Another Side of Christmas

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I get into the sentimental side of Christmas; that snow covered, Hallmark Movie Channel, Rudolf, and wanting for Two Front Teeth; all of that goes on display in the world earlier and earlier each year. It's fun to put on those tacky sweaters and eat too much turkey. I get into that side of Christmas like most people (though I don't go shopping the day after Thanksgiving.)

There is another side to Christmas that is tangent to that worldly, fun, memory-lane sentimental side of Christmas, and it's the Jesus part. Sometimes you can find a little baby tucked away behind the big-ol-Santa statue, but even that little baby can get lost in the fluff of nostalgia. We hear very little of Jesus birth and childhood, and most of that is about what was happening around him--how the world responded to his Incarnation (when God put on flesh.) Jesus started causing trouble the moment he was born. The local authorities were out to get him because he threatened the order of things. There's a new king in town (so Herod heard) and he comes to shine a light in the dark places of the world.

Each little twinkling light (if the lights are twinkling) is an opportunity to remember that reality. Each time we are in a dark-enough place to notice the star, we have the chance to remember that how ever dark our darkness may be it is never void of God. God did not wait for the world be bright, shiny, and apparently perfect before Mary Birthed him into the world. God came to a world that was divided, broken, full of oppression, hunger, fear, and of political unrest. In Jesus, we meet a new way of understanding the world that doesn't ignore the challenges of our world, but moves right into them to make peace.

The peace of Christ isn't like a dirty street covered with snow, it is like a friend who will walk the dirty street with you. The peace of Christ doesn't remove our differences, it celebrates them, and teaches us to listen to one another. What is born in Christ is a light that will never go out, even when all seems to be dark and dangerous.

When Jesus was born, only the shepherds noticed (the way St. Luke tells it.) But those shepherds went running, and saw angels, and knew something great was happening. When Christ is born will we notice the change? Will be observe the new light that will not be extinguished? Pay attention--Christ comes as silent as light, out away from things, to bring a peace the world cannot give.


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