Christmas Without Edges

When I was a teacher,  I asked some form of this question to my students each year before Christmas: 

“In my neighborhood of 200 or so homes, there are 5-6 homes with Christian decorations out front, and well over 100 homes with lights, Santa’s, reindeer and other inflatables. Roughly 80% of all Americans would say they are Christian.  Why, then, do you think we’re so reluctant to profess that faith at Christmas time? “

“People don’t want to be preachy,” they tell me.  “Yeah, they don’t want to come off as better than their neighbors,” another says.  “I think it creates awkwardness,” says another, “better to play it safe.” 

I’m pretty sure my students are correct. We don’t want to imply that we’re more religious than our neighbors, so we opt for the lowest common denominator, choosing instead to celebrate fictional children’s stories:  large blowups of Frosty the Snowman, or Santa riding in his sleigh, or Rudolph grazing with other reindeer. 

I’m not a killjoy! I’ve raised four children, and when they were young, part of our Christmas tradition was to drive around neighborhoods, oohing and aahing at the lights, “rating” who put on the best “show.” 

But at the same time, we're in danger of losing something precious, aren't we? By not celebrating the Christian story explicitly, by reducing our Christmas decorations to those which give least offense, I fear we’re losing the sharp edges of Christmas that make it such a compelling story-- full of human emotion, irony and beauty. And if we rub down these sharp edges, what’s left?  

Consider what the gospels tell us. Mary and Joseph are compelled to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for reasons of the census, with Mary soon to give birth. That’s a distance of 90 miles, by donkey, which would likely take three, maybe four days. We don’t know Mary’s exact age—Scripture says a “young virgin”—but at that time girls were often married  just after menstruation, so scholars believe Mary was likely on the younger side of the teenage years. In her ninth month, she would have been terribly uncomfortable on that trip, terrified at the prospect of her first birth like all mothers, and undoubtedly cranky. If Joseph was the typical husband of his day, he'd have been about 19-20 years old (not the older man that some Christian artists depict). He would also be weary from the trip, worried for his wife, uncertain of himself, frantic at not finding a suitable place for the birth. He must have felt like a lousy provider. 

And what about that stable? Perhaps because of the influence of Christmas carols like “Silent Night,” we tend to imagine the stable animals as quiet, docile things, staring lovingly at the newborn, glow in the dark, Christ-child. But surely it was a horrible racket of nay-ing horses, baa-ing sheep and bleating goats! New mothers and newborns need sleep, so this was a terrible state of affairs! Mary must have been utterly exhausted. Our carols talk about the “sweet smelling hay.”  Well, there was certainly a smell, but it would have been from animal manure, the stench of which can be overwhelming.

Forgetting all this, we miss the great irony of Christmas: the angels proclaiming to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the Highest!”  and “A savior has been born, who is Christ, the Lord!” Might they have imagined a great king, born of a royal household? Instead they find a much lowlier state of affairs: the newborn infant of a peasant carpenter and mother, lying in a feeding trough. Did the manger still have remnants of the slop fed to the animals? If not, I’m sure it retained the odor. 

And what of the warning that Joseph and Mary had to smuggle Jesus out of Bethlehem to Egypt, to avoid the murderous intent of Herod? That reads more like a spy novel than a sweet children’s tale.

We do this often to the gospels, which have become so familiar to us that we miss the human element—the "hooks" that grab us. We’ve reduced the cross, for example, to jewelry, forgetting the brutality of ancient crucifixions. When I speak to students about crucifixion, I point out that Rome maximized its deterrent effect, first by forcing the crucified person to carry the upper beam through public streets, then by humiliating him by stripping him naked, and then by prolonging his death on the cross for 2, 3 or 4 days, expertly avoiding the major arteries when hammering in the nails. The crucified person would eventually die of suffocation, too weak to push up with his legs to regain his breath. "Death by crucifixion was so excruciatingly painful," I remind them, "that breaking the legs of the crucified with a sledge hammer to hasten suffocation was considered an act of mercy."

One student, after listening to tall this, asked “Mr. Weber, all this Christian fascination with Jesus’ death, isn’t it, well, a little morbid? If Jesus had come today, would Christians 2,000 years from now be wearing little electric chairs or syringes around their necks?”  “Yes! Exactly so!” I said, delighted. Such was the cross regarded in its day. But morbid? No. In fact the opposite: the cross becomes the instrument for our salvation. 

And so, my prayer for all of us this Christmas is that we are “snagged” once again by the jagged edges of the gospel, so that in our celebration of Christmas,  we're brought back to the foot of the crib, filled with awe and gratitude.

He is Emmanuel, "God with us!" Come, let us worship him! 

Merry Christmas.