I love the extended end-of-year holiday season. I enjoy everything about it. Given a choice between the two major cultural-Christian
holidays of Easter and Christmas, I’d take Christmas every time. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying “humbug” to Good Friday and
Resurrection Sunday. In the framework of
western philosophical and religious thought, Easter – or its equivalent – is
inevitable. Humanity is inexorably drawn
to reminders of our imperfection and alienation, our struggle to define the
sacred, our emptiness apart from something greater than our self. Easter is the perfect complement for such
ruminations. .
By contrast, the advent season is the antithesis of
that. Christmas reminds us that the
story of humanity need not be bound up in the existential angst of uncertainty
and despair.
It’s about innocence, new beginnings, gifts and
celebrations. It’s about family and community.
When distilled to its essence Christmas is a proclamation of the good. It’s a reminder that humility, truth, love,
compassion - and all else that defines what is good and honest and true about us
- is worth celebrating. It begins with an announcement from an other-worldly
choir heralding “peace on earth, good will to all people”. Angelic messengers usher in this season,
their joyous song a reflection of what Deity thinks about us and envisions for
us, and what we should envision for ourselves. It is not a time of doubt and
estrangement but of faith and community.
Fear not, we are told, for this is an occasion of good tiding, a time of
great joy.
The miracle of Christmas may lie not so much in the fact of
incarnation as in the expression of worth revealed in its effect - that the
manger’s babe is a child of humanity.
Our merit, indeed our intrinsic value is revealed not in that God has
come to visit with us but that He has become one of us, and more importantly,
that he has become one of the least of us, a helpless child. By this simple yet profound act God affirms
the value of who we are. Christmas is a
reminder that life is pregnant with purpose and meaning and that each of us
independently and as an organic whole is favored and deserving of good will and
peace.
