Missing Christmas

“Jesus is not to us as Christmas is to the world, here today and gone tomorrow.”  Rick Mylander

  During the great depression a family was unable to afford much of anything but the bare necessities. One day news came that a circus was coming to town. Tickets cost one dollar. The little boy came running home excited and eager to get the money from his Dad. The father regretfully told his boy that he couldn’t afford to give him with that much money, but if he went out and worked on odd jobs, he might make enough to be able purchase a ticket on his own. The Dad promised to match what the boy could earn. So this little guy worked feverishly and, just a few days before the circus came to town, he found that he had just enough money, including his Dad’s contribution. He took his money and ran off to town to buy his circus ticket. On the day the circus came to town, he grabbed his ticket and rushed to the main street, where he stood on the curb as the circus parade went by. He was thrilled to watch the clowns, elephants, and all of the performers. A clown came dancing over to him and the boy put his ticket in the clown’s hand. He eagerly watched as the rest of the parade went by.   

  After the parade, the boy rushed home and told his father that he’d been to the circus and how much fun it was. The father, very surprised that his son was home already, asked him to describe the circus. The boy told of the parade that went down the main street and then of giving his ticket to the clown. The father sadly took his son in his arms and said, “Son, you didn’t see the circus; all you saw was the parade.”

  That boy reminds me of many people at Christmas time. They get so caught up with the carols, trees, lights, and gifts. They think that they’re experiencing what Christmas is all about, but really, all they’re doing is seeing the parade and missing the main event, the real Christmas story.

  Most of us would agree that Hollywood and contemporary music have made Christmas something syrupy and sappy. In the Church, authors, philosophers, poets, preachers and composers through the centuries have searched in vain for words that adequately capture the wonder, mystery, beauty, and power of Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us. And too often, we’re as guilty of missing the real Christmas story as a secular world.

  The miracle and meaning of the incarnation is hard for us to comprehend with our finite minds. It can be so difficult to grasp that we give up and start to view Christmas in ways that leave us impoverished and unimpressed with the real story. Often our songs and reflections about Christmas can fail to leave people gasping in amazement or humbled in awe that God would come to dwell among us.

  Sometimes we turn Christmas into a Hallmark special. Sentimentalism is focusing on the sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas that give us good feelings. Dazzling decorations, fresh baked cookies, poinsettias, family get-togethers, gift shopping, twinkling lights, Christmas carols, cards from friends, tree-cutting expeditions, wrapping presents. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things. They’re all expressions of common grace, for which we can joyfully thank God. And traditions are important. They’re truly the stuff memories are made of. I hope that you have some and that you’re passing them on to your children and grandchildren. Our family has developed a few of our own over the years and we look forward to them every year. Man-made traditions though are just a “ticket” though and miss the real show, or at least, the main story of Christmas. They fail to solve our deepest problems or fulfill our deepest needs.

  Sometimes we turn Christmas into a White Glove inspection. When I was in college, before we went home for the holidays, we had to make certain that our rooms were spic and span. It was called a “White Glove inspection.” Sometimes we do that with Christmas. We sanitize it when we only present a picture-perfect, storybook rendition of what took place in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. The straw in the manger is fresh and clean. There’s no umbilical cord to cut and no blood. It’s a “silent night.” The surroundings are strangely free from the pungent odor of manure. Joseph and Mary are calm, cool, and collected. Everyone gets a good night’s sleep. There’s no controversy or gossip surrounding the birth. It’s a pleasant, appealing way to think about Christmas, but it obscures the foulness, uncertainty, and sin that Jesus was born into. We forget that rather than coming for the put-together, well-to-do, and self-sufficient, Jesus identified with the rejected, the slandered, the helpless, and the poor.

  Sometimes we turn Christmas into a Kum Bah Yah moment. A religious world focuses on just one smidgen of the Christmas story, “Peace on earth.” Christmas is manipulated into some U.N. peacekeeping moment. Christmas primarily then becomes about promoting virtues like universal brotherhood, peace, joy, generosity, love, and of course, tolerance. It ignores that the incarnation is an earth-shattering event and forever altered the course of human history. While those are good things and again evidence of God’s common grace, they’re not the Christmas story. We should be thankful that our still culture sets aside a time of year, however commercialized it may be, to celebrate and commend being kind, paying it forward and loving your neighbor. But the fruit of Christmas is impossible to achieve or sustain apart from the root. We understand what love is by looking not to ourselves and our good deeds, but by considering Jesus, who came into the world to lay down His life for us (1 John 3:16). Preaching or singing about peace without recognizing our core need for the Prince of Peace, is a shallow peace indeed. The incarnation, the real Christmas story, is that God became man. It was never meant to be marginalized to a few weeks. It means something cataclysmic every day – Jesus, the eternal Son of God who before time was worshiped by innumerable angels, set aside His glory and entered the world through the birth canal of a young woman that He had created. The fullness of deity took of residence in the body of a baby gasping for its first breath. The One who spoke the universe into existence lay silent, unable to utter a word.

  And He came by choice and with the sole intention of redeeming a fallen and rebellious race through His perfect obedience, substitutionary death, and victorious resurrection. The Son of God entered our world of space and time to die on a cross for our sins and be our Savior. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). That’s the real Christmas story!