One of the innumerable aspects I deeply appreciate about Christmas is how the holiday is clearly a contemporary collision course.
Collisions get our attention. They demand we stop where we are, shred our schedules and to-do lists, and deal with the immediate. In “this thing we keep calling 2020,” such couldn’t be any more clear.
Christmas is where the sacred and secular collide.
As Tim Keller poignantly points out in Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ, “The background music in stores is moving from ‘Joy to the World’ to ‘Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas.’” We tend to sing along with both.
And while no doubt both songs have meaning and value, there is a difference in depth between “Let every heart prepare Him room and heaven and nature sing” — and — “I don’t know if there’ll be snow, but have a cup of cheer.”
Fascinatingly, when Christmas occurred, there existed rampant poverty, oppression, racial tension and political strife on this planet.
People weren’t always merry and they didn’t all get along. That was over 2,000 years ago.
Hence, in the sacred and secular, we often hear a collective crying out. They heard it 2,000 years ago; we hear it still today; we hear cries to “fix it” — fix all this tension and strife!… Some of those voices are gentle and respectful. Others are harsh and demanding. But the plea is often the same: fix it. There are many significant, dark challenges in our world.
Back to Keller…
“Years ago, I read an ad in the New York Times that said, ‘The meaning of Christmas is that love will triumph and that we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.’ In other words, we have the light within us, and so we are the ones who can dispel the darkness of the world. We can overcome poverty, injustice, violence, and evil. If we work together, we can create a ‘world of unity and peace.’
Can we?
One of the most thoughtful world leaders of the late twentieth century was Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic. He had a unique vantage point from which to peer deeply into both socialism and capitalism, and he was not optimistic that either would, by itself, solve the greatest human problems. He knew that science unguided by moral principles had given us the Holocaust. He concluded that neither technology nor the state nor the market alone could save us from nuclear conflict, ethnic violence, or environmental degradation. ‘Pursuit of the good life will not help humanity save itself, nor is democracy alone enough,’ [Havel] said. ‘A turning to and seeking of . . . God, is needed.’ The human race constantly forgets, he added, that ‘he is not God.’
Despite the sincerity of the Times advertiser, the message of Christmas is not that ‘we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.’”
In other words, we need more than we. Christmas reminds us of that. Note the collisions, the contrasts…
Contrast the unadorned visual of the birth of a baby boy in a stable full of hay, prophesied multiple times in centuries prior. Contrast the dirt and the hay and the zero fanfare with the majesty of a king.
Contrast the babe’s later, adult call to love God and love his people with all the reasons we justify not loving and respecting at least someone today.
The collision is clear.
Maybe it’s what the Grinch realized — or what Dr. Seuss realized, when he wrote: “And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?”
Thankfully, the collision of Christmas provides the opportunity to see that “little bit more”… that we need more than we… that “pursuit of the good life” is not enough…
So I sit and reflect these days before the holiday… dealing with the immediate, wishing my family and friends unparalleled peace and tremendous goodwill, knowing this year is different, but still, daily, singing “repeat the sounding joy”…
Over and over again.
Merry Christmas, friends… to you and yours… always…
AR