Sermon Illustrations on Christmas
Background
The American Origins of Santa Claus
While we may call Santa Claus “jolly Saint Nick,” he is a far cry from Nicholas of Myra (270-343), patron saint of sailors, merchants, brewers, and students (among many others). His reputation as a gift giver comes from the story in which he threw purses of money through the window of a man who, due to misfortune, could not afford dowries for his daughters. Due to this, many European countries have traditions of St. Nicholas travelling the country in episcopal attire on his saint’s day (Dec 6) and distributing gifts (and punishments).
But how did we get from a relatively austere Mediterraean bishop to a fat man towed about by reindeer on Christmas?
It starts in a relatively improbable place: the United States. It was improbable because Christmas was not that popular of a holiday in the United States during its early years. It was briefly illegal in 17th century New England and not even a federal holiday until 1870! Still, pockets of immigrants from continental Europe did maintain Christmas traditions, including Sinterklaas.
In the early United States, a swing of anti-British sentiment caused an increased interest in the Dutch heritage of New York (after all, it had been initially a Dutch settlement from 1613-1674). Santa Claus really hit the mainstream when Washington Irving (1783-1859) published his wildly popular satirical book A Knickerbocker’s History of New York. St. Nicholas features prominently in the work and is represented, not as the historical bishop, but as a short, fat, jolly figure smoking a pipe, riding over trees and rooftops to drop presents down chimneys. Two poems published in the 1820s (including the 1822 “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”) first painted the picture of Santa Claus as arriving on Christmas Eve (not Dec 6), pulled by reindeer, and descending the chimney to place gifts in stockings.
Even so, the image of the increasingly popular Santa Claus remained in flux until German immigrant Robert Nast, illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, began depicting him in the way now familiar to us all. In a rather bizarre twist, the first appearance of his Santa Claus was Jan 3, 1863, midway through the Civil War. Santa is dressed in the stars and stripes, holding a hanging effigy/puppet of Jefferson Davis. Seriously. His annual Christmas illustrations would show Santa as reviewing letters from children, living at the North Pole, and having elves building his toys. Advertisers did much of the rest of the work in popularizing the image of Santa Claus we know today (esp. Coca Cola).
Santa Claus, oddly enough for a figure based on Nicholas of Myra, turns out to be a remarkably American invention.
William Rowley
An Unlikely Adoption
Joseph exhibited the true spirit of adoption. It is a vivid picture both of God’s adoption of us as His children in Christ, but also the call every believer has in welcoming into our homes and communities the world’s most vulnerable and forgotten. It was Jesus’ brother James who would later write that true religion is defined by care for orphans and widows (James 1:27). With Russell Moore we can speculate that perhaps James first learned this by watching Joseph. “Did the image of Joseph linger in James’s mind as he inscribed the words of an orphan-protecting, living faith?”
Ultimately, we don’t know really what happens to Joseph after he is mentioned in that visit by Jesus to the temple at the age of twelve. He doesn’t show up again in the Scriptures, and there is reason to believe that perhaps he met an untimely death. In every other passage of Scripture where the family is featured, it’s only Mary and Jesus’ siblings who are mentioned. Given that he was likely older than Mary and life expectancy for a first-century peasant Jew was not great, it could be that losing His father was Jesus’ first instance of human suffering.
The (Christian?) War on Christmas
From 1659-1681, if you were caught celebrating Christmas in Boston, you could be fined 5 shillings. That is because it was illegal. This original “War on Christmas” was waged by Christians in the Massachusetts Bay Colony!
Here is the order:
For preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others, it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such accounts as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offense five shillings, as a fine to the country.
(qtd in Ellis, The Puritan Age [1888])
There were three main reasons for this. The first was the association of Christmas (that is “Christ-mass”) with Catholicism and paganism. The second was that Christmas (as a celebration) is never mentioned in Scripture—and for their particular strain of Protestantism, that was a reason not to celebrate it.
The third big reason was that Christmas was associated with disorderly conduct. Medieval English traditions surrounding Christmas were… rowdy. There was a lot of drinking (and drunkenness). Wassailing, for example, wasn’t just going about singing happy songs from house to house. It involved demanding gifts (food and drink, especially) of the wealthy and not-so-veiled threats of property damage or violence if refused. Even without the rowdiness, Puritans objected to the indolence of the holiday from work.
Christmas was legalized again with a British takeover of the colony from the Puritan authorities. But it didn’t really take off in the region again until the 19th century!
William Rowley (source)
Christmas Ghost Stories
Our secular, commercialized, Christmas elevates good feelings such as hope, joy, and happiness during the holiday season above all else. So, it might seem incongruous to hear that there is a very old Christmas tradition that is much darker—the telling of ghost stories. In fact—you participate in this tradition when you read or watch Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
This holiday mainstay is not a strange aberration by incorporating ghosts into Christmas. It is an entry in a long tradition of telling ghost stories during the Christmas season. They even are mentioned in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. Perhaps it is, as historian and folklorist Francis Young suggests, a response to the depth of dark and cold of winter in Britain, where the unseen lurks in the dark, hostile world beyond barely kept at bay by flimsy walls and the flickering fire—perhaps even hiding in the deep indoor shadows that the hearth’s weak light only deepens.
Sometimes even Christians forget the truth: there is a darkness in Christmas. As Young writes:
Beyond the light and wonder of the stable lies the bloodlust of Herod, thwarted by the dream of the Magi, yet still deadly. And behind the wrath of Herod lies a foe darker still, whom the child in the stable will one day confront and overthrow. To tell dark stories at Christmas is to acknowledge the reality of the encompassing darkness into which the light of Christ is born. To forget the dark is, perhaps, to risk forgetting the true nature of the Light. (“The History of Christmas Ghost Stories,” First Things (2021))
William Rowley
Christmas: A Tradition of Gift-Giving
While Christmas traditions vary the world over, gift-giving is a central practice just about anywhere Christ’s birth is celebrated. Sometimes gifts are exchanged on December 6, the feast day of Saint Nicholas, and sometimes on Twelfth Night, the last day of Christmas, but most commonly on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, the official liturgical start of the season. Many people look to the gifts of the Magi as the original inspiration for Christmas gift-giving. But how the Magi’s gifts of gold frankincense, and myrrh for the Christ child transformed into the gift-giving extravaganza Christmas has become is a long and complicated story. A few high points are worth noting.
Before the birth of Christ, gift-giving was common in the Roman Empire to mark the start of the New Year. When the date of the Christmas feast was set on December 25, it was situated closely to an established gift-giving occasion in the surrounding culture. It makes some sense, then, for the gift-giving practice to migrate to Christmas once the date was recognized.
Then, in the fourth century, Nicholas the bishop of Myra in Asia Minor became renowned for his sanctity and generosity, especially his gifts to poor families and children.
One story has him dropping gold coins in a poor family’s stockings while they dried by the hearth. Tradition says the reason for the gift was the provision of suitable dowries so the family’s three daughters could marry. Due to his beloved memory, the day of Nicholas’s death, December 6, became a traditional date of giving gifts to children in his honor. Many families leave out their shoes the night of December 5 so Saint Nicholas can fill them with sweets and small gifts overnight. Saint Nicholas is, of course, the historical basis for the myth of Santa Claus, popularized by Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas / Tie Night Before Christmas” (1822) and clever retail advertising campaigns.
