Is Christmas Only for Children

Is Christmas only for children? Certainly, when we look around us at cultural, secular Christmas, we might think so. Just think of all the effort that goes into providing toys for children at Christmas. We encourage our children to tell Santa Claus what they want, or write a letter to Santa, and then we search for just the “right” toys for our children, just the ones they wanted. And we also make sure that we provide toys for children in need. Every civic group, school, bank, hospital, and office has a drive for toys, to say nothing of the trees in malls with tags that direct shoppers to buy and donate toys. And that’s all good and praiseworthy: as followers of Jesus, we are always called to share with others – and not only at Christmas.

By the same token, when we think of Christmas day, what are our fondest memories? Are they the years when we ourselves were children? When he hung stockings somewhere, left out cookies for Santa, and woke up too soon on Christmas Eve, chasing our weary parents out of bed so that we could root around in our stockings and tear open brightly lit packages? Perhaps it was the year there was a shiny bicycle parked by the tree. Those of us who are older may recall the years when our own children were young, as we watched them replay the rituals of our own childhoods. Or now we watch our grandchildren express their own wonder and delight as they race to the Christmas tree to discover its offerings.

Even in our churches our celebrations seems to revolve around the children. In many churches no Advent 4 or Christmas Eve service would be complete without a Christmas pageant, that annual enactment of the Christmas story according to Luke, with the cardboard stable, baby Jesus doll, children in bathrobes, children toting fleecy sheep, and, of course, an army of sweet-faced angels. Last year, we had such a pageant, and I even preached about a Christmas pageant that went delightfully awry, but was mercifully saved by a resourceful pianist and a gracious, welcoming congregation.

So is Christmas only for children? What about us adults? Do we somehow have to recreate for ourselves that bright anticipation of Christmas morning that we work so hard to create for our own and others’ children? Do we have to believe in Santa Claus? (Of course, it’s perfectly OK to honor the memory of St. Nicholas of Myra, the ancestor of Santa Claus. Although he was a bishop in the fourth century, we can still follow his example and give generously to poor children as he did.) Do we have to take Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth literally, since we have immortalized it in pageants and Christmas carols? Do we have to take it as actual history? If so, then how do we account for the fact that gospel of Matthew gives a quite different version of Jesus’ birth, and even that Jesus’ birth is not even mentioned in the gospels of Mark and John, or in any book of the New Testament?

What happens to faith when we suspect or realize that Luke composed his version of the Christmas story for a particular community, using deliberate rhetorical strategies? What happens to faith when we remember that we celebrate Christmas on this day at least partly because the church inherited from the pagans of Rome a celebration of the return of the sun following the winter solstice? Do we turn our backs on Christmas and declare, “Bah, humbug?” Is it only for the sake of the children who are the future of the church that we go through all this? Is Christmas only for children?

My brothers and sisters, the truth is that Christmas is for adults. Its meaning is far deeper than most of us could grasp as children. Indeed, it takes a lifetime of plumbing the depths of Christmas for most of us to begin to glimpse that deeper meaning. And we are here, because we need to be reminded at least annually, if not more often of that deeper meaning. In fact, in the end it doesn’t’ really matter when and how Jesus’ birth happened – these details are ultimately unimportant. Does it matter for my ministry among you that I was born in Crown Heights Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, and that my mother’s physician was a woman?

What matters in what our Scripture stories tell us is the deeper truth that they enable us to glimpse, the deeper truth that Christians have proclaimed ever since Jesus’ followers began to gather after that first Easter. And that deeper truth is no less than this: that God became inseparably joined with human beings, that “God has a mom,” as one writer put, or that God put skin on, as another suggested, that the great, unknowable Mystery beyond all times and worlds came into our midst in the most dependent, vulnerable way possible, first as a fetus inside a woman’s body, and then as a helpless baby. And more: that God came us to us not in pomp and circumstance, not in the glare of social media like the children of British royalty, but in the poorest possible circumstances, in a stable in a poor country ruled by a foreign power that would soon destroy Jerusalem. And even more: that the unfathomable Mystery, the Source of all that was, and is, and is to come, chose to be born to an unmarried teenage mother, and that the first people to hear about the birth were surprised, working class people, who were grubby and smelly by the time they reached the birthplace. This is the truth: that God snuck into our world and took human form while no one was watching and where no one expected God to show up.

And there’s more: there’s another truth embedded in Luke’s account. God may have snuck into our world, but at least some people were aware of God’s coming. They were low-life, working class, despised folks, to be sure, but somehow they had heard the angels’ song of “good news,” somehow they had had a revelation that something had happened. Those grubby folks, who wouldn’t have even gotten close to the gate of Herod’s palace, didn’t just stand there and say, “Wow, that’s nice.” They picked themselves up, followed the angels’ bidding, took themselves to Bethlehem, joyfully praised God, and then shared with others what had happened to them.

And here’s where we come in. We’re in that story too. God continues to sneak into our world. All of us are like Mary in some sense. We’re poor, too young (or too old, as in the case of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth), not yet married, from a small town. Yet God continues to come into the world through us. Jesus continues to be born through us. And all of us are like the shepherds in some sense. We’re poor, grubby, sinful, weary, and tired – especially tired of the long nights of war and injustice. And then we catch the faint echoes of angel song. We hear a rumor of God’s presence in some unlikely place. And we go there and find God: in a quiet church, in our backyard at dawn, in the face of a child, at the altar rail, in a hospital or nursing home room, in the kitchen at Loaves and Fishes.

When we catch a glimpse of God with us, what do we do? Do we shout for joy? Do we dance and sing? Do we ponder the mystery in our hearts? Do we share it with others? Do we care more generously for those around us? Most important, do we remember that the child whose birth we celebrate this night showed and shows us the depth of God’s love for us, and that the adult he became enabled us, through his life, death, and resurrection, to share God’s love with everyone we meet?

Is Christmas for children? Of course it is. And we adults would do well to reclaim children’s spontaneous joyfulness. But Christmas is also for adults. Christmas is for all of us who need to remember, rejoice in, and celebrate God’s coming into our lives. In this darkest time of the year, in the dark times of our lives, when the darkness of the world threatens to overwhelm us, we all need to remember that God came, comes, and will continue to come into our lives. All of us need to remember that God may sneak into our lives, that God may show up when we least expect God to show up, and that God may reveal Godself to or through unlikely people. And when God does show up, all of us are called to share with others the great love that we find in God’s presence.

And because poets are often better than preachers at expressing how we experience God’s presence with us, listen to the last three stanzas of English poet John Betjeman’s poem, “Christmas:”

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No caroling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare —
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

God give you a most blessed Christmas tide.