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Minutes
of Meetings with God |
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The Christmas Challenge ... |
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Snow began falling last night. It made the world beautiful. And, somehow, the snow helped jump start me in getting ready for Christmas. I'm not sure why. Something about how the snow covers simply everything in a blanket of such pure white speaks to my spirit in ways I need to hear (even if I don't consciously understand it). The snow seems to clean the world, at least temporarily, in anticipation of a new start come Spring. Perhaps, it's that anticipation of a new start that helps me in my getting ready for Christmas. Christmas challenges me. To be more honest, Christmas bends me out of shape. Some of the challenges have to do with making the place we live ready for Christmas. We've got our three Christmas trees up in the stands, each tree all draped in lights. Two are fully decorated and the last one waits for ornaments and tinsel. This year, for some unknown reason, the trees were unusually hard to get into the stands just right. What frustration it all generated. At one point, I was ready to take a chain saw to the troublesome trees, cut them into bits good only for making wreaths or grave blankets, and go buy other trees (my wife talked me out of it!). The trees simply did not want to stand in the tree stands; for a change, the stands seemed too big for the trees. Talk about tipsy trees. We managed to get the lights hung on the shrubs in front of the house, after one false start. The first effort got rained out just as we completed hanging lights on the big bush next to the driveway. We quit, all wet, after finishing only that one shrub. In the second effort, it was me who drug my wife outside into cold and to the task. Usually, it's the other way around, with her dragging me outside. This time, I was the one who said, "Come on, let's get this done tonight!" Sets of lights would get contrary and refuse to work. That meant checking every bulb (while standing outside in the cold and damp) to see if any were loose. It seemed like the process took forever. Our fingers and noses and toes got pretty cold. But later, when we looked at our handy work from the vantage point of the road, it was worth the struggle. The outside of the house looks ready for Christmas. The inside of the house is about two thirds decorated and will probably be finished this weekend. The other challenges of getting ready for Christmas are the ones that go on inside me, in my heart and between my ears. Those are the hardest challenges because they have to do with my thoughts and feelings about this season of the year. And, the thoughts and feelings tumbling around within me are, typically, extremely ambivalent. I guess I know too much about Christmas and want to know more about it. Christmas has gone complicated. It started out simply enough, but the simplicity disappeared long ago. Now, there are so many levels and layers to Christmas that it's next to impossible to sort it all out. A good deal of our modern Christmas has little or nothing to do with "the reason for the season." Christmas started out as a celebration of the birth of Jesus. No one knew or knows Jesus' true birth date; not the day or the month or even the year is certain. However, by the early third century (probably before 225 A.D.), some few Christians felt it important to observe Jesus' birthday. A day was picked. Clement of Alexandria (a Christian who lived from 150 to 215) suggested May 20th to celebrate Jesus' birth. By about 336, the observance of Jesus' birth had been moved to December 25th as Christians opposed and protested the pagan "Feast of the Sun" by creating their own celebration of the birth of Jesus (who the Church called "The Sun of Righteousness"). A relentless tension between Christian and non-Christian elements in the observance of Jesus' birth has continued ever since. Sometimes, the non-Christian influences have been so strong that various expressions of the Church (especially during England's radical Reformation and among the Puritans and Quakers) have gone so far as to outlaw the celebration of Christmas. It is hard to imagine, but at one time in this country, some Christians who didn't observe Christmas would throw in jail any Christians who did. Obviously, now, we are going through a swing to the other extreme with our celebrations most often having at best only a token connection to observance of Jesus' birth. Both the Christian and non-Christian extremes have managed to totally miss the point of the Christmas season. When all is said and done, the reason for the season is that "the Word" has come in the flesh and dwelt among us in the most unexpected way. That in itself is something that weaves together things extremely simple and terribly complex. The birth of a baby, any baby, is at once common and yet full of mystery and miracle. The birth of the baby, Jesus, takes the measure of the common and mysterious and miraculous way off the scale. Paradox and tension permeate, not only the events of Jesus' birth, but the whole of his life. He is at once blessed and tragic, successful and a failure, human and divine, the beginning (Alpha) and the ending (Omega) of everything. He did, through the paradox and tension of his life, live out the meaning of who he is so that, forever, God and humanity are finally "at-one". Because of Jesus, there is cosmic peace and harmony (goodwill toward all?). What an awesome, joy filled thought and how worthy of unabashed celebration, of song, of dance, and of merriment? Christmas is a time to especially allow ourselves to taste something of that peace and harmony. The unrelenting tension of "the season" can keep me, can keep us, from the taste of peace and harmony we so desperately want and so deeply need. The tension can overwhelm us and drive away what Jesus so generously brought. We can get so immersed in the way we do Christmas, or we can be so repulsed by the way others do Christmas that we lose the "good will" that the season originally promised to deliver. That taste of peace and harmony can't be found in a glittering store or in a fancy hall or amongst the throng at a mall or even at some small country inn. The one who brings peace and harmony lies some-where out back, in a rude, crude stable, and is dressed in a simple wrap of rags. It's a place in which you have to watch where you step because of where the animals have been and what they've done. The one we seek doesn't look at all the way we would imagine God to be like. Somehow, when we find him, we will know that we're in the right place, with the right people. The peace and harmony that we taste will tell us so. Nothing else will intrude. It will be Christmas, both inside us and all around us. We can celebrate with abandon. Amen!
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