What Christmas Says

I threw myself my own little, personal Christmas party the other day. The family was around the house, but each person was settled into some activity of their own. So I retreated to the quiet of the dining room.

We had on the dining room table a Christmas puzzle underway. Christmastime puzzle working has become a bit of a tradition for us these last few years. We get these lovely Wysocki puzzles, with festive, holiday scenes and piddle at the puzzle in the evening hours. So I grabbed a cup of the most delicious drink known to man, eggnog, of which I prefer Weigel’s chunky eggnog, where it is so thick you have to wait for it to come out. It is basically pudding, but I like it that way. Anyway, I sat down at the dining room table, to my Christmas puzzle, with my cup of eggnog, and then I took out my phone and selected the playlist “Sentimental Christmas” and proceeded to have my own little Christmas party.

As I “partied the night away,” sipping my eggnog, working the puzzle, listening to Christmas music, I found myself turning over, in my mind, the Christmas holidays. I was thinking about the songs, thinking about the season, thinking about the movies, and thinking about the traditions. As I turned all of this over, I was struck by what Christmas – all of it: the songs, the movies, the traditions, the theology – says.

Of course, Christmas says a great deal about God, and we will talk about that in just a moment, but I was particularly struck in that moment by what Christmas says about us.

What does Christmas say about us?

1. Christmas says something about who we were meant to be.

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we are given an account of creation. It is a summary real-telling, not meant to satisfy every scientific question, but we are meant to learn some important things about that first creation. We are meant to understand that God created all things, and we are meant to understand that everything God created was good. We are told again and again that all God made was good. He made trees, and it was good. He made the sun and moon, and it was good. And he made mankind, and it was good. Indeed, we’re told that his creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). There was light and life and love and peace. God walked with mankind, and mankind lived in harmony. This picture of creation, described in Genesis, shows us how things were supposed to be. There was supposed to be life and peace and joy and harmony and fellowship with God. We were supposed to enjoy life here on earth and have families and friendships and walk with God in the Garden of Eden.

And I think at Christmas we hear a whisper of this, a whisper of how it was supposed to be, of how good it might be.

• Our Christmas songs, even the most secular, speak of joy and peace. They speak of friends coming together. They ring with possibility and delight. At Christmas, we get Bruce Springsteen, the New Jersey boss, laughing and singing about being good and Santa Claus coming to town. At Christmas, even Bing Crosby and the gaunt rocker, David Bowie, take a moment to come together and sing a duet about the little drummer boy and peace on earth.
• Our Christmas movies often portray the joy of a romance blossoming or a relationship restored and a family together again, after being home alone for a long time.
• And our Christmas traditions invite the best of who we are to come out. We open our homes. We share a meal. We donate money. We give gifts. We go to the Christmas Eve service at church to make our parents or grandparents happy.

And in all of these Christmas trappings, we bump into a deep nostalgia. And it’s interesting; we don’t just find ourselves nostalgic for our own past. It’s a deeper Nostalgia. It’s a kind of capital “N” nostalgia. We find ourselves longing for things we’ve never even known. I didn’t grow up with a lot of white Christmases, but I find myself longing for that same beauty and peace that a “white Christmas…I used to know” represents. I have never roasted chestnuts on an open fire in my life, but I find myself suddenly tender-hearted about the idea and the hearth and home and peace it pictures.

What’s going on? These are echoes of Eden…

Excursus: Echoes of Eden

These little glimpses of the good life, these pinings for some past that we haven’t even known personally, these feelings are echoes of that Eden life were meant to live. The joys of Christmas are not just the fanfare of escapism and presents; the joys of Christmas are glimpses of real joy, of what you were meant for. As Genesis describes, you were meant for peace on earth. You were meant for fellowship with one another. You were meant for life and love and harmony. You were meant for God and holiness. And I think at Christmas, the deepest nostalgia we feel is actually not for Christmas when we were a kid but for Eden when all was right with God.

C.S. Lewis said when we get these little glimpses of this other world, this Eden, this heavenly Kingdom, we are tempted to think that whatever circumstance or memory brought it to mind was the source of the feeling. But he says no. He says, “…they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited” (Lewis, Weight of Glory). In other words, the joy and meaning you find at Christmas is not the whole thing itself. Rather, it is an artifact of the thing itself. It’s like discovering an ancient gold coin buried in your backyard. The gold coin in your hand is one thing, but its true delight is the other world, other kingdom, it speaks of. Christmas provides us with such a moment. Christmas speaks of another world. Christmas carries with it an echo of Eden, a whisper of how things were supposed to be.

And so if you are unsure about this religious stuff, unsure about faith and God, I invite you to consider these deep feelings we get at Christmas. I would encourage you to contemplate this Christmas the beauty and the longing you may feel. Could this deep truth and beauty you long for be more than biology, more than neurons firing, more than atoms colliding? Could it be at Christmas you are actually encountering an ancient reality, something transcendent and eternal and truly true?

C.S. Lewis is helpful on this point, too. He said if you experience a hunger, that hunger suggests the reality of a corresponding answer. If you’re thirsty for water, it suggests you’re meant to drink. If you’re hungry for food, you’re meant to eat. And if you encounter this longing for goodness and a God-ordered world at Christmas, maybe you were meant for that too. Do you see? Christmas is speaking to who you were meant to be.