Taken from Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin Copyright (c) 2023, by Emily Hunter McGowin. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Christmas Carols
Christmas carols always seem to bring out the best in people. It’s as if we can travel back in time to a place where life was less complicated and Christmas was full of joy and magic. The churches fill with people and in our villages, towns and cities people meet to stand together in the cold to sing songs.
The Dicey Side of Christmas
Christmas (a shortened form of “Christ’s mass”) has been an embattled holiday for much of its history— and not just because talking heads on TV like to argue about the “war on Christmas” every year. The truth is, long before Black Friday sales and seasonal Starbucks cups, many Christians (yes, Christians) viewed Christmas as a thoroughly debauched and godless season. With all the raucous drinking, public carousing, and even violence, many reasoned that genuine Christians would never join in such immoral and irresponsible revelry.
In addition, some of the symbols and rituals of Christmas seem disconnected from the true ‘reason for the season”; many are thought to be thoroughly pagan in origin.
… As Christianity spread out from the Middle East, becoming the established religion of Europe, the observance of Christmastide slowly evolved into a twelve-day spree of merriment and mischief-making. How these celebrations developed through the ages is a long and fascinating tale. For our purposes, it helps to know that most of the population lived by agricultural rhythms. Since planting and harvesting were completed in spring, summer, and fall, wintertime coincided with the cessation of labor (including laying off seasonal workers) and slaughtering of livestock. Thus, winter was a natural time for relaxing, feasting, and, in the midst of widespread idleness, troublemaking. And it just happens that all of this was taking place during Christmastide.
In the medieval period, especially, Christmas developed into a carnivalesque time for turning hierarchies and social conventions on their heads. Peasants went about demanding gifts from lords, threatening violence and looting if they weren’t satisfied. (Remnants of this practice can still be heard in the lyrics to “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”: “O, bring us some figgy pudding, And bring it right here! I We won’t go until we get some, So bring it right here!”)
Servants dressed up as their masters and lampooned them publicly while men disguised themselves as women, parading through the streets drinking and caroling.
Taken from Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin Copyright (c) 2023, by Emily Hunter McGowin. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Embracing the Call
So what did it mean for Joseph and Mary to accept the Word of the Lord, to say, “We embrace the call to receive this child. We will accept whatever comes with it”? What did it take for them to literally have “God with us” in their midst (Matthew 1:23)? What does it take to be with him? This text’s answer is courage. And a willingness to do his will, no matter what.
When the angel said to Joseph, “Marry her,” he was saying, “If Jesus comes into your life, you are going to be rejected. You will have to kiss your stellar reputation good-bye.” And he married her. Surely some of Joseph’s friends said, “Why in the world did you marry her? Either you did that or she was unfaithful to you.” Can you imagine Joseph trying to tell them the truth? “Oh, I can explain. She is pregnant through the Holy Spirit. We learned all about it from the angels.” The truth wasn’t something his friends would understand, and therefore he knew they would always think ill of him.
A Force of Love and Logic
The idea that there’s a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with, if you believe it. Actually, maybe even far-fetched to start with, but the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby born in straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally. To me, as a poet, I am just in awe of that. It makes some sort of poetic sense. It’s the thing that makes me a believer, though it didn’t dawn on me for many years.
Bono
The Humanity of Jesus’ Birth
By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.
Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.
The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”
The Humanity of Jesus’ Birth
By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.
Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.
The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”
Krampus, the Christmas Demon?
For much of the world, Santa Claus is said to travel about, distributing presents to the good little boys and girls. To the naughty, it is said that he leaves a lump of coal. Other parts of the world give the punitive part of Santa’s mission a pretty dark twist.
In much of Europe, St. Nicholas actually is supposed to visit children bringing gifts or sweets on December 5 (St. Nicholas’ Day). Traditionally, he often has a companion who does the dirty work of punishing the naughty children. Who this is varies by country: Knecht Ruprecht (Germany), Schmutzli (Switzerland), Zwarte Piet (Netherlands), and Pére Fouettard (France), just to name a few. They generally are a bit intimidating, often older men or elves clad in brown, who often are said to beat bad children with sticks (rather than just giving them coal). Quite a bit more intimidating than the modern “Elf on the Shelf.”
One companion stands out: Krampus. Folk traditions of mountainous regions like Austria, Bavaria, the Balkans, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and northern Italy pair St. Nicholas with a creepy, hairy, clawed, half-goat demon monster. If you’re good, then St. Nicholas might give you some nice treats. If you’re bad, then, depending on the legend, Krampus gets to beat you with sticks or stuff you in his sack to snack on you later!
Krampus likely stems from some pre-Christian pagan tradition which was grafted onto Christian festivals—and churches haven’t been fond of his obvious resemblance to some sort of demon (the Catholic church tried to ban him in the 12th century). These days, Krampus’ popularity has only increased in post-Christian Europe as religious motivations for celebrating Christmas have waned. Krampuslauf parades, once a superstitious attempt to scare away evil spirits with frightening costumes and noise, have become an excuse for a scare. The tradition has even made its way to America, with a Krampus festival held in Orlado, Florida, annually.
William Rowley (source “The Origin of Krampus, Europe’s Evil Twist on Santa”)
Mary & Eve
I first encountered Mary and Eve by Sister Grace Remington at my friend’s house in Atlanta. It was hanging as a decoration in their bathroom, and I was stunned by its message. My friends may have been worried by how long I was in there, but I eventually emerged inquiring, “What is this painting, and who made it?”
It’s like they’re at a cosmic party where they don’t know each other at first, but when they get introduced, they find out they are deeply connected on so many levels. They also notice they have a billion mutual friends on Facebook.
In this incredible image, Eve is experiencing hope and grace from a brokenness she never thought she’d see an end to. Yet her face could also be that of a knowing mom bestowing wisdom and compassion on a new mom, as if to say, “Parenting is one of the greatest and hardest adventures of a lifetime. You’ll love your children and want to have them forever, but you may see one of them die before their time, and it’s the absolute worst.”
Mary & Joseph were Poor
They were poor. We know this because the two young turtledoves Joseph and Mary brought was the smallest offering they were allowed as devout Jews and yet the largest they likely could afford.
With two birds, they presented the Incarnate Word on the steps of the temple in Jerusalem. Poor and yet the richest people on the planet. Paradox upon paradox in the person of Jesus: God and man, divine and human, gentle and demanding, servant and king conquering death through death.
Taken from A Spacious Life: Trading Hustle and Hurry for the Goodness of Limits by Ashley Hales Copyright (c) 2021 by Ashley Hales. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
The Master of the Universe Born a Baby
The promised Messiah, whose voice sounds like rushing waters, who holds the key to death and Hades, also grew in secret in Mary’s womb. He kicked and elbowed as all babies do, and came at the appointed time, though I’m sure it didn’t seem right to Mary and Joseph. Jesus welcomed small—he welcomed limits—as the pathway to love. I imagine Mary breathed through the contractions, giving herself to the process of her own opening body, with the same acceptance that she had told the angel: “May it be to me as you say.”
May it be as you say. These are not the words of inaction or self-obliteration; they are words of acceptance; they are vows. They are words that create a place. So, Mary bore down, grabbing on to Joseph, wondering, even as she submitted herself to wave after wave of contraction: Is this how the Son of God comes? Here, now, like this?
The master of the universe submitted to become multiplying cells, submitted to the slow process of growth in a human womb. Before that, he orchestrated and waited, through generation upon generation of prophecy, babies born, and his people falling away. Finally he was born in the city of King David; he had the vernix scrubbed off him and his umbilical cord cut, and the air of the earth filled his lungs. All this shows us how Love flourishes by limits. He cried a cry to let everyone know he had arrived: I’m here. Finally. The rescue all humanity has been waiting for.
