The Pagans Stole My Christmas Tree!

 Pardon this Scrooge, but I don’t really care if Christmas is commercialized, or if the pagans have “stolen” it, or if Santa is really Satan, only with letters mixed around.  If the Incarnation was a prelude to things to come, then I have a sneaking feeling the big hub-bub over Reasons for Seasons might not be as big of a deal as we think. 

To change a focus from, “Toys, toys, toys,” to, ”Not a lot of toys,” is really an adventure in missing the point.  Emmanuel, God-with-us, is actually with us.  Why take the focus off of Him and onto the twenty four different reasons why I can prove Christmas tree’s are spawned from pagan fertility rites (and then wonder why the world doesn’t seem to be taking me seriously)? 

It seems strange to launch a diatribe about how our culture doesn’t appreciate a good ol’ manger scene anymore (as if a manger “scene” would solve our problems).  Once again, our private murmuring reveals our true feelings about this “culture” we find ourselves in—it’s the enemy, it’s dangerous, it’s what we are fighting. 

What has happened to the Jesus that turned water to wine, that ate with sinners, that touched untouchables, that said, “I desire compassion and not sacrifice?”   What was it about Him that made them feel safe, that drew them?  And why do most people not associate that with (whatever it is we’ve done with) Christianity today? 

The suffering cried out for a show of God’s strength and He promised one—promised He would bare His Strong Right Arm, that He would send a mighty Deliverer. 

And then, in the fullness of time…  He sent a baby born in a barn. 

It all depends on how I define things, and it all depends on if I can see what isn’t shown, and it all depends on what I’m crying out for.  Hindsight is 20/20—it’s easy for me to see, NOW, that it was the Messiah, but would it be fair to say that I sometimes miss the Strong Right Arm here and now?  Maybe, like the crowded city of Bethlehem, I don’t realize what is in our midst because my eyes have been trained to value the wrong things, to focus in on what seems important in my own estimation, to bustle about listening to my own prattling judgement calls—while all along the Holy is right in front of me.   

There is a reason for the season, and it has nothing to do with harumphing about everyone that doesn’t understand it, but everything to do with One who joined Himself to earth.   He is the ladder that Jacob dreamed of, He is the connecting of two opposing worlds, and that’s the beauty and fearfulness of the thing, and that’s what we’ve been called to be—-agents of reconciliation, ladders by which heavenly and earthly intermingle, grace raining on thirsty fields (of good and evil men alike).  Which has everything to do with the Babe laid in a manger, and nothing to do with December 25th.