Christmas and Epiphany have become the malleable raw material to which each culture and family attach their own meaning and value. We have watched the holiday grow and prosper but at the cost of the holy day of our Savior's birth. Because Christmas (and Epiphany) are no longer strong days with a clear and consistent message, they have become a diverse recipe of family, friends, fun, food, favors, and feelings. The day has been stolen right from within the stable and replaced with any value, purpose, and meaning people choose to attach to it. There is no real Christmas (or Epiphany) anymore but only the one imagined and defined by the people as they have chosen to do so. Because of this, the holy day is rather impotent and meaningless. It no longer has the power to united and bind and has become the domain of the individual and the individual family. This day no more needs Christ nor Mary even if the shepherds and angels may still have a small part.
The original Christmas was not this kind of day. It was in every sense of the term an apocalyptic moment. No, not the kind of apocalypse bantered about today for the next big weather condition or economic crisis. I mean the old-fashioned kind of apocalypse in which the once long hidden is now finally and fully revealed. Shepherds and angels did not have bit parts in this story but were major players in the new thing God was doing. They watched and sang and beheld the mystery long promised but now revealed. They invited others as they had been invited to come and see. It would seem that today there is nothing to come to see and instead is a hand pushing you move along and not to linger. But linger is exactly what we ought to desire when God opens the heavens to reveal His clothing of flesh and blood.
Though some may lament the lost of the full 12 days of Christmas, there are many more who are, well, over it almost as soon as it has begun. That is the sadness of it all. We have not simply invited others to come with us to Bethlehem to see what the Lord has done, we have surrendered the holy and grand mystery of this moment so that people may decide and define it as they so choose. In the end we are left with little to last past the packing up of the snow men and the return of gifts we did not want. An example of this was a lighted Christmas tree decoration in my neighborhood. It was a tree, at least the lights were an outline of a stylized tree, but it could be set to glow orange and black for Halloween and, for some reason, purple and green for Thanksgiving. Then it conveniently glowed red and green for Christmas. This is the perfect Christmas decoration for the times -- it lights up whatever you wish to emphasize and so it allows Christmas to become what you want it to be -- no offense to the Baby first-born of Mary.
Christians have also surrendered to the holiday. Overall, Christians themselves fail to see themselves as believing in or offering the world much more than a system of moral teaching (about which you can disagree) and a vague hope of some justice for the costs of this life to be enjoyed after death (maybe as simple as the completion of the circle of life). There is not much left to be holy. God is the sense of time and promise fulfilled by the God who comes as one of us and instead is left some sort of imagined idea of good will, be nice, and why can't we be friends. It is not that it has been a failure. It has been so successful that we have adopted the very thing we say we abhor. It is all about us and God is a footnote in the menu of traditions that give shape to our celebration.
Christmas is apocalyptic. No, not in the sense of some terrible bad thing which occurred but in the original sense of that term. It is about revelation. In many and various ways God spoke to His people of old through the prophets but now, in these latter days, He has spoken through His Son. This is the only peace on earth that matters. If we could get this far to the table, we might just have something to chew on placed before us. God came in our flesh to rescue us sinners and redeem us to everlasting life. In just a few weeks, of course, Epiphany will end on the Mount of Transfiguration and we will journey down to the valley of the shadow below. If Christmas can offer us anything for the journey, it will be that the night shone with apocalyptic wonder as that which was hidden from Eden was made plain. Christ is the face of God!
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