Taken from A Spacious Life: Trading Hustle and Hurry for the Goodness of Limits by Ashley Hales Copyright (c) 2021 by Ashley Hales. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
The Origin of the “J Shaped” Candy Cane
Legend has it that the choirmaster of Cologne Cathedral was the one who first bent straight white candy canes into their familiar inverted “J” shape. It wasn’t to represent the name Jesus, as is often thought, but to represent the crooks of the shepherds to whom the angel announced the first Nativity. August Imgard, a German immigrant, brought the tradition to Ohio. He is generally credited with being the first person in America to decorate a Christmas tree with candy canes.
The Origin of Santa Claus and Stockings
The man behind the unlikely tradition of Christmas stockings is usually thought to have been Nikolaos of Myra. He was a Greek Christian who became bishop of Myra, a city of Asia Minor. Nikolaos, or Saint Nicholas as he became known, was a kind man, and his faith was such that he became known as Nicholas the Wonderworker for the miracles he performed. The title “Saint Nicholas” was expressed in Dutch as Sinterklass, and this came into American English as “Santa Claus.” Nicholas’s personality and piousness was such that he is revered by both Catholic and Protestant churches…
Bishop Nicholas…was wandering through town one evening, according to legend, when he overheard a father’s lament. His three daughters all had men they wanted to marry, but he couldn’t provide them with dowries, so the weddings couldn’t go ahead. Nicholas waited until the middle of the night then slipped into the man’s house. He carried with him three bags of gold, one for each daughter. Looking around for a place to put them, he spotted the daughters’ stockings hanging over the fire to dry. He left the bags of gold in the stockings—and a Christmas tradition was born!
Pagan Origins for Christmas Day?
It is a commonplace “fact” that Christmas is celebrated among western Christians on December 25 as a way of taking over and “baptizing” the pagan holiday of Saturnalia. It has even been used as an argument for not celebrating Christmas.
There are similarities. Saturnalia lasted from Dec 17-24 and Dec 25 was “the birthday of the unconquered sun,” celebrating the end of the darkest time of the year. The New Year’s celebration featured decorations and gifts. Further, some of the unruly traditions of the middle ages do bear strong similarities to rowdy Saturnalia.
It is now the “received wisdom” that Saturnalia and pagan festivals are the reason Christians placed Christmas on December 25. However, Andrew McGowan of Yale Divinity School has argued that December 25 became Christmas (in the west—eastern Christians celebrate it on January 6) independently of Saturnalia or any other pagan festival.
The Bible, of course, doesn’t give any sort of date for Jesus’ birth. It is only around AD 200 that we have any writings speculating on the date of Jesus’ birth or records of celebrations of it. December 25 doesn’t come onto the scene until the fourth century, though it appears that at that time December 25 was already considered a “traditional” date, suggesting that it predated the conversion of Constantine (AD 312)—a time when distinguishing Christianity from paganism, not accomodating it, was foremost on the Church’s agenda.
A more likely way (and one increasingly favored by scholars, says McGowan) of calculating Jesus’ birth has to do with the date of his death. Early Christians (by the 4th century) thought that Jesus was conceived on the date he died. Even Augustine writes about it. The idea was that it was natural for important events like these to occur at the same time in the calendar—indeed, there was even a Talmudic tradition that the month of Nisan (the month of the Passover and Passion) was linked with the most important cosmic events in salvation history: creation, the births of the Patriarchs, and the salvation of Israel.
The thing is: nine months after March 25, the date generally accepted for the crucifixion… is December 25. And the discrepancy between eastern and western calculations of the crucifixion result in their celebration on January 6.
So, while McGowan notes that we cannot be certain, this early belief about the cycles of history may be the real explanation for why we celebrate Jesus’ birth in December, with later accomodations of pagan customs coming later.
William Rowley, source Mark McGowan, “How December 25 Became Christmas” in Bible History Daily (2012)
Poinsettias: The Christmas Flowers
Clusters of bright red flowers set against dark green leaves are a common sight in churches across America (and elsewhere) during the Christmas season. But how did festive tropical flowers end up as a mainstay of churches and homes in regions where Christmas falls in the bleak midwinter? (Interestingly, the flowers of a poinsettia aren’t proper flowers. They are a kind of leaf called a “bract.”)
Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) originate in Mexico and Central America and were long prized by indigenous peoples for their beauty and usefulness. Called cuetlaxochitl by the Aztecs and k’alul wits by the Mayans, they were used as medicine and as a source of reddish-purple dye. (source)
The flowers first became associated with Christmas in the 17th century in Mexico. According to legend, a young girl named Pepita (or María) was walking to a Christmas Eve service and, having no gift to present to the baby Jesus, she gathered a bouquet of weeds (sometimes she is advised to do this by an angel). When she presented her gift in the church, the weeds were transformed into bright poinsettias, earning them the name “Flores de Noche Buena” (Flowers of the Holy Night). (source)
It was only in the 19th century that poinsettias moved north, due to the botanical curiosity of an American diplomat. Joel Poinsett was sent to Mexico by John Quincy Adams in 1825. American meddling in Mexican affairs made him very unpopular and he was sent back to America in 1830. However, during his time in Mexico, he sent home a variety of flowers which he successfully propagated and popularized, including poinsettias, to which he gave his name. (source)
Today, millions of poinsettias are sold across the United States during the Christmas season and are often displayed in churches. The star-shaped flowers (well, leaves) represent the star of Bethlehem, while red poinsettias are said to represent the blood of Christ and white poinsettias to represent his purity. (source)
William Rowley
Seek not Courts
Seek not in courts, nor palaces,
Nor royal curtains draw;
But search the stable,
see your God, Extended on the straw.
William Billings, “Methinks I See a Heav’nly Host,” in The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778). The full text available here.
The Twelfth Day of Christmas
In many Christian lands Epiphany is the most important feast of Christmas. Especially in Latin countries the arrival of the Wise Men, the Three Kings, looms large in the imagination. My native city, New Orleans, is heir to a European, especially French and Spanish, heritage. Twelfth Night not only concludes the Christmas season, but also inaugurates the festive days of Carnival, leading up to Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras.
…In Latin countries, Epiphany is the biggest day of the whole Christmas season, when gifts are exchanged to recall the gifts of the Magi….The twelfth day of Christmas—the Epiphany—is about God making this sovereignty known not just to Israel but also to all the peoples of the world. To understand this story, we need imagination: the eyes not of rationalism but of revelation.
The Christmas season begins with incarnation and ends with manifestation. The star that guided the Magi was governed, not by gases and gravity, but by God’s desire to convey a message to his people. It is a majestic story meant to be embroidered in tapestries shot through with gold.
Was Jupiter the Star of Bethlehem?
What was the star of Bethlehem? Maybe it was Jupiter.
Celestial conjunctions were very important to ancient astrologers. Three significant conjunctions occurred around the time Christ was born: two in 6 BC and one in 2 BC. The most interesting is one that occurred on April 17 in 6 BC. Astronomer Michael Molnar points out that on that date, Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, and the sun aligned in the constellation Aries. The language of the gospel fits well with the way that ancient astrologers would have described this event, with Jupiter “rising in the east” by appearing as a bright star right before the sun rose. The event continued from April, with Jupiter continuing to “move” west (the direction the wise men went), until December 19, when Jupiter “came to rest” (in ancient astrological terms and those of the gospel) by appearing to stop in the sky before beginning to move east (called “retrograde motion”). While it might seem a little odd that the “star of Bethlehem” was a planet, recall that the ancient conception of planets was as special “wandering stars” (because they did not appear fixed in the background of the sky), so it would not have been out of place for Matthew to refer to a planet as a “star.”