And yet Christmas speaks to how we fall short…

2. Christmas says something about who we are not.

I said Christmas speaks to who we are meant to be. The “meant to be” part – that’s the real rub. Christmas says something about “who we were meant to be,” but that’s not who we are. And that’s not what the world is like now. At Christmas we get glimpses and glimmers and whispers of another way, another world. But at Christmas, we also get painful reminders of just how broken our current world is.

The Christmas holiday is also shot through with pain points. At Christmas, we may feel the most estranged, as we feel most sharply the separation of a marriage, the absence of a sibling who doesn’t come around anymore, the child who doesn’t call. At Christmas, we see the greed and envy of the world shine with the tinsel and lights. At Christmas, we may miss our loved ones the most. The empty chair at the table, the trip no longer taken, the voice now gone… it all weighs heaviest over the holidays. We think, “Oh, mom would’ve loved this.” Or, “Grandpa would be fiddling with his camera right now.” At Christmas, depression is often at its worst, feasting on the slowdown and the loneliness and the darkness of the winter solstice.

And we see this message all through the Christmas songs and movies and traditions, too. The song that almost always takes me to these reflections is, ironically, called “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland. It’s so depressing that they’ve changed the words, but originally, she sings:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light,
next year, all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again as in olden days, Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were near to us, Will be dear to us once more

Someday soon we all will be together, If the fates allow
Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Do you see? It’s all future. Next year. Will be. Someday. And until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow. This is our plight. This is the tension of Christmas. We’re tasting merriness, trying to be merry now. And yet, it’s all future. Right now, things are broken.

Why is life like this? The Bible tells us because the human race has forsaken God. We left Eden. And now, we live East of Eden. We have turned from God, and when you turn from the author of light and life and love, you get darkness and death and fear. And the pains of Christmas speak of this, too.

So, Christmas speaks to who we were meant to be, both the goodness of that and the pain of not being that. But thankfully, Christmas says so much more…

3. Christmas says something about God and what he is like. (And it’s good news!)

What is God like? Christmas tells us. He is the God who draws near.

The Gospel of John describes that first Christmas like this: “[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… [14] And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).

The Gospel of Matthew connects Christmas to a prophecy of Isaiah. He says the birth of Jesus fulfills the promise that Isaiah made. Isaiah said, “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23). Jesus is God with us.

So Christmas speaks to God and what he is like. And it shouts from the roof tops that God cares! He loves you! How do we know? Because he came to earth himself. He took on flesh. And more than that, he took on our sorrows. He took on our sin. And he took them to the cross to put them away forever.

There are these Christmas movies where some angel intervenes. You might think of Clarence in It’s a Wonderful Life. He steps into a broken story to bring healing. Clarence is this sweet on man, who’s a new angel, trying to get his wings. And he rescues George Bailey. But the original Christmas story is way better! An angel does not come to help one man. The Lord, God Almighty himself comes to rescues all people!

And listen, he comes himself. God knows what it’s like to be you. We’re told in the Bible that Jesus was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He knew sickness and pain. He knew hunger and longing. He knew temptation and struggle. He knew what it meant to lose a loved one. And Christmas reminds us of this. Christmas speaks to this great love. Christmas says something about God and what he is like.

But Christmas also says something about God and what he wants. God wants us to come home…

4. Christmas says something about God and what He wants. (He wants us to be rescued and to come home.)

In the Gospel of Luke, we hear Jesus say, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). Jesus has come to call sinners to turn back that they might be saved.

Are you broken? Is your life riddled with regrets? Do you have a checkered past? Have you hated God? Have you lied and cheated and slept around and lost your temper and stolen and blasphemed and committed murder and said things you can never get back? LISTEN: HE CAME FOR YOU.

Jesus has come that you might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

When Jesus was about to be born, angels appeared to a group of shepherds watching their flocks at night. The angels said this:

“[10]…Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. [11] For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

Friends, this is the good news of Christmas! Consider these three appellations for Jesus…

Jesus is a Savior. How so? As we will see, he will live a perfect life in tune with God, and he will offer that life in our place that we might have our sins washed away. And anyone who wants to have Jesus as their savior can be saved. Have you ever asked Jesus to save you?

Jesus is the Christ. Christ means Messiah. That means two things… (1) Jesus is a King because the Messiah was a King. (2) Jesus is the long awaited special King, the one destined to set all things right. (Like Arthur who pulls the sword from the stone, he isn’t just any old king; he is the king foretold, from of old, destined to set things right.)

Jesus is the Lord. The Lord is the name of God in the Old Testament. The people of God in the Old Testament would also boast that they alone knew the name of God. Everyone knows there must be a God (at least deep down in their heart), but the people of Israel actually knew his name, knew him personally. His name was the Lord, which was Yahweh in Hebrew. So that means Jesus is the Lord come in human form.

And this is meant to be “good news of great joy…for all the people.” For everyone, for you. The Lord himself came as the Savior and King in Jesus to SAVE YOU!

So this Christmas…

When you bump into the joys, remember this joy is real and what God intended for you.

When you bump into the sorrow, remember these are what God himself came to fix at Christmas.

And when all the gifts are open and the holidays have ended, remember the best is yet to come. That first Christmas was only the beginning. It was a kind of D-Day, when God landed on the beaches of this world and began to turn the tide. But the best is yet to come. One day…

Christmas speaks to all these things. May Christmas speak these joyous and true truths to your heart this year. Amen.