This year marks the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. I know that sounds premature, but when the current calendar was devised, it was off by four years.
Two millennia later, how fares the spirit of Christmas? Each year, in the weeks before Christmas, I have that uneasy Charlie-Brown, what’s-this-all-about feeling. I had it this year as Adrienne and I set off to drive from Seattle to New Mexico. We drove straight into four days of blinding snow, sleet, slush, ice and high winds. Each day we saw accidents, cars and trucks sliding off the road. Each night, we and other travelers were forced off the road by snow. As it was two thousand years ago, the inns were full or there were no inns at all. I didn’t see anyone sleeping in a stable, but I saw many people sleeping in their cars, which is the twentieth century equivalent.
In the course of those four days, I saw people sharing food and charging each others’ batteries. I saw people lie down in slush to put chains on a stranger’s tires. I saw people risk their lives on the highway to help those who had been injured in crashes. I saw one man strip off his shirt in a freezing wind to bind a woman’s wound. I saw another man give away his coat to someone who lacked one.
When I was a child, we decorated our house at Christmas by putting electric candles in the window. That decoration derives from Irish tradition of putting a candle in the window as a beacon for the Christ Child, who was said to wander lonely through the world on the darkest nights of the year.
I feel like Charlie Brown when I hear the stores and television sing their annual refrain of “the best Christmas ever” with blinking lights and bright bows. That confusion disappeared in an anxious blizzard on an Idaho mountain pass.
What we experienced out there was not the spirit of Christmas giving, I think it went beyond that. We travelers became a community in the face of our common adversity and our transactions were not giving, but sharing. I was reminded again that Christmas is not found in an abundance of tangible items, but through a recognition of that candle burning in the heart of another.
When Christmas is over, like those travelers from the east, Adrienne and I will return to our own country by another route. But this Christmas, by the side of a snowy highway, we travelers were both shepherds and flock and while the Christ Child may sleep in the meanest of stables, we can still find Him in the hearts of those around us.
In the Bleak Midwinter
This year marks the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. I know that sounds premature, but when the current calendar was devised, it was off by four years.
Two millennia later, how fares the spirit of Christmas? Each year, in the weeks before Christmas, I have that uneasy Charlie-Brown, what’s-this-all-about feeling. I had it this year as Adrienne and I set off to drive from Seattle to New Mexico. We drove straight into four days of blinding snow, sleet, slush, ice and high winds. Each day we saw accidents, cars and trucks sliding off the road. Each night, we and other travelers were forced off the road by snow. As it was two thousand years ago, the inns were full or there were no inns at all. I didn’t see anyone sleeping in a stable, but I saw many people sleeping in their cars, which is the twentieth century equivalent.
In the course of those four days, I saw people sharing food and charging each others’ batteries. I saw people lie down in slush to put chains on a stranger’s tires. I saw people risk their lives on the highway to help those who had been injured in crashes. I saw one man strip off his shirt in a freezing wind to bind a woman’s wound. I saw another man give away his coat to someone who lacked one.
When I was a child, we decorated our house at Christmas by putting electric candles in the window. That decoration derives from Irish tradition of putting a candle in the window as a beacon for the Christ Child, who was said to wander lonely through the world on the darkest nights of the year.
I feel like Charlie Brown when I hear the stores and television sing their annual refrain of “the best Christmas ever” with blinking lights and bright bows. That confusion disappeared in an anxious blizzard on an Idaho mountain pass.
What we experienced out there was not the spirit of Christmas giving, I think it went beyond that. We travelers became a community in the face of our common adversity and our transactions were not giving, but sharing. I was reminded again that Christmas is not found in an abundance of tangible items, but through a recognition of that candle burning in the heart of another.
When Christmas is over, like those travelers from the east, Adrienne and I will return to our own country by another route. But this Christmas, by the side of a snowy highway, we travelers were both shepherds and flock and while the Christ Child may sleep in the meanest of stables, we can still find Him in the hearts of those around us.
Merry Christmas.