So, while we cannot be sure what the star was, there is a pretty good candidate: Jupiter. (For a deep dive assessing Molnar’s thesis, see this article by Bradley E. Schaefer (2015).)
William Rowley (primarily drawing from Weintraub, 2014 and O’Callaghan, 2022).
Was the Star of Bethlehem a Comet?
As early as AD 248, Origen suggested that the star of Bethlehem was a comet—and there continue to be astronomers who think that he was right. Comets are icy objects that orbit the sun. When seen from earth they appear as a star in the sky that moves over the course of several nights against the background “fixed” stars. Their characteristic “tail” is a cloud of gas and dust blown away by radiation and solar wind.
Ancient astronomers (astrologers, really) thought they were very significant and often recorded their appearance. The fact that they would appear to rise in the east every night, move across the background of the sky over a series of nights, and then fade away might fit the star of Bethlehem. Further, some of the ancient language used for the behavior of comets fits Matthew’s description (such as “resting above” a location). So, if a comet appeared in the sky in the last few years of the first century BC, that comet might be what the gospel records.
However, no Roman or near-eastern records exist of such a comet. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t see one, or even record it, only that none have come down to us. But Chinese astronomers might have seen one. Chinese astronomers recorded two “guest stars” during this period, which tend to be interpreted as comets (in 4 and 5 BC). In 1991, Colin J. Humphreys argued that the 5 BC observation was the star of Bethlehem in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, basing it on historical and biblical data on the date of Jesus’ birth. It appeared in March/April of 5 BC, would have been visible in the morning sky, and was visible for 70 days. The fact that it followed a 7 BC conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and another 6 BC conjunction may have intensified the importance to ancient astrologers. Humphreys, drawing on a variety of ancient sources, writes:
in Magian astrology the planet Saturn represented the divine Father and Jupiter was his son. The constellation Pisces was astrologically associated with Israel. Thus it is suggested that the astrological message of the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces in 7 BC was this: a Messiah-king will be born in Israel. (398)
These planets massed again the next year (6 BC), joined by Mars. Humphreys argues that the 5 BC appearance of the comet would have been, to the Magi, a third great sign that a king was being born, causing them to set out for Jerusalem, a trip which he calculates to be possible during the time of the appearance of the comet.
So, was the star of Bethlehem a comet? While we cannot be sure, Humphreys makes an interesting case (contrast with Weintraub, who thinks Jupiter is the real star).
(For a deep dive, check out The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi—at a library, it’s very expensive).
William Rowley (primary source: C. J. Humphreys, “The Star of Bethlehem,” Journal of the Royal Society of Astronomy 32 (1991): 389-407)
When Christmas was Illegal
Puritans in England and America were not fond of Christmas.
When Puritans controlled the British Parliament in 1647, celebrating Christmas was outlawed. A little over a decade later, in 1659, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony followed.
Why would Christians ban celebrating Christmas? There were a few reasons: it was viewed as a vestige of “popery” (“Christ-mass”), unbilical (celebrating it isn’t mentioned in Scripture), it was occasion for revelry, drunkenness, subverting hierarchies, and (in their view) laziness.
The Restoration of the monarchy brought an end to the anti-Christmas laws in England, though they would continue in America until the crown (temporaily) put an end to Puritan rule in Massachusetts in 1681 by the (much hated) governor Edmund Andros (though Christmas wasn’t prominently celebrated until the 19th century in New England).
William Rowley
When You Encounter a Snake…
When you encounter a snake… catch your breath, calm your heart, and watch it for a few seconds before it glides out of sight. If you do, you’ll see one of the most unexpected, and unnerving, spectacles in the animal kingdom. Limbless, a snake propels itself in waves, writhing and slithering along the ground. To climb, it will coil around a tree or pole, scrunching and creeping upward. To burrow, it relies on “rectilinear locomotion,” a unique coordination of scale and muscle movements that allow it to push its body forward in a straight line. Surprisingly, this uncanny way of getting around is the first specific animal phenomenon recorded in Scripture. And perhaps even more surprisingly, the snake is the first to receive the promise of Christmas.
Hannah Anderson and Nathan Anderson, Heaven and Nature Sing: 25 Advent Reflections to Bring Joy to the World (B&H Books, 2022).
Stories
Bigger and Bigger Christmas
Kristen Welch, in her book Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World, described the growing discontent their family experienced after pursuing more and more stuff. She describes it this way with respect to Christmas:
We scraped our money together, packed up our rented 1,000-square-foot townhome, and couldn’t believe the sellers had accepted our bottom-dollar offer on our dream house. We moved in mid-December and scrambled to put up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, mostly for our two kids, who were two and four years old at the time. There were a few gifts scattered underneath the tree, but we all knew we’d really gotten a house for Christmas…
Every year Christmas got bigger and bigger in that house. We put up the biggest tree we could find in the front bay window and the thousand white lights that adorned it could be seen from the street. I spent a lot of time and money decorating nearly every room. I’ll never forget the Christmas morning when my kids were six and four years old and there were piles of presents under the tree, dozens for each of them. I didn’t feel it was excessive because I was an organized deal shopper and had gotten most of the toys on sale months before. I was as excited as my kids, and I couldn’t wait to see their faces as they opened each gift in delight. What had once been more than enough eventually became not enough.
But it didn’t really happen that way. It was a blur of grabbing and tearing into gifts, and within minutes the room looked like a tornado had ripped through it. I watched my kids go from one gift to another, hardly taking the time to even remove all the paper. With piles of opened gifts and still more to go, they actually seemed tired from the exertion of opening so many. We took a break and cleaned up for a bit before we started round two. There were some gasps of delight here and there, but with a room full of stuff, I don’t think I’ve ever felt emptier.
Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree
God’s love for the vulnerable is illustrated well in the beloved animated film Charlie Brown’s Christmas. Who can forget the climactic moment when Linus with his stocking cap and blanket walks to the spotlight and recites a portion of Luke’s Gospel to explain the meaning of Christmas? But it’s the arc of the entire story that demonstrates God’s love so beautifully. Charlie Brown chooses the ugliest, most bedraggled tree for the Christmas play, to the chagrin of his peers. We might say Charlie Brown leaves the ninety-nine beautiful trees for the one lost and downtrodden tree.
But as the story progresses, Chuck’s instincts are proved correct. The ugly tree is made lovely by being beloved; the lowliest tree is made glorious by being chosen and set apart. I’ll admit I didn’t understand the point of this story as a child. I found the whole thing rather baffling, to be honest. But now I see the deep Christian wisdom in the cartoon. In Charlie Brown’s insistence on choosing the detestable tree to adopt and adorn, we get a small but vivid glimpse of God’s compassion for the overlooked and forgotten.
Luke’s version of the nativity, which Linus quotes so movingly, further elaborates on this theme. In Luke 2, Joseph and Mary are forced to leave their hometown due to the emperor’s desire for a census of the empire. “So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child” (Luke 2:4-5).
