Ian Hodge
Happy Christmas everyone! For those of you thinking that I’m a bit belated with a Christmas greeting, I give you the good news that on the Christian calendar Christmas is actually a 12-day celebration, beginning with Christmas day and ending with Epiphany (the visit of the wise men).
In truth I haven’t always found the Christmas season particularly joyful. More and more the symbols that surround Christmas and help us remember its meaning as the feast of Christ’s incarnation are fading in meaning.
Why do we have Christmas trees? Because that’s what we’ve always done. Why put up lights? Because they look nice. Is it okay to wish strangers “Merry Christmas,” or would it be offensive? How many pounds have I put on in December again? That many?!
I don’t intend to be a killjoy, as someone yelling to our culture “get off my lawn!” as if it were my job to keep the observance of Christmas pure. Instead, I sense that for many of us Christmas becomes a responsibility more than a celebration.
We have all these gifts to buy, dinners to plan, events to go to, and by the end of Christmas we’re deeply ready to be rid of it. The meaning of Christmas itself is often lost, or at best obscured, by our observance of it.
How strangely we have chosen to celebrate God’s gift of himself to us at Christmas! We have taken matters into our own hands, believing that we are on the hook to deliver a meaningful celebration to ourselves, our families, and all the other people we feel responsible for.
It’s as if we believe that we need to plan and execute a perfect event, or Christmas won’t come. The premier carol we could write might be, “If I burn the roast, Christmas is toast.” But who would want to sing it?
It helps to remember that what Christmas celebrates was an answer to hundreds of years of prayers from hundreds of thousands (or more!) of people. It was something that no one could force to come, although many tried. The people of Israel, God’s chosen people, had lost their nation and lost their homes.
They suffered under a succession of rulers who at best were indifferent to them, and at worst lined up masses of Jews for execution. They needed God’s promised king, the “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace” that the prophet Isaiah promised (Isaiah 9:6).
Many people tried, like we still do today, to bring Christmas in their own timing and on their own terms. The Maccabean Revolt took place in the early to mid-second century BC, temporarily making Israel independent again, although it was no more just than before as the Hasmonean rulers squabbled overpower.
In 57 BC the peasants of the land revolted until Herod crushed their rebellion. When Jesus himself was crucified two “bandits” (Greek lēstēs) hung on either side of him, likely social revolutionaries themselves.
But the good news of Christmas is that we longer need to take matters into our own hands. God will bring to us what we couldn’t bring ourselves, whether we gave it our best effort or cynically cooperated with the unjust powers and ideologies of the world.
After all, that first Christmas came to shepherds simply doing what they did every night; watching their sheep in the fields. To them the angels proclaimed “good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)
So, in these waning days of Christmas, I pray that each one of us will find God acting unilaterally in our lives. I pray that we will receive Christmas not the way Santa gives it, “He’s making a list and checking it twice/gonna find out who’s naughty and nice,” but as the free gift of the True Savior, Jesus Christ. May you find Christ in Christmas!
Ian Hodge is pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Carson City.