Christmas, especially an American Christmas, is “a many splendored thing.”
It engages the imagination and the heart. And while it is a Christian feast – celebrating the birth of Christ - unlike other Christian feasts, it is celebrated not just by Christians but by just about everyone. And in America we start celebrating it right after Halloween! We celebrate it with fanfare and great expectations. What is an “American Christmas?”
There is some myth: Santa Claus, reindeer and Christmas elves for starters. Santa Claus has his origins in a real person, St. Nicholas, the saintly Bishop of Myra (present day Turkey). He was actually present at the historical Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., , attended by Constantine the Great, that liberated Christianity from persecution. In recent centuries he somehow shed his bishop’s robes and became a roly-poly “Spirit of Christmas” who comes from the North Pole to bring gifts on Christmas. As a neutral, non-religious “chubby jolly old elf,” in America, he is cherished by Jew and Gentile, Buddhist and Moslem and Atheist – a true American.
Then there is folklore. Folklore is an extension of Christian mystery woven into the fabric of everyday life, much of it originating in Old World traditions. Folklore gave us the Christmas tree, the creche, the carols. Folklore made Christmas a family day, a day of feasting and convivium. It started the tradition of gift-giving, of concern for the poor, and turned Christmas into a day of genuine concern and active charity for others.
Finally, there is the mystery, the mind-boggling theological truth about Christmas: God’s divine humility and love for us The very fact that the Word, the Son, the Second Person in the Trinity, became fully Man, like us in everything but sin, is humanly incomprehensible.
We finite creatures are unable to comprehend the infinite. We perceive that it is Love that we are witnessing; we believe that it is real and that it fits our deepest longing. Beyond that, it takes faith to guide us into the glow of God’s love.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Concentrate on the word “gave.” God did not merely send his Son or loan him for awhile; he gave him to be our very own – and as an infant - one of us, bonded to the human race forever, a champion of our best interests; the price of our eternal survival.
Because of Christmas we know that we are not helpless. Since Love has become irrevocably a factor in human history, no powers of death, hatred, falsehood, selfishness and exploitation can ultimately prevail. May the mystery of Christmas touch you deeply, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” and that you may “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17; 19).
A blessed and truly joyous Christmas!
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