Taken from Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin Copyright (c) 2023, by Emily Hunter McGowin. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
The Christmas Gift
A preaching professor at Harvard University tells the story of the year his 5-year-old son was working on an art project in his kindergarten class. It was made of plaster, resembled nothing in particular, but with some paint, sparkle and time in a kiln, it was ready to be wrapped as a gift. He wrapped it himself, and was beside himself with excitement. It would be a gift for his father, one three months in the making.
Early in December, when the child could hardly contain the secret, the last day of school finally came. All the parents arrived for the big Christmas play, and when the students left for home, they were finally allowed to take their ceramic presents home. The professor’s son secured his gift, ran toward his parents, tripped, and fell to the floor. The gift went airborne, and when it landed on the cafeteria floor, the shattering sound stopped all conversations. It was perfectly quiet for a moment, as all involved considered the magnitude of the loss. For a 5-year-old, there had never been a more expensive gift. He crumpled down on the floor next to his broken gift and just started crying.
Both parents rushed to their son, but the father was uncomfortable with the moment. People were watching. His son was crying. He patted the boy on the head and said, “Son, it’s OK – it doesn’t matter.” His wife glared at the great professor. “Oh yes, it matters,” she said to both of her men, “Oh yes, it does matter.” She cradled her son in her arms, rocked him back and forth, and cried with him.
In a few minutes, the crying ceased. “Now,” said the mother, “let’s go home and see what can be made with what’s left.” And so with mother’s magic and a glue gun, they put together from the broken pieces a multi-colored butterfly. Amazingly, the artwork after the tragedy was actually much more beautiful than what it had been in a pre-broken state.
At Christmas, the gift was finally given, and as long as he taught at Harvard, the professor kept the butterfly on his desk. It was a constant reminder that grief is real, and that loss hurts. It was also a reminder that from great loss, great beauty can eventually emerge.
Christmas in Mosul
Living rooms and shop windows aren’t the only places where decorations are meaningful features of Christmas. When Iraqi forces expelled the Islamic State from the predominantly Christian city of Mosul in 2017, the reinstitution of Christmas celebrations was a major symbol of victory. Worship was held at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the only functioning church in Mosul, for the first time in years. But the Christmas Eve gathering was bittersweet.
The Islamic State had done extensive damage to Mosul and other Christian communities during their occupation. They looted, demolished, and burned both homes and churches, stealing anything of value and smashing Christian relics. The physical destruction, though, was surpassed by the destruction of the community. Faced with the order to convert to Islam, pay heavy taxes, or die, tens of thousands of Christians fled, leaving behind an even smaller minority community than was present before.
But in 2017, Mosul’s Christians celebrated Christmas Eve Mass once again. And decor played a major part. Outside the building, a portrait of a Christian executed by the Islamic State was displayed in defiant honor. White- and gold-robed clergy and well-dressed worshipers chanted and prayed surrounded by white sheets covering bombed-out windows and vandalized walls. Candles, wreaths, and Christmas trees adorned the battered sanctuary, and a simple stone cross hung above the altar. Beyond the church walls, Christians had erected Christmas trees and nativity scenes amid the surrounding rubble. Given all they had faced (and continue to face), these hopeful decorations testified to the courageous and enduring faith of Christians in Mosul.
Taken from Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin Copyright (c) 2023, by Emily Hunter McGowin. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
The Christmas Truce
Many expected at the outbreak of World War I that they would be home by Christmas. Instead, the Christmas of 1914 found the troops of the Western Front cold, miserable, and locked in brutal trench warfare, separated by only a few yards of “No Man’s Land.” A light dusting of snow began to replace the frigid, soaking rain which had turned the front into a mass of heavy mud.
On Dec 23, German soldiers began putting up trees outside their trenches and singing Christmas carols. The British soldiers replied with carols of their own. Without permission from the upper ranks, some junior officers began to order their men to “live and let live,” not to fire at the enemy unless fired upon, an uneasy, unofficial truce silenced the guns.
On Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged, unarmed, from their trenches. Some waved at the British, showing they had no hostile intent. Before long, British soldiers ventured into No Man’s Land, where they showed remarkable friendliness to each other. Many German soldiers had spent time in England before the war and could speak English. Both sides socialized, exchanged gifts, ate and drank together, and even played soccer. The dead were recovered and buried. For a day (in some cases, a little longer), the war was suspended and peace reigned.
The truce was not universal, however. It was limited to the Western Front (the Russians celebrate Christmas on Jan 6) and mostly to areas under British control. In some places, those who tried to initiate the truce were shot by the opposing side. And not all agreed with the truce (a young Adolf Hitler is said to have criticized his fellow soldiers for participating) . But it is estimated that about 2/3 of the British line participated.
Though no one was punished for participating in the truce, military leadership was not pleased with the truce and ensured it did not recur in 1915. The event is the subject of the 2005 film, Joyeux Noël.
William Rowley (main source is Michael Ray, “Christmas Truce,” Brittanica.)
A Christmas Surprise
There was a woman who was baking her Christmas cookies and she heard a knock at the door. She opened the door to find a man who was dressed in pretty tattered clothes, and he was obviously poor. And he wondered if the woman had any work for him to do. She asked him, “Well, can you paint?” He said, “I can paint. I’m a pretty good painter.”
She said, “Okay, well, here’s a couple of gallons of green paint, here’s a paint brush, and there’s a porch out back that needs to be painted.” And she said, “If you do a good job, I’ll pay you what your worth.” He said, “Deal! I Love it.”
So he took the paint brush and went out back. She forgot about it until sometime later when there was another knock at the door. It was him. He obviously had been painting because there was paint splattered all over his clothes. He said, “I’m finished.” She said, “Did you do a good job?” “Yes, ma’am. I did a good job, but I need to point something out to you, ma’am. That’s not a Porsche out back, that’s a Mercedes.” That’s what you might call a “Christmas Surprise.”
Original Source Unknown
Gosh, Some Angels
My ten-year-old son Jim had to write a play for Christmas for his Sunday School class. He made it a dialogue between two animals at Bethlehem. It goes like this:
Donkey: It sure is cold, is it not?
Lamb: It sure is.
Donkey: Do you know what year it is?
Lamb: I think it is the year 1.
Donkey: Did you hear that Caesar Augustus sent out an order that everyone in the country should be taxed?
Lamb: That means that the people will be coming back, does it not?
Donkey: Right
Lamb: Here comes somebody now.
Donkey: Hey, there’s something in the sky.
Lamb: Is that not a star?
Donkey: Yes, there is something right by it. There are two of them.
Lamb: Who is that over the hills?
Donkey: It looks like some people coming to get their taxes in the books.
Lamb: But the inns are all full. Maybe they will come here, huh?
Donkey: Here they come.
Lamb: Be nice to them, huh?
Donkey: She looks like she is going to have a baby!
Lamb: Hey, look over the hills. It looks like some kings.
Donkey: She’s having a baby–look, some angels.
Lamb: Gosh, some angels.
Donkey: The shepherds see the angels.
He goes on…I don’t know how you say in Aramaic, “Gosh, some angels,” but I assume that the first shepherds said at least that.
Walter Breuggemann, The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
“I’m in the Secret Service”
Jim was leaving church after Christmas services when the pastor greeted him and said, “Jim, it’s time you joined the Army of the Lord. We need to see you every Sunday.”
“I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor,” Jim replied.
“Then why do we only see you on Christmas and Easter?”
Jim looked to the right and to the left, and then leaned over to whisper, “I’m in the Secret Service.”
