Christmas is for…

A few Decembers ago we were startled by a cashier’s tired comment that they wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas, they’d had it early because “it’s just for the kids.” That cashier may well have been financially and emotionally exhausted and just couldn’t admit one more thing in the schedule. But if all one knows of “Christmas” is the Santa-Claus-is-coming-to-town version, as fun as that may be, “Christmas” can exhaust itself a few weeks before the season of Advent is over and Christmas actually begins.

What do we mean when we prepare for “Christmas,” when we set up a tree, put up lights, perhaps prepare a creche with an empty manger?

At the liturgy on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day, which many may not get to attend, the church celebrates the incarnation of God among us. Julian wrote that this gift of God’s self was twofold: “In his taking on of our nature he gave us life” and “in his blessed dying upon the cross he gave birth to us into eternal life.” God came among us to give us life, to give us a radical flourishing, a community not based on rivalry but the radical hospitality of love.

At Christmas, we remember the first gift. Jesus was born and so Christmas is a birthday, and so much more than a birthday. If we want to make Christmas “for children,” what about the child at the heart of this holiday? On birthdays, we often give the person a gift, as a gesture of our happiness for their life—something they might particularly desire. What do we give Jesus for Christmas? What might give him joy, here and now, in our own lives, our own world?