How Christmas Works
Matthew 2:13-23 12/26/2004
You know about the shepherds and the angels and the wise men from the East. You’re familiar with Joseph and Mary and the “little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.” These characters are known to us all, and our visions of them leave us with a warm and fuzzy feeling. But maybe you suspect that there is more than sweetness to this story. Scratch the surface of any Christmas card image, and you’re going to uncover greed and passion, danger and death. How does Christmas really work?
One place to begin to answer this question is the Internet, which conveniently enough includes a site called “How Christmas Works.” It’s a one-stop shop for all your questions about the holiday.
Questions like, “Why do people give each other presents on Christmas Day?” Or, “Is December 25 really the day Jesus was born?” Then there’s the mistletoe mystery. What does it have to do with the Christmas story? Absolutely nothing. And how about the 12 days of Christmas? What’s that about? Aren’t there like about 30 days of Christmas, from Thanksgiving until Christmas Day?
Many people like to say, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” But is this really true for the Christmas season? If we were to look at the origin of the holiday we would find that Christmas comes from a conglomeration of pagan practices. Many of our Christmas traditions seem more properly associated with the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia than they do with any practice of the church.
Historical evidence shows that the Christian message was simply grafted into these pagan customs. Even so, today the message of the birth of Christ is generally accepted as the general theme of Christmas. It is a time where the Christian can tell the whole world about the incarnation, and it is a time where, in most cases, we can loudly proclaim, “A Savior is born” without being censored. It can also be a wholesome time of family gatherings and a time to show others you care about them. The point is, a cultural and religious tradition like Christmas takes years, even centuries, of formation until it becomes the event it is today…Christmas works, and it works because of these traditions and legends and customs that have evolved over time.
All of these cultural accumulations help us to “put on” Christmas. To do it right. But how does it work? Really work? Is there a lingering, lasting effect that Christmas produces in us and for us? If it doesn’t, then Christmas doesn’t really “work,” does it.
Actually, Christmas almost didn’t happen. Dig beneath the peaceful picture of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, and you are going to find surprises. Take a close look at the gospel of Matthew, and you’ll be stunned by the danger and death that permeate the original Christmas story. You want to talk about catastrophe theory, you can start right here. Christmas should never have happened.
You don’t, for example, take your pregnant wife — nine months pregnant with God— put her on a mule, and pack her off on a 120-mile road trip. Second, if you do, you arrange for lodging, and don’t just hope there will be a room in the inn.
Third, the child is born in a manger. Think about it. How do children survive these days? Answer is, back then, a lot of them didn’t. Jesus did. It wasn’t a sterile environment to have a child. Wasn’t your typical birthing center.
And then there are the wise men who hit a roadblock as they attempt to gain access to Jesus. Sure, the star in the sky is a big help as they make their way, but once they arrive in Jerusalem they run smack into King Herod. The Bible says that when the wise men told Herod they had seen the King of the Jews’ star and came to bow down to him, “he was frightened and all of Jerusalem with him.” So, working on an exit strategy Herod himself tells the wise men to “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
Now, try and put aside our culture’s Christmas story where the baby is born and while he’s still in that manger in Bethlehem, the wise men come riding in on three magnificent camels. That’s not the way it happened. Actually, by the time the wise men, who came from “far from the East,” made it to Jesus, Jesus was between one and two years old. The gospels are not clear as to why Mary and Joseph chose to stay in Bethlehem instead of returning to Nazareth, but they did.
But the wise men finally make it to the house of Joseph and Mary and Matthew 2:10 says “they were overwhelmed with joy,.” I bet. Verse 11 and 12: “On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts…” and you know the rest, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
And then, at the tender age of one or two, trouble begins for little Jesus already. Matthew 2:13-20 tells the story of danger and death better than I can:
2:13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."
Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son."
When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.
Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead."
So although we paint a pretty picture of Christmas, it wasn’t pretty for very long. Sometimes Christmas is still like that for us. I’d be willing to bet that some of you are feeling relief today because it’s over for another year. But we go through the motions year after year. The presents, the Christmas cards, the shopping, the food, the parties, and so on.
But that’s not Christmas. That’s the holidays. And even though we still have New Year’s to get through before they will be over this time, maybe we are glad. Because some years Christmas is not very pretty. Some years we don’t have enough money. Some years we don’t have health. Some years we have death overshadowing any joyful celebrations.
