It seemed like the closer Christmas came this year, the more tenuous it became. I was beginning to think all was well, and then the Omicron variant pounced on us. More than 3,000 Christmas Eve flights were canceled globally. In New York City, the Rockettes canceled their Christmas Spectacular. “Hamilton” and “Aladdin” on Broadway paused performances last week.
This is the second year many were not able to make trips to celebrate the holidays with family. It became personal with Lori and me. Our daughter, who lives in New York City, had to cancel her trip home because she contracted Covid.
One of our friends announced she had Covid, for the second time. It was going to be the first Christmas she could spend with her parents in many years. “It…stinks!” she said.
“Christmas this year has gone to crap!” blurted another friend, whose family Covid had upended Christmas.
Covid seemed to have won, two years in a row.
Then my grandson came over. Because Covid had dampened our plans for Christmas activities, I was able to listen to him more closely than I perhaps would have. He had seen me baptize a young lady at church the Sunday before, and he had some questions about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Slowly I told him, trying as best I could to explain heavenly truths in an earthly enough manner that he could begin to grasp them.
“It’s okay,” I said at one point, “I don’t understand it all myself and never will.” I told him we can never completely understand how God would come to our messed up world and be born in a manger.
Christmas comes to us in the mess of life. It certainly did for Mary and Joseph. They didn’t call ahead and schedule a midwife to meet them when they arrived in Bethlehem. “Make sure we have a clean birthing room, please.” That’s wasn’t an option.
Jesus was born in a barn of sorts. That’s how he came to us, in a birthing suite that not only echoed with his infant cries but with barn animals mewing, grunting, and snorting. The aroma filling the room that night was not the clean, antiseptic smells of a baby-friendly environment but the stench of fresh manure, dried hay, and dirt. Most of us would have wretched at that potpourri. “Welcome to earth, Baby Jesus.”
Christmas comes not to those who have their lives put together, nice and neat like, so that they can lean back, poke their chests out and boast, “Look what we did.”
No, Christmas comes in those desperate folks who have stumbled in the darkness and fallen flat on their ego-centered faces.
Christmas comes to those who hear cancer hissing, “I win.”
Christmas comes to those whose homes have been destroyed by a tornado, or a foreclosure notice, or a divorce settlement, or addiction.
Christmas comes to those who are isolated in a retirement home, whose only guests are health care workers.
Christmas comes to those who fear that the darkness has overcome hope for light.
And, oh yes, Christmas comes to those whose dog jumped on the table and chowed down on the Christmas ham while the family ran outside to watch Johnny ride the new bike Santa put by the tree. It comes to whose least favorite aunt and uncle announced they could stay “one more day,” after all.
Christmas, it’s never perfect. That’s why it’s Christmas, after all. Christmas is for those who have somehow come to the end of themselves, recognizing their desperate need for what Christmas is, the welcoming of Christ into our broken lives, the One who can make us whole again, able to live and love again.
“I want to be a follower of Jesus, PopPop. I know I need Him,” my grandson said to me in an unusually soft voice.
And so, right there, not in a temple or a church sanctuary, but sitting on a messy couch with some of my newspapers strewn about it, next to a dog’s blanket, there, in the stillness of the morning, the two of us traveled to Bethlehem and bowed at the manger of the Christ child. And prayed.
And it was Christmas, after all.