Merry Christmas
Here it comes–Christmas is merely days away. On one hand, it feels as though that blessed day has been on its way since mid October, when I first saw Christmas items at market. By now, we have each heard enough Christmas music to render us vegetables, seen enough manufactured Christmas cheer to harden our hearts, and been dehumanized in public enough times to wonder what in God’s name He was doing coming here to save us, anyway.
We trample people to death when they stand between us and the goods we want, after all. All in the name of providing a “meaningful gift.”
The Advent Conspiracy tells us that we Americans spend tons more money each year during Christmas than we would need to spend if we, collectively, decided to end the world’s water problems. The WHOLE WORLD’S water problems! I am humbled to think that we could make this world better, but we choose not to….
And everywhere I go I hear people making a big deal about saying “Merry Christmas,” rather than the unholy “Happy Holidays,” as if what we say, alone, will magically change the hearts of the people we are around, who see us as obstacles rather than as people that God loves. I have also read articles from several sources that delight in reminding us all that Christmas was not likely as it is in our Christian story (who knows how many wise men came, how old Christ was when they arrived, whether he was born in a cave or what we think of as a stable, if Jesus was born in April, or if Mary was, indeed, a virgin?). What remains, aside from the trivia, is what matters most: God came here.
Call it Holidays or Christ-mas, next week we celebrate God doing something totally new. We celebrate the truth that the creator of all things went out of his way to show us love, knowing how we’d react (think, again, of the Wal-Mart trampling for a glimpse of the human nature Jesus came to love). This bit from Stephen W. Simpson, PhD sums it up, for me:
“Manger” is just a cute word that hides the fact that the Son of God spent his first night in a place where sheep ate. Jesus was born poor, against the backdrop of impropriety.
He could have done it another way. He could have descended from heaven in a flaming chariot. He could have emerged from the ocean, bellowing with righteous rage as he struck down evildoers. Or he could have not come at all, leaving us to worship a distant God who has no idea what it’s like to be human.
Clearing the record about things like donkeys and wise men doesn’t show us the real truth of Christmas. The power of the Christmas story has little to do with who did what and when. It doesn’t matter if Jesus was born on December 25 or on Flag Day. What matters is that he came into the world as a fragile human being, a baby boy in the care of a teenage girl with a skittish husband. God showed us that humility and grace mean so much more than power and glory. Once we clear away the decorations and the subterfuge, we see God revealed in an impoverished infant. I don’t know the mind of God, but it seems like he was making a point.
May we tangibly feel our blessings this year; May we finally get the point, at last. Merry Christmas to you!
