That famous first line of Clement Moore’s poem—a line so familiar that it has replaced the original title, “A Visit from St. Nicolas,” in the popular imagination — is all about the surprise visit of Santa Claus.
At the risk of mixing the visit of St. Nick with the real reason for Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, we can allow Moore’s poem to remind us that Christmas comes in surprising ways. If we aren’t watching, Christmas will pass us by.
Almost everyone in Bethlehem missed it.
On the night before Christmas, nothing happened in the village, at least not much out of the ordinary.
“No vacancy” signs disappointed the overcrowded cities’ visitors. The locals were likely agitated with the extra traffic, all those people rushing back to their place of birth to register for the census. Impatience would be the expected, normal behavior in those circumstances. And Roman soldiers in Bethlehem probably griped about being stationed in a backwoods, hick town. It was business as usual in the overcrowded, little town of Bethlehem.
Unlike the Santa who arrived with such a clatter that he awoke the father in Charles Moore’s poem, Jesus’ arrival was quiet, except perhaps for the cries of a mother and child at childbirth in a manger.
No trumpets announced his birth. The government certainly didn’t force anyone to bow to the baby king. No one recited words of allegiance to the coming of a new kingdom.
I think Jesus intended it that way. It’s just like him. He doesn’t intrude into people’s lives.
Think about the people who missed the first Christmas: The innkeeper, or whoever it was that turned Mary and Joseph away, missed Jesus; the religious leaders, who had been waiting for the Messiah, searching their Scriptures for clues of his arrival, got so caught up in their religious activity that they missed him when he finally came; the Romans missed him too, so preoccupied were they with their own pantheon of gods as well as daily survival a brutal world.
It’s easy to miss God when he shows up in the flesh, smelling like a baby.
But what about now, this Christmas? Most people will miss him just as they did the first Christmas.
Instead of staying in the five-star hotel, like we might think, the Savior sleeps under the stars; we expect to find him swaggering down the aisle of the largest church in town, and instead he quietly worships in the shadows; we suppose he will march on Washington, making a powerful statement that he is the man in charge now, but instead he sits down in a park, lets the children crawl all over him, then shares a meal with the homeless while telling them about life in a different kind of Kingdom.
It’s easy to miss Jesus, not because he doesn’t want us to find him. We miss him because we pass by him on the way to someone or someplace else that’s more important to us than he is.
And so we walk on by Jesus, for surely he wouldn’t be here in this ordinary place where plain people like us live, surrounded by the dull, drab walls that encase our dull, drab lives.
But his presence, his Spirit, is here because we are that valuable to him. And so he watches us, waiting for us to recognize him for the person he really is, the very Son of God, so that we can know and be the people we really are: his own children.
He looks for us first, so that we will look to him.
He intended it that way.
And instead of hearing him shout, “ere he drove out of sight, ‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night,’” we hear the simple Carpenter’s words,
“Come, follow me.”