The meaning of Christmas?

The third week in November, the local Christian radio station ran an advertisement for a program that was about giving toys to disadvantaged children on December 25th. A nice man with a mellifluous voice came on the air and encouraged everyone to “spread holiday cheer, and show a needy child the true meaning of Christmas.” While I have nothing against giving presents to children, and in fact I hope lots of people do so this December, I cast a skeptical eye on assigning such a grand title to that activity. If we could try to capture the ‘true meaning’ of incarnation, I doubt seriously it would include wrapping paper and a bow.

To be honest, tinsel and elves and flying reindeer disturb me, just a little. Why? Because I’m afraid that the fairy-tale world we create for ourselves at Christmas blinds us to the awe and wonder of the Christmas narrative. The event we remember is fairly simple—a young Jewish girl gives birth to a baby. Was it an international event at the time? No. Was there something clearly miraculous about it? Maybe. Two of the four gospel stories in the Bible don’t even mention Jesus’ birth. But the other two gospels tell a story that a scientific age has problems with.

The miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth wasn’t the issue for early Christians. They didn’t follow him, gives their lives to him, lay down their lives for him, because of what they knew or didn’t know about his parentage. They weren’t convinced because they had heard stories that he didn’t have a human father, or because of stories of angels and mangers and stars and camels and shepherds when he was born. No, they followed because of what they saw in the man.

Jesus showed them a new kind of living. A new kind of being. A new and unexpected manifestation of God’s love, God’s power. They looked at him and saw something of the mystery and wonder of God. They saw in Jesus something so profound, something so deep at the bedrock of reality, that their very natures were transformed by his presence. And, at the limit of their ability to comprehend what was going on, they confessed: God was in Christ.

It would not have occurred to the Biblical writers to separate this story from the world of everyday occurrence. So, in the supernaturalistic world in which they lived, they told the story of his birth with poetry and song, with silver starlight and the roar of angel wings, to allow us, the readers of the story, a way of brushing against the significance of the man as we slide past. As the creation stories of Genesis tell not how the world was created, but why, so the birth narratives stretch past the mundane, past what happened? and on toward Why? Who was this man? and What can it mean?

But when we 21st-century folk read the stories of the virgin birth, we wonder how such a thing might really happen, and we find ourselves in danger of reading into the gospel account the conclusion that Jesus was special because he was fundamentally different, when instead the story is trying to tell us that he was human, the same as us, from birth to death.

Modern Christmas stories leave me quietly disturbed because when we tell each other stories of flying reindeer and magic elves, we know they’re not in any way real. Sure, they’re heartwarming, or inspiring, or funny. But maybe, when we tell those silly stories, we push the story of Jesus away from our reality at the same time.

If we allow Jesus to be a fairy-tale, then he’s something other than one of us—kinda like us, but not really one of us. And then the gospel melts away into dirty slush, right along with the January snow.