Christmas 2009

Of the two great feasts of the Christian year, Christmas and Easter, the one that we are celebrating this evening is clearly the later arrival in the development of the Church’s liturgy, and to this secondary position in the historical development corresponds the lesser theological significance of the Christian feast.  In the profession of faith, which we have just made, we declare our belief that our Lord Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, but only of his crucifixion do we say that it happened for our sake.  At least in the theology of the Western Church Christ’s saving role is attached to his sacrificial death, rather than to his birth in Bethlehem. 

But despite the secondary position of the Christmas feast, both liturgically and theologically, it is clearly the most popular feast of the Church year.  I am not speaking now of church attendance, for which I have no comparative statistics .  What I mean is this: if any religious feast has the power to transform a great city, even if only for a few days, then this feast is clearly Christmas. 

This transformation is apparent in external changes, such as the giant Norwegian spruce at Rockefeller Center in New York City, where I come from.  But the changes are not merely external.  People really do seem a bit friendlier around this time of year, a bit more considerate, a bit less obsessed with their own private happiness, a bit more conscious of the needs of others. 

To what can we attribute this power of Christmas?  Why is it that it seems to produce effects in the life of a great city which are not evident when we celebrate the central mystery of our faith, Christ’s death and resurrection?  Is it just because of the greater appeal of the mother and child, the singing angels and the adoring shepherds, compared with the stark bleakness of Calvary and the empty tomb?  Is it simply that the Christmas story is more readily assimilated by our bourgeois society and hence better suited to commercial exploitation?  This, I think, is certainly not the whole story. 

There are times in the lives of all of us when only the horrible paradox of a crucified God is capable of carrying us through the suffering and absurdity of human existence.  But for most of us, at least, these times are mercifully few and far between.  Our lives have their ups and down, but only rarely are we forced to confront the ultimate mystery which was revealed on Calvary. 

At  other times the thought of God’s terrifying love for mankind is perhaps more of a hindrance than a help in our efforts to render those little kindnesses to each other in which we try to imitate, so very imperfectly, the divine philanthropy.  And this, I think, is why the revelation of God’s good will towards men in the babe in Bethlehem has a greater power to help us show good will to one another than the more solemn celebration of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. 

If we are to dispense with all myth and legend in representing the ultimate truth of Christianity, then the only appropriate style of graphic depiction would be the pitiless abstraction of a Kandinsky.  But who of us would survive a form of religious expression which was stripped of all myth and legend? 

The bountiful presence of these literary forms in tonight’s readings is cause not for embarrassment but for joy and gratitude.  Let us humbly thank God, then, for having become, for our sake, a little baby, and let us make our own the sentiments of those simple people who welcomed him on that first Christmas night. 

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December 24, 2009