With tinsel and holly masking life’s harsher realities for a season, and with the soothing strains of “Silent Night” blocking out the cries of anger and hurt that so often assault our modern ears, “peace on earth” and “good will toward men” may briefly eclipse the anxieties and hostilities that stress our souls.
Thus lost in present fantasy, we are likely to mythologize the past. When we are lulled by the pageants and carols of Christmas, it is only too easy for us to misread the Gospel accounts of our Lord’s birth and to miss the turbulence and terror and turmoil that surrounded his entry to earth so many years ago.
If you doubt me, consider a few obvious comparisons between then and now.
Some of us, for example, are troubled by the increasingly intrusions of government into our lives. But the encroachments we suffer are downright tame compared to Roman regulations that forced peasants like Joseph and Mary to sign tax rolls in a province many hard miles from their own front door.
Inflamed by the militant racism of misleaders like Louis
Farrakhan, some African Americans may march to protest injustices that rightly
rankle their souls. But few of them have ever faced anything akin to the pogrom
King Herod aimed at the Jewish babies in
Democrats countered recent Republican budget cuts with scare tales of reduced health care and limited dollars for the poor in our land. But how many welfare mothers do you know who crib their newborns in mangers? How many families do you know who bunk in a barn?
With the lights of the season aglow and gifts piling up under our trees, it’s easy for us in these late days of December to slip into a warm, fuzzy holiday mood. And that’s O.K. We probably need the brief release that comes when we surrender to nostalgia and let sugar-plum memories dance in our heads.
But if, despite the warmth and cheer of our own season, we
can remember that our Lord chose to be born into poverty, racism, and political
strife, it may help us appreciate what God did for us in