At Christmas, take seriously the lessons of Jesus, including love, compassion, humility
So, have you already taken down the Christmas decorations? Even if it’s only Dec. 26, the second day of Christmas? The 12 days of Christmas start on Christmas Day, ending on Jan. 5.
Not that I honestly blame anyone for taking down their decorations. Our stores put up decorations before Halloween. Christmas music starts to creep its way into our lives in early November. It’s been almost two months of Christmas feasts, Christmas indulgence, Christmas presents, Christmas joy.
We put such a premium on this experience of joy that by the time Christmas Day has finally arrived, we’re ready to be done with it. Our stomachs want nothing to do with eggnog, sugar cookies or anything peppermint flavored. We want lights and decorations to go away. We want something that isn’t a remix of “Jingle Bells.” We’ve had sleigh bells ringing in our ears for over a month.
But what would it be like to dig deeper into Christmas and not pack it away?
I was driving home after the Christmas Day service a decade ago, listening to the local Christmas music station. The clock hit noon, and suddenly the Christmas music stopped and switched to the station’s regular programming. Christmas Day was only half over, but clearly once the presents were opened, Christmas was over — they didn’t even wait for people to get done with Christmas dinner!
If our Christmas movies were to be believed, Christmas means so much more than the presents under the tree, but it seems that such a message is more of a decoration than a real belief.
Christmas, if we take it seriously, means a lot more. Not presents, even if it’s fun to give and receive them. Not food, even if it’s wonderful to have lots of treats. Not even family — if we’re honest, it’s much too big an expectation for Christmas to be about family. Families can be dysfunctional no matter how much we pretend that holiday magic heals all of it.
So what does it mean?
It means taking seriously not just the cute little baby Jesus in the manger, but making his teaching and life part of our everyday lives. Cute little baby Jesus may inspire us with feelings of peace, calm, joy and contentment, but he will grow up and have some serious expectations of us to extend mercy, to speak truth and to cherish justice.
It means taking seriously that to care for life is to care for all the living. We wrangle over definitions about life in legislating pregnancy and women’s choices, but what happens when a baby is born? To care for life means caring for the child’s health, well-being, education and development. Oh, and to care for the parents’ health, well-being, education and work.
Every single adult was, at one point, a little baby in need of love and human compassion. And all living things are part of this web of life, too – the donkeys, camels, cows in the Nativity scene represent all of God’s living creatures. Don’t they share in the blessings of Christmas?
It means taking humility seriously. Humility is not a bad thing. It’s not a weak thing. Only narcissists fear humility. It means acknowledging our limitations and our needs.
A Nativity scene shows the Messiah, Jesus, God made human, being born in the most humble conditions. His dignity did not depend upon absurd accumulations of wealth and prestige, of economic growth and upward mobility. His dignity didn’t depend upon getting investors to help him get to outer space. Humility is embracing one’s own dignity, one’s humanness, one’s belovedness — and everyone else’s dignity, humanness and belovedness.
Christmas could change our whole year, if we’d let it. Or are we ready to shove it into the attic for next year?