A Christmas Epistle - 2020

10 December 2020

Dear friends in Christ,

This year has been one for the history books. I suspect that Christmas will follow suit and likewise be very different. Usually, Christmas cards have a catch-all letter of the family’s travels, accomplishments, and additions over the previous twelve months. This year’s letters will be pretty dull, I imagine, without words like vacation, adventure, party, graduation, and reunions. Instead, they’ll be loaded with words like Covid-19, quarantine, lock-down, toilet paper, remote learning, and isolation. Other words like scared, lonely, unemployed, broke, depressed, and uncertain round out the story. 

We’ve heard it for weeks now: the celebration of Christmas is in danger! Officials are discouraging family gatherings unless all are socially distant, in open air, with faces covered in masks and hands dripping in stinky alcohol-based sanitizer. Questions abound: Will there be a family Christmas dinner? Will grandparents be able to snuggle with their grandsons and granddaughters while opening gifts? Will adult children watch and listen to their aging parents tell the story (again!) about the winter of ’48 when the water froze? Will Christmas trees be empty underneath, or will they even be put up at all?

There is a very (very, very) left-hand blessing-in-disguise in all of this: the chicanery, the noise, the distractions, and the hullabaloo of the Christmas event is being stripped away. The secular festival of Christmas, with the focus on Rudolph and Frosty, mistletoe and eggnog, leaping lords and roasting chestnuts, and tiny tots with eyes all aglow, is being pushed aside. That leaves a vacuum. Nature abhors vacuums. Something needs to fill the space. 

Set aside Christmas. Instead, fill the space with the Nativity of Jesus. 

One of the phrases of the Luke 2 narrative always catches me: “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Imagine all that she witnessed in the past year: her aged cousin having a baby; an angel appearing in her own home, telling her she would also have a baby; having that conversation, “Uh, Joseph…we have to talk…there was this angel…”; this baby would be God’s Son; a trip to Bethlehem; lost reservations leading to housing in a stable; a manger as her son’s bassinette; and their first guests being a bunch of stinky shepherds who spoke of angels sending them to town to see a newborn babe. Oh, and make sure to name the Child “Jesus,” for He will save His people from their sins. 

This year, may I encourage you to follow in the footsteps of Mary. Make the sign of the cross over yourself (forehead, chest, right shoulder, left shoulder). Read Luke 2, by yourself or you’re your family. Sing the Christmas carols that speak of Jesus and His birth. Pray for “peace on earth; good will among men.” Then, be still and ponder the wonderful mystery of God becoming flesh in the baby Jesus. Pray the Lord’s Prayer. Sing Silent Night. Make the sign of the cross again.

The sign of the cross. It reminds us of Jesus’ purpose. His name gives it away: Savior. He was born to die, to rescue and redeem that which was lost. The greatest gift of all is a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger. Wonder of wonders, that swaddled baby wraps you in His grace and mercy, clothing you in His righteousness so that God sees you through Him. Baptized into Jesus, you follow that same cross path from font through today and into tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. 

Then log in and Zoom with the family. Have a glass of the ‘nog – add a shot of old Saint James’ finest while you’re at it. Sing Feliz Navidad off-key and Joy to the World in harmony. Open the gifts that were mailed to you. Watch The Miracle on 34th Street or Die Hard – great Christmas movies, both. Laugh. Smile. Rejoice.

And have yourself a very, merry celebration of the Nativity of Jesus Christ. 

“Unto you is born a Savior…Christ, the Lord.”