our larger culture, is that the celebration has left behind the reason behind it; the birth, like the menorah, the flipping of a calendar, and the harvest, is just another excuse to party, a fate unworthy of any of them. How do we solve this? By stepping aside from the party and reconsidering the bedlam that was Bethlehem, and in that the reverence due the mystery of God Incarnate.
God, from the beginning of time, has brought light to darkness. In Genesis, darkness covered the earth, and the Spirit hovered over the waters. And the first thing God did in that situation was transform it by creating light. Later, in Isaiah 9, the prophet described an oppressive darkness covering the land of Israel, due to its sin and punishment, and foretells the Child as a sun breaking over the horizon at last. John, in his gospel, wrote of Christ as the light that gives life to all men, coming into the world, and in Revelation depicted the eternal Jerusalem as a place not needing sun or moon, because the Lamb Himself will be its light.
No matter what the carols say, we make a mistake if we believe nights are silent and peaceful. There can be good in the night, as with the Spirit that first day of Creation, but the more common nighttime of the punished Israelites and lost mankind is characterized by chaos, fear, hardship, and oppression. This was the case even on that first Christmas night: Mary and Joseph didn't find the stable picturesque or pleasant, except that it was a place outside the craziness of a village absolutely filled to capacity; the birth may have been miraculous, but I doubt Mary found it enjoyable; and I'd be willing to bet, again in the face of carols, that the Holy Infant did plenty of crying. But the night, and the babe, were all the more holy for that. For normal things to be accompanied by the normal, or exceptional things by the exceptional, is a boring truism; the awe-inspiring other-ness and holiness of the night was that the exceptional came in the midst and guise of the normal, and transformed it.
The Christ Child was a gift, but He was also a bit of a Trojan Horse. Wrapped incomprehensibly in that package of flesh was the fullness of the infinite God, a God Who, out of unspeakable love, had, on the one hand, humbled Himself to an astonishing level, yet, in so doing, had made Himself finally accessible to all. The effect of God's glory is to kill those who look on it, because it's too much for us to handle, yet, in the incarnation, as John writes, “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14) Well might angels sing, stars shine rightly, shepherds come and bow down, and magi leave their studies to seek Him, for, by His own choice, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:14)
This Christmas, if your joy stems from dancing elves, boughs of holly, or even songs in the air, let me suggest you return to where it all started, with a God who, to change the world He loved, gave it neither revolution nor peace, neither a thunderclap from the heavens nor the final outworking of earthly evil, but instead gave the one gift no one could have dared to imagine and that the theologians still don't understand: Himself, laying on a pile of hay, so that one day He could hang upon a cross, and that today we could be adopted into His family and transformed into His likeness.
Merry Christmas!
