Three Views of Christmas
The reason for this annual burst of gift buying, parties, and hysteria is a quiet event that happened a long time ago. You can say that is all societies there has always been a midwinter festival and that many trappings of our Christmas are almost violently pagan. But you come back to the central fact of the day and quietness of Christmas morning—the birth of God on earth.
It leaves you only three ways of accepting Christmas. One is cynically, as a time to make money or endorse the making of it. One is graciously, the appropriate attitude for non-Christians, who wish their fellow citizens all the joys to which their beliefs entitle them. And the third is reverently. If this is the anniversary of the appearance of the Lord of the universe in the form of a helpless babe, it is a very important day. It’s a startling idea. My guess is that the whole story that a virgin was selected by God to bear His Son as a way of showing His love and concern for man is not an idea that has been popular with theologicans.
It’s a somewhat illogical idea, and theologians like logic almost as much as they like God. It’s so revolutionary a thought that it probably could only come from a God that is beyond logic, and beyond theology. It has a magnificent appeal. Almost nobody has seen God, and almost nobody has any real idea of what He is like. And the truth is that among men the idea of seeing God suddenly and standing in a very bright light is not necessarily a completely comforting and appealing idea. But everyone has seen babies, and most people like them. If God wanted to be loved as well as feared He moved correctly here. If He wanted to know His people as well as rule them, He moved correctly here, for a baby growing up learns all about people. If God wanted to be intimately a part of man, He moved correctly, for the experiences of birth and familyhood are our most intimate and precious experiences.
So it comes beyond logic. It is either all falsehood or it is the truest thing in the world. It’s the story of the great innocence of God the baby—God in the form of man—and has such a dramatic shock toward the heart that if it is not true, for Christians, nothing is true.
So, if a Christian is touched only once a year, the touching is still worth it, and maybe on some given Christmas, some final quiet morning, the touch will take place. –TV new commentator Harry Reasoner.
Dickens on Christmas
I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round . . . as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore . . . though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it! –Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Miracle of the Virgin Birth
The grounds for belief and disbelief are the same today as they were two thousand or ten thousand years ago. If Joseph had lacked faith to trust God or humility to perceive the holiness of his spouse, he could have disbelieved in the miraculous origin of her Son as easily as any modern man; and any modern man who believes in God can accept the miracle as easily as Joseph did. –C. S. Lewis
Symbols of the Greater Gift
At a Christmas celebration in a nursing home, I asked the folks to tell us about their favorite Christmas experience. The group seemed to light up. Spontaneously one by one they told their Christmas story. Each was different except in one respect. Every experience was taken from their childhood. They did not remember Christmas as a parent, but as a child.
Then I turned the question on myself. I, too, returned to my childhood. The first, and perhaps most memorable, experience I recalled took place when I was seven years old. Early Christmas Eve, my mother took my brother and me out for a treat. It was her way to get us out of our fifth-floor apartment in the Bronx while my father prepared for the evening festivities.
As we climbed the stairs back to the apartment, the shrill sound of a whistle filled the hallway. What was that, and where did it come from? Our pace quickened and a second burst of the whistle could be heard. We dashed into the apartment. There was my father playing engineer with the biggest Lionel train ever made. It was so magnificent, so unexpected, so wonderful.
Some fifty years later, I still have the train set and cherish it as much as any material gift I ever received from my parents. The train is a warm reminder of the greater gift my parents gave me. This gift has nothing to do with any material advantages, or even with any piece of sage advice. Unconditional love was their gift. I never doubted their care for me, and from such grace sprang my own capacity to truth.
It was years later that I fully understood the gift my parents gave me had its source in God’s gift of the Child to us all. The sound of the whistle and the song of the angels have become one and the same. They are both the signal of God’s love. –Andrew Wyermann
The Marvelous Paradox of Christmas
The claim that Christianity makes for Christmas is that at a particular time and place God came to be with us Himself. When Quirinius was governor of Syria, in a town called Bethlehem, a child was born who, beyond the power of anyone to account for, was the high and lofty One made low and helpless. The One who inhabits eternity comes to dwell in time. The One Whom none can look upon and live is delivered in a stable under the soft, indifferent gaze of cattle. The Father of all mercies puts Himself at our mercy. –Frederick Buechner
Whose Birthday?
One family celebrated Christmas each year with a birthday party for Jesus. An extra chair of honor at the table became the family’s reminder of Jesus’ presence. A cake with candles, along with the singing of “Happy Birthday” expressed the family’s joy in Jesus’ presence.
One year, an afternoon visitor asked five year old Ruth, “Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas?” After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “No, but then it’s not my birthday.”
The Pushy Church
A few days before Christmas, two ladies looked into a store window at a large display of the manger scene with clay figures of the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men, and the animals. Disgustedly, one lady said, “Look at that, the church trying to horn in on Christmas!”
The Star
Back during World War II a little boy and his father were driving home on Christmas Eve. They drove past rows of houses with Christmas trees and decorations in the windows. In many of the windows the little boy noticed a star. He asked his father, “Daddy, why do some of the people have a star in the window?” His daddy said that the star meant that the family had a son in the war. As they passed the last house, suddenly the little boy caught sight of the evening star in the sky. “Look, Daddy, God must have a son in the war, too! He’s got a star in His window.” Indeed, God has a Son Who went to war, but Jesus came into the world to go to war with sin.
Jesus with a Switch
The kids were putting on the Christmas play. To show the radiance of the newborn Savior, an electric light bulb was hidden in the manger. All the stage lights were to be turned off so that only the brightness of the manger could be seen, but the boy in charge of the lights got confused—all the lights went out!
It was a tense moment, broken only when one of the shepherds said in a loud stage whisper, “Hey, you switched off Jesus!”