When that happens, we have to be like the wise men and we have to take a detour around these dangers. If we are going to gain access to Jesus, we are challenged to find another way. The wise men protected Jesus by evading the expectations of Herod, and we should follow this same path. Our access to Jesus may require eliminating some of the Christmas expectations that can elevate our anxiety.
Fact is, we don’t need to obsess about holiday decorations, and insist that our houses be stuffed with green holly branches and red poinsettia plants. But even if we scale back our expectations and downsize our decorations, we’re still going to face some dangers as we make our way through the season. Life has a way of shattering our serenity, even when we do our best to keep the chaos under control.
Why am I talking about this NOW, you ask, the day AFTER Christmas. It’s because I want to remind you how Christmas works.
It works when we remember that Christmas now, as then, is a dangerous business. It is dangerous because it evokes dreams and hopes. There’s a scene in the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, where Andy says to his best friend, “Hope is a dangerous thing. The reality is that we’re in here, and hope is out there.”
Christmas is not easy, and in fact it can be costly, because it demands that we put “the hopes and fears of all the years” to work. It calls on us to give muscle to our aspirations and dreams. And that’s not easy. But if we do it, Christmas works.
Christmas works when we shatter the false gods of materialism, and the idols of ambition, and the demons of self-importance, and set up the Christ child as the promise and priority of our lives. When Christ is the center of our daily living, then the other demons will fade away. And there’s no better time to consciously work at instilling these new habits into our lives than after Christmas, at the dawning of a new year.
Did you see the movie, A Beautiful Mind, about a schizophrenic named John Nash? There is a moment when Nash by Russell Crowe, has come to terms with his demons. They’re still there, but he ignores them, and there’s a scene when these demons, being ignored, appear sad, and understand that they no longer exert the influence over Nash that they used to.
When we honor Christ, and not the culture of Christmas, then Christmas, ironically, really works. The demons, while there in the background, have no control. That’s how Christmas works.
Finally, we honor Christmas when we allow it to take us to a foreign land. The text today tells us about the flight of the holy family into Egypt. Jesus often leads us into unknown territory. We find ourselves in uncharted waters. But that’s what Christmas is about, letting Jesus take our hand and lead us along our journey.
We tend to start adulthood as exiles, living far from what God envisions as our homes, among strangers who don't love us as we need to be loved, in places that aren't yet worthy of the name "home." We need to be shown the highway and to have its rough places made plain. We need to be shown how to give. We need partners to walk alongside us. That’s what makes Christmas work.
We need to know, when the birth of Jesus comes around again, that each year finds us different, and that what we give isn't the routine of "doing Christmas" one more time. What we give is a glimpse of grace, a taste of that sweetness which it is God's good pleasure to give us. What we give is a memory of being loved. Some years are more light-hearted than others, some more burdened. Even when the same faces gather around the tree, it is always a fresh assembly. And Christmas works. In time, sons become fathers, daughters become mothers, siblings scatter and decorate trees in far-flung places, and all the while our children are preparing for their own scattering time. Most of us leave childhood and family and go forth on the highway.
The prophet Isaiah understood that exiles aren't always itching to go home. The Israelites had grown accustomed to Babylon, and if they thought of Zion at all, they saw it as impossibly distant, across a fearsome desert.
Our exiles can seem like that, too: comfortable in their own way, familiar at least, and preferable to the arduous journey onward. Isaiah didn't sing cute songs or promise easy happiness. He sang of a God who would not allow people to "go astray," a powerful and faithful lover who would lay a highway for the redeemed to walk home. This is what our families can be: not cute, not easy happiness, but a gift from God to make our journeys possible.
The point is that whenever and wherever we go, we are the hand of Jesus to others, and when that happens — Christmas works, all year long.
Christmas works…
LET’S PRAY: Precious Jesus, help us to receive the grace of God with open arms, allowing that grace to flow through our hearts and give us wings of wisdom and understanding. Amen.
Benediction
Go forth carrying Christmas in your hearts. Whatever you face this week, fun or stress, remember that Christ is with you; remember that God loves you; remember that the message of Christmas — the true meaning of Christmas — isn’t confined to a day, a week or a month. Carry God’s torch of love to quietly and kindly illuminate the paths of those living in darkness. You are the light of the world.
Sources:
Brain, Marshall. “How Christmas works.” Howstuffworks Web Site. People.howstufworks.com. Retrieved June 14, 2004.
—Tom Carpenter, “Is Jesus really the reason for the season?” Rockdale/Newton Citizen, December 22, 2001, Creationdefense.org.