Source Unknown
Noticing Where You Find Yourself
One Christmas Eve in Vermont when my children were small, we did the things you do when your children are small on Christmas Eve. We stuffed and hung their stockings. We put out a draught of cider and a cookie on the mantelpiece for Santa Claus—who would be tired by the time he got there through all that snow—and we put them to bed and then went upstairs and got the presents out of the closet off the guest room, and we dragged them down and put them under the Christmas tree.
…we were just about to tumble exhausted into bed when I remembered that our neighbor just a short distance down the hill had gone off to Florida, I think, for a couple of weeks and had asked me if I would feed his sheep while he was gone. Late as it was, I knew I had to do it.
So my brother and I put on our boots and our coats, and we trudged down the hill through a lot of snow to the barn where we each picked up a couple of bales of hay and carried them out to the sheep shed in the back and pulled the string on the 40-watt bulb, and the sheep came bumbling around the way sheep do, and we split the strings of the bales and shook the dust out and put them in the rack.
And there was the smell of the hay and the bumbling of the sheep and the dim light and the snow falling outside and it was Christmas Eve, and only then did I realize where I was. Being a minister trained me to notice things, but it was only then that I noticed the manger, though I might have not noticed it at all. And it seems to me the world is a manger, the whole bloody mess of it, where God is being born again and again and again and again and again and again. You’ve got your mind on so many other things. You are so busy with this and that, you don’t see it. You don’t notice it.
Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life, Zondervan, 2017.
The Origin of the “J Shaped” Candy Cane
Legend has it that the choirmaster of Cologne Cathedral was the one who first bent straight white candy canes into their familiar inverted “J” shape. It wasn’t to represent the name Jesus, as is often thought, but to represent the crooks of the shepherds to whom the angel announced the first Nativity. August Imgard, a German immigrant, brought the tradition to Ohio. He is generally credited with being the first person in America to decorate a Christmas tree with candy canes.
The Origin of Santa Claus and Stockings
The man behind the unlikely tradition of Christmas stockings is usually thought to have been Nikolaos of Myra. He was a Greek Christian who became bishop of Myra, a city of Asia Minor. Nikolaos, or Saint Nicholas as he became known, was a kind man, and his faith was such that he became known as Nicholas the Wonderworker for the miracles he performed. The title “Saint Nicholas” was expressed in Dutch as Sinterklass, and this came into American English as “Santa Claus.” Nicholas’s personality and piousness was such that he is revered by both Catholic and Protestant churches…
Bishop Nicholas…was wandering through town one evening, according to legend, when he overheard a father’s lament. His three daughters all had men they wanted to marry, but he couldn’t provide them with dowries, so the weddings couldn’t go ahead. Nicholas waited until the middle of the night then slipped into the man’s house. He carried with him three bags of gold, one for each daughter. Looking around for a place to put them, he spotted the daughters’ stockings hanging over the fire to dry. He left the bags of gold in the stockings—and a Christmas tradition was born!
Our Christmas is Complete
There is a story from Czech bishop Monsignor Hnilica of a Christmas Eve with Saint Teresa of Calcutta. There was a knock on the convent’s door during their simple but festive dinner, and the nun who went to answer the door returned with a basket covered in a cloth.
“A woman gave it to me, then rushed off,” she said—then added as she handed the basket to Teresa, “She was probably a benefactor who wanted to donate some food to us for Christmas.” Teresa’s eyes sparkled as she removed the cloth and lifted up a sleeping baby boy. “Jesus has arrived,” she said with a smile. The baby was only a few days old, and the boy’s mother had probably entrusted him to the nuns because she felt unable to raise him. The boy woke up and began to cry. Teresa said with tears in her eyes, “Look, now we can say that our Christmas is complete. Baby Jesus has come to us.”
Tsh Oxenreider, Shadow & Light: A Journey into Advent, Harvest House, 2020.
Poinsettias: The Christmas Flowers
Clusters of bright red flowers set against dark green leaves are a common sight in churches across America (and elsewhere) during the Christmas season. But how did festive tropical flowers end up as a mainstay of churches and homes in regions where Christmas falls in the bleak midwinter? (Interestingly, the flowers of a poinsettia aren’t proper flowers. They are a kind of leaf called a “bract.”)
Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) originate in Mexico and Central America and were long prized by indigenous peoples for their beauty and usefulness. Called cuetlaxochitl by the Aztecs and k’alul wits by the Mayans, they were used as medicine and as a source of reddish-purple dye. (source)
The flowers first became associated with Christmas in the 17th century in Mexico. According to legend, a young girl named Pepita (or María) was walking to a Christmas Eve service and, having no gift to present to the baby Jesus, she gathered a bouquet of weeds (sometimes she is advised to do this by an angel). When she presented her gift in the church, the weeds were transformed into bright poinsettias, earning them the name “Flores de Noche Buena” (Flowers of the Holy Night). (source)
It was only in the 19th century that poinsettias moved north, due to the botanical curiosity of an American diplomat. Joel Poinsett was sent to Mexico by John Quincy Adams in 1825. American meddling in Mexican affairs made him very unpopular and he was sent back to America in 1830. However, during his time in Mexico, he sent home a variety of flowers which he successfully propagated and popularized, including poinsettias, to which he gave his name. (source)
Today, millions of poinsettias are sold across the United States during the Christmas season and are often displayed in churches. The star-shaped flowers (well, leaves) represent the star of Bethlehem, while red poinsettias are said to represent the blood of Christ and white poinsettias to represent his purity. (source)
William Rowley
This Constant Bickering
The monks at a remote monastery deep in the woods followed a rigid vow of silence. Their vow could only be broken once a year—on Christmas—by one monk. That monk could speak only one sentence. One Christmas, Brother Thomas had his turn to speak and said, “I love the delightful mashed potatoes we have every year with the Christmas roast!” Then he sat down. Silence ensued for 365 days.
The next Christmas, Brother Michael got his turn and said, “I think the mashed potatoes are lumpy, and I truly despise them!” Once again, silence ensued for 365 days.
The following Christmas, Brother Paul rose and said, “I am fed up with this constant bickering!”
Strive to Humor Daily E-mail List
What Do You Want for Christmas?
What do you want for Christmas this year? If you were to ask a typical little boy, he’d probably give you two words: video games. There’s a little boy I know named Brian. For weeks he bugged his parents about getting a watch for Christmas. Finally his dad told him, “Brian, if you mention that watch again, you’re not going to get it. Quit bugging us!” One night Brian’s parents asked him to lead in prayer before dinner. Brian said, “I’d like to quote a Scripture verse before I pray. Mark 13:37: ‘I say unto you what I have already told you before—watch . . .’”
Taken from Rick Warren: On This Holy Night Ed. Thomas Nelson, 2013, pp. 71-73.
Worship in Space
A little more than a year ago, three men were orbiting the moon in a space capsule. It was Christmas Eve, and they took turns reading Genesis 1, the opening chapter of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’ a most magnificent choice of texts for Christmas Eve. The Apollo 8 spacecraft was transformed momentarily into a Jewish/Christian pulpit.
Man’s most impressive technological achievement to date was absorbed in the declaration of God’s creative act. Apollo, the most dashing of the pagan Greek gods, bowed down in worship to “God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The astronauts did what a lot of people spontaneously do when they integrate an alert mind with a reverent heart-they worshipped.
Studies
Blue Christmas
For many people, the holidays are the “hap-happiest season of all” and sing “Joy to the World” at Christmas, but there is a reason why “Blue Christmas” is a hit, too.
