So Christmas time has rolled around again, well, for me at least. For the rest of America it seems like it rolled around back in October. But as Americans now decide they can freely and unashamedly start blasting their Christmas carols, bedecking their spaces with electric color, and wearing green and red, I just have a funny feeling that seems to have been growing more and more with each passing Christmas the last few years.
I know it's a used cliche to say Christmas has been commercialized. Duh. Welcome to the 20th century, oh wait, 21st century. But one of the things I've been noticing is just how much Christians have become all caught up in the culture's holly-jolly-ness surrounding Dec. 25, and less caught up in the wonder and joy that surrounds Christmas.
Obviously, Christmas is a time of joy. Christ, the Son of God, came to earth and became man to save us from our sins. We should be ecstatic! But is that really what we, as Christians, are getting so hyped up about this time of year? When we get that warm-fuzzy or that holly-jolly feeling, is it because we are remembering Christ's birth or because we are basking in the glow of the human virtues of love and generosity and hot cocoa by the fireplace?
While Christmas is about love and is joyous occasion, I think we often forget that the Christmas story is not a warm-fuzzy or holly-jolly story. Many of us Christians have this picture of the Christmas story stuck in our heads from our little illustrated Bibles of our childhood. The highly romanticized and softened image of a sweet little baby wrapped in a clean, white blanket laid in fresh hay. A rosy-cheeked mother Mary, probably in her late-20's, gazes lovingly at the child as she herself is wrapped in flowing blue and pink robes. Her steadfast husband Joseph stands guard over the scene, a stable that looks a whole lot tidier that many of our modern bedrooms illuminated by a warm glow of unknown origin. The nicely groomed animals, surely from one of the finest petting zoos in Palestine, just hang out quitely and nonchalantly in the background. And then come the shepherds. Fine, upstanding men. Nice and clean. I mean, who wouldn't want these guys coming to see your newborn baby? And they're bringing the absolute cutest little lambs with them. Awwww...I won't even talk about the we-three-kings-of-orient-are making the light-speed journey across the desert to reach the Bethlehem stable that night. And where did this pa-rum-pum-pum-pum drummer boy come from?
Okay, so maybe I exaggerate a little. But do we ever really think about what the Christmas story really is? When we read the words in gospels of Matthew and Luke each Christmas, do we really understand what they're saying, or do we just revert back in our minds to the images of the nativity scene on our mantle?
The Christmas story is one of hardship, of a light in the darkness. Scene: Nazareth. Basically, a slum. No tidy, picturesque Bible-times village here. It's a dirty, old, run-down slum. Mary, a very young girl, probably early teens, is a girl that's pretty ordinary. One day, she's visited by an angel. (we gloss over this so much...an angel! she was visited by an angel!) This angel tells her she has found favor with God (wow!), and oh yeah, she's also now pregnant with the Son of God. How would you take this? How do you have that conservation with your parents, let alone your betrothed, Joseph? What do you do when the pregnancy starts to show? When everyone in Nazareth now knows that this good-girl Mary, she's never really gotten in much trouble, is now PREGNANT, and she's not even married yet. Scandal. Big time. And Joseph...what's he supposed to do? His betrothed wife is pregnant already, and he knows it certainly wasn't him!
So we already have a story of heartache and scandal in a tiny, backwoods slum. After being visited by an angel himself, Joseph takes Marry as his wife, a step that surely cost him his reputation around town as well. And then, when Mary's is quite pregnant, Caeser Augustus decides it's time for a census and that everybody needs to go back to their hometown to register. This means, Joseph and Mary load up the mini-van and hop on the interstate to Bethlehem. Nope, Mary, very very pregnant Mary, must ride on the back of a donkey while her new husband Joseph is tasked with guiding them down the long and difficult road to Bethlehem. To make matters worse, as they finally start nearing town, Mary starts going into labor. Imagine her panic, not to mention Joseph's panic, at that moment. They arrive in town and find the inn, glad to finally be at their stop and relieved they made it in time. But no, the innkeeper says there is no room for them. Can you imagine Joseph pleading and begging with the innkeeper as his wife is still sitting on the back of a donkey about to have a baby? Finally, the innkeeper relents and tells them about a stable out back. Instead of the cute little wooden structure we often imagine, this stable was probably in a cave, which means dark, damp, and cold. Now, I grew up in the city, but even I know that farm animals are not nice and quiet beasts. Donkeys, cows, pigs, etc...and they're certainly not very clean. We have taken the term "manger" and turned it into some idealized notion of basically a cradle. It was a trough. Do we know where farm animals eat from in a barn? That was where the Savior of the world was to spend his first night on earth, with old hay as his mattress. Swaddling clothes were not the normal thing to put on a baby...they were used to bury the dead. So it was here, in this dark, damp, cold, dirty, loud stable where a young, tired, confused, and scared newlywed couple give birth to the Son of God. The shepherds that came to see this newborn King were men that basically slept in fields with sheep. That's not an easy, or clean, job. They were the low-end blue-collar workers, the surly, hardened men that dealt all day and night with the stubbornest animals created by God. These were the men the heavenly host sent to Bethlehem to worship the newborn King. Not the mayor, not the upstanding merchants, not Bethlehem's finest, not even the innkeeper...the shepherds, straight from the fields.
The story goes on. We all know it. We all know it didn't get much easier. We all know that King Herod ordered a massacre of all baby boys under 2 years old and Joseph and Mary had to flee with their baby to Egypt.
So yes, the Christmas story is one of joy and, as the angel said, peace on earth and good will toward men. But this joy comes from the fact that our Savior was not only born a man, but he was born into some of the worst of circumstances. This baby boy that Mary gazed so lovingly at would 33 years later have the sins of the world laid on his shoulders and be violently crucified to pay that penalty. Of course, that story ends with the glory of His Resurrection.
Christmas is not a time to be sad. It's a time to rejoice!
JOY TO THE WORLD, not because the ground is covered in snow, the lights are on the tree, and "It's a Wonderful Life" is on television, but because THE LORD HAS COME. As we receive our presents, we are reminded of when we RECEIVED OUR KING. LET EVERY HEART not be filled with all the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season and vague, imperfect concepts of generalized love and generosity, but let every heart PREPARE HIM ROOM.
And Heaven and Nature Sing.
I think this is why I've been growing more and more uncomfortable with all of these culturalized celebrations of Christmas. Now I'm not going to go all Ebenezer Scrooge and swear off all merriment and celebration during the Christmas season, but I do want to take a different look at it. We Christians throw around the term, "Jesus in the Reason for the Season," but then we promptly restrict Jesus to His place in our nativity set and the Christmas Eve church service. A true celebration of Christmas is one where we are more caught up in and enamoured with the glory of our Savior than with a jolly old man in a red suit.
This Christmas, I want to find that joy in the Christmas story, that joy in my Savior. It just seems like all of this hustle-bustle, warm-fuzzy, holly-jolly spirit gets in the way. It's all fluff. What does it mean? Some incomplete, imperfect, vague notion of good will where everyone has a friend and gets what he wants? Our true joy is found in the ultimate and perfect notion of love...For Unto Us a Child is Born.