We all know that it can be hard when we can’t join loved ones at Christmas. It’s worse still when we are grieving a loved one through estrangement or death. The memories that make Christmas wonderful for others can haunt those coping with loss. One poll in 2021 found that 36% of Americans didn’t feel like celebrating the holidays because of grief or loss.
It’s worse for people with a diagnosed mental illness (nearly 20% of Americans). The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) found in a 2014 study that 64% of those polled reported that the holidays made their condition worse.
It’s worth remembering, too, that some studies have found that after the holidays, people can “crash” emotionally. A 2011 review of earlier research found that while (unexpectedly) some serious crises requiring hospitalization (including self-harm and suicide attempts) went down during the holidays, they surged immediately after.
(Some resources for mental health and the holidays can be found here.)
William Rowley
Overspending at Christmas
Though how much people spend at Christmas varies year by year, a 2021 study found that 7 out of 10 Americans go over budget on Christmas, often racking up high credit card bills which saddle them with heavy debt at high interest rates (averaging 21% in 2023) over the rest of the year. Deloitte reports that in 2023, average spending in the US is expected to be $1652 per person (though that’s not all on gifts). Given how serious financial stress can be on marriages and the big mental health challenges before and after the holidays, our spending is a serious pastoral issue.
William Rowley
Analogies
The Adoption of the Grinch
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss could be seen as a story of adoption. In the end, the Grinch leaves his cave, takes off his disguise, makes restitution, and opens himself to a new place and a new people. His transformation is inspired by the risk-taking grace of the Whos. The Whos open their hands and table, making room for the enemy and stranger.
Lisa Degrenia
Covering the Bald Spots
Every year at the end of November, my husband, Ike, and I load the kids in the car and drive to the nearest Christmas tree lot. We are committed “real tree” people—not to be confused with “fake tree” people who keep their trees stored in a box—so the hunt for the perfect tree is one we anticipate and enjoy every year. No matter where we live or how busy we are, we set aside time to visit a farm or a store in order to make our pick. Ike, the kids, and I painstakingly inspect every single option, examine them for gaps, assess their sizes, and scan for brown spots.
Then, after we have made our choice, Ike hoists the tree on top of our car, ties it down, and drives us home. Once we get back to the house, we carefully mount the tree on the stand and carry it inside, trying to scatter as few needles as possible. For the rest of the night, the sap on our fingers attracts dirt, hair, fuzz, and other light debris. I don’t like the mess and I don’t like the hassle, but it’s a hassle we are happy to endure.
Nothing beats the smell of Fraser fir filling the air, and nothing transports Ike and me to our childhood Christmases quite like the glow of a fresh tree in our home. At least, that is how it normally goes. Several years ago our Norman Rockwell moment was not to be. Ike and I bought a discount tree at a local store. That was probably our first mistake. The tree had several bald patches and multiple brown spots. The branches were dry and the needles prickly. We should have read the signs, but I was optimistic. I thought I could hide the gaps with some faux poinsettias and no one would be the wiser. So we took the tree home. For the first few days, the tree was stunning. I loaded it with ornaments, ribbons, and pearls. It was shiny, full, and smelled like an evergreen forest. It was probably the most aromatic tree we’ve ever had.
All was well except for one niggling concern: the tree wasn’t taking any water. If you have ever purchased a real tree, you know they guzzle water, especially at first, and especially after the lights have been weighing on their branches for a while. But not this one. Every time I checked the stand, the water level had barely dropped. That’s when I suspected something wasn’t quite right. Not long after, the branches were drying out, and the needles became so thorny I flinched to brush against them.
And the smell that I loved so much? Over time the scent of evergreen was replaced with a musty, rotten odor. That was when it became clear: our tree wasn’t just a dud. Our tree was dead. That was a disappointing year in the Miller home. We decided to keep the tree for those remaining days before Christmas, but whenever I passed by it, I was reminded of something I had missed amid all the Christmases before. No matter how much you dress up a “real tree,” no matter how much you cover it in family heirlooms, silver bells, tinsel, and lights, a Christmas tree is still a dying tree. And this, I realized, was a tree-shaped sermon about my life.
…For many of us, that Christmas tree is our story. We look great, our church looks great, everything seems fine. Until the day we pull back the branches and discover the sickness hiding within. Underneath all the ministry commitments, the Christian conferences, the growing churches, the bestselling books, and the uplifting social media posts, there is fear. There is pride. There is a need to control. There is self-preservation in place of generosity. Defensiveness in place of humility. Silence in place of boldness. Shouting in place of listening. Cynicism in place of hope.
We can hide all of these things behind the ornaments of nice Christianity, which allows them to exist undetected for years. These ornaments do not simply mask the sickness, they contribute to it as well. The baubles that decorate brittle branches also weigh them down. The lights that obscure a tree’s dehydration dry it out faster.
The Great Exchange
The incarnation has often been described as “The Great Exchange,” whereupon God took on human form so that we might participate in God’s divine life (through the Holy Spirit). In a sermon on the nativity by John Chrysostom, this is how de describes the ineffable beauty of the incarnation:
The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He who sits upon the sublime and heavenly throne now lies in a manger. And he who cannot be touched, who is without complexity, incorporeal, now lies subject to human hands. He who has broken the bonds of sinners is now bound by an infant’s bands. But he has decreed that the ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and abject humiliation the measure of his goodness. For this he assumed my body, that I may become capable of his word; taking my flesh, he gives me his spirit; and so he bestowing and I receiving, he prepares for me the treasure of life.
John Chrysostom, “The Joys of Christmas”, Quoted in Vassilios Papavassiliou, Meditations for Advent; Preparing for Christ’s Birth.
Letters to Santa
“Dear Santa, there are three little boys who live at our house. There is Jeffrey; he is two. There is David; he is four. And there is Norman; he is seven. Jeffrey is good some of the time. David is good some of the time. But Norman is good all of the time. I am Norman.”
“Dear Santa, you did not bring me anything good last year. You did not bring me anything good the year before that. This is your last chance. Signed, Alfred.”
Original Source Unknown
The Plane Is Coming
In rural Msinga, a municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa, the highlight of Christmas Day festivities is when men, newly returned home from work in the big cities, gather to sing and dance. In call-and-response melodies, accompanied by energetic dancing, the men sing playfully of the holiday gifts they are expected to bring their families. “The plane I’ve bought for my darling is coming,” they sing. “You’ll get your stove this afternoon / not a coal one, darling, but a gas one… .The [temperature] setting will be just right.”
Amid the joy of returning home to family and friends, they humorously express the very real pressure of being able to provide the right gifts. …humans give gifts for a variety of not-so-noble reasons: as an effort to outdo others, in a bid to manipulate, as an attempt to assuage guilt, or out of a sense of obligation.
In our best moments, though, we give gifts as tangible expressions of love—not sentimental, soft-focused love, but clear-eyed, knowledgeable, active love. To love another is to will their good. Gift-giving, then, is best practiced as an expression of this goodwill. And when done in this way, Christmas presents can, in a very small way, demonstrate the great exchange-—the ultimate expression of love that lies at the heart of new creation in Christ.
Taken from Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowin Copyright (c) 2023, by Emily Hunter McGowin. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
The Rarity of Light
In the great scheme of things, light is actually quite rare. Geo-physicists tell us that 71 percent of the earth’s surface lies under the ocean, which means that most of our planet abides in eternal darkness. Astrophysicists add that over 95 percent of the total mass and energy content of the universe is “dark,” which means that it is entirely invisible to us. Since our earliest beginnings, we have indeed been a people dwelling in a land of gloom and living under the shadow of death.
No wonder the predominant symbol in the Christmas story is light. The people who walk in great darkness now see a great light. The glory of the Lord shines down upon the shepherds. The great star of Bethlehem sheds its light over the manger where the child sleeps, illuminating the way west for the wise men and their camels. Epiphany, which commemorates their journey, is known in Greek as “The Day of Lights.” Leo the Great says that for those who had no idea of what was about to happen, it must have been as though Jesus arrived “from a very remote and deep seclusion,” spreading light in his wake.
Thanks to Christmas, we will never again be starved for light. This is why we celebrate Lucemarium during Easter Vigil, standing in the darkness as the priest lights the great Paschal candle, saying, “May the light of Christ rising in the glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.” This is why, on Christmas Eve, we stand and dip the candle in our hand into our neighbor’s flame. One by one, we pass the light to each other until the whole room is afire.
Taken from Radiant Birth ed. Leslie Leyland Fields & Paul J. Willis, Copyright (c) 2023, by Leslie Leyland Fields & Paul J. Willis. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Humor
A Christmas Surprise
There was a woman who was baking her Christmas cookies and she heard a knock at the door. She opened the door to find a man who was dressed in pretty tattered clothes, and he was obviously poor. And he wondered if the woman had any work for him to do. She asked him, “Well, can you paint?” He said, “I can paint. I’m a pretty good painter.”
She said, “Okay, well, here’s a couple of gallons of green paint, here’s a paint brush, and there’s a porch out back that needs to be painted.” And she said, “If you do a good job, I’ll pay you what your worth.” He said, “Deal! I Love it.”
So he took the paint brush and went out back. She forgot about it until sometime later when there was another knock at the door. It was him. He obviously had been painting because there was paint splattered all over his clothes. He said, “I’m finished.” She said, “Did you do a good job?” “Yes, ma’am. I did a good job, but I need to point something out to you, ma’am. That’s not a Porsche out back, that’s a Mercedes.” That’s what you might call a “Christmas Surprise.”
Original Source Unknown
Doubting Santa’s Existence?
It is astonishing that some people still doubt the existence of Santa Claus. Despite the vast amount of photographic evidence, the hundreds of annual reports on Father Christmas’s activities from perfectly reputable news sources, and the bulging stockings full of presents that reliably appear on Christmas morning, somehow the doubters remain unconvinced. Thankfully mathematics can help. The conspiracy theorists have already tried turning to science to demonstrate their (clearly incorrect) position.
They calculate that if Santa were to visit the 1.9 billion children in the world,* he would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound while carrying more than 300,000 tons of presents (about the weight of six Titanics). Richard Dawkins, king of the skeptics, has insisted that the lack of any noticeable sonic booms from all that zipping about at supersonic speeds is more than enough evidence that Santa cannot possibly be real.
Worse still, some claim that this astonishing weight of parcels travelling at such a remarkable speed would practically vaporize the leading reindeer, who would have to withstand the full hit of air resistance. Meanwhile, sitting in the back of his sleigh, Santa would be subjected to forces tens of thousands of times stronger than gravity, making it impossible for him to breathe or to retain any of the physical structure of his bones or internal organs, thus reducing him to a liquefied mess.
A Gift That Requires Swallowing your Pride
Christmas is about receiving presents, but consider how challenging it is to receive certain kinds of gifts. Some gifts by their very nature make you swallow your pride. Imagine opening a present on Christmas morning from a friend—and it’s a dieting book. Then you take off another ribbon and wrapper and you find it is another book from another friend, Overcoming Selfishness. If you say to them, “Thank you so much,” you are in a sense admitting, “For indeed I am fat and obnoxious.”
In other words, some gifts are hard to receive, because to do so is to admit you have flaws and weaknesses and you need help. Perhaps on some occasion you had a friend who figured out you were in financial trouble and came to you and offered a large sum of money to get you out of your predicament. If that has ever happened to you, you probably found that to receive the gift meant swallowing your pride. There has never been a gift offered that makes you swallow your pride to the depths that the gift of Jesus Christ requires us to do. Christmas means that we are so lost, so unable to save ourselves, that nothing less than the death of the Son of God himself could save us.
Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas, Penguin Publishing Group, 2016, pp. 16-17.
Gosh, Some Angels
My ten-year-old son Jim had to write a play for Christmas for his Sunday School class. He made it a dialogue between two animals at Bethlehem. It goes like this:
Donkey: It sure is cold, is it not?
Lamb: It sure is.
Donkey: Do you know what year it is?
Lamb: I think it is the year 1.
Donkey: Did you hear that Caesar Augustus sent out an order that everyone in the country should be taxed?
Lamb: That means that the people will be coming back, does it not?
Donkey: Right
Lamb: Here comes somebody now.
Donkey: Hey, there’s something in the sky.
Lamb: Is that not a star?
Donkey: Yes, there is something right by it. There are two of them.
Lamb: Who is that over the hills?
Donkey: It looks like some people coming to get their taxes in the books.
Lamb: But the inns are all full. Maybe they will come here, huh?
Donkey: Here they come.
Lamb: Be nice to them, huh?
Donkey: She looks like she is going to have a baby!
Lamb: Hey, look over the hills. It looks like some kings.
Donkey: She’s having a baby–look, some angels.
Lamb: Gosh, some angels.
Donkey: The shepherds see the angels.
He goes on…I don’t know how you say in Aramaic, “Gosh, some angels,” but I assume that the first shepherds said at least that.
Walter Breuggemann, The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
“I’m in the Secret Service”
Jim was leaving church after Christmas services when the pastor greeted him and said, “Jim, it’s time you joined the Army of the Lord. We need to see you every Sunday.”
“I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor,” Jim replied.
“Then why do we only see you on Christmas and Easter?”
Jim looked to the right and to the left, and then leaned over to whisper, “I’m in the Secret Service.”
Source Unknown
Letters to Santa
“Dear Santa, there are three little boys who live at our house. There is Jeffrey; he is two. There is David; he is four. And there is Norman; he is seven. Jeffrey is good some of the time. David is good some of the time. But Norman is good all of the time. I am Norman.”
“Dear Santa, you did not bring me anything good last year. You did not bring me anything good the year before that. This is your last chance. Signed, Alfred.”
Original Source Unknown
This Constant Bickering
The monks at a remote monastery deep in the woods followed a rigid vow of silence. Their vow could only be broken once a year—on Christmas—by one monk. That monk could speak only one sentence. One Christmas, Brother Thomas had his turn to speak and said, “I love the delightful mashed potatoes we have every year with the Christmas roast!” Then he sat down. Silence ensued for 365 days.
The next Christmas, Brother Michael got his turn and said, “I think the mashed potatoes are lumpy, and I truly despise them!” Once again, silence ensued for 365 days.
The following Christmas, Brother Paul rose and said, “I am fed up with this constant bickering!”
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What Do You Want for Christmas?
What do you want for Christmas this year? If you were to ask a typical little boy, he’d probably give you two words: video games. There’s a little boy I know named Brian. For weeks he bugged his parents about getting a watch for Christmas. Finally his dad told him, “Brian, if you mention that watch again, you’re not going to get it. Quit bugging us!” One night Brian’s parents asked him to lead in prayer before dinner. Brian said, “I’d like to quote a Scripture verse before I pray. Mark 13:37: ‘I say unto you what I have already told you before—watch . . .’”
Taken from Rick Warren: On This Holy Night Ed. Thomas Nelson, 2013, pp. 71-73.
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