The broken festivities of the first Christmas
This year, like many other people, I couldn't go home for Christmas. It was my first Christmas away from home. The winter is also cold and snow-less where I am, which is the worst weather combination. I'm thankful though that a family at church invited me over to have lunch with their family on Christmas Day.
Experiencing this rather sombre Christmas, coming at the end of an awful year that still hasn't ceased to be awful, I've got to peel away the candy wrapper of my childhood Christmasses and notice how little of the night of Jesus's birth matched the tinseled festivities we've grown familiar with.
There was a lot of pain beyond Mary's labour that night long ago, which even marshmallows in hot chocolate would not have remedied. This variance between the darkness of that night and the joy it still rightly inspires, gives Christmas a deep, meaningful glow that we've had the opportunity to reclaim this year.
The first Christmas was away from home
I'm 6,466 miles from home right now, locked into an even greater impression of distance by an 8-hour time difference. A lot of the warmth and fuzziness of the popular "Christmas spirit" derives from homely comforts: the company of close family & friends and the comfort of coming downstairs in your pajamas on Christmas morning.
But there was nothing homely and cosy about the first Christmas. Mary and Joseph were away from their hometown, Nazareth. When the time came for Jesus to be delivered, a census was called for and the couple had to make their way to Bethlehem, since Joseph was from the line of David, originating in that town.
Furthermore, the baby being delivered was not being welcomed into a merry new home. To begin with, he was coming into a world in which he did not belong—he was divine but taking on human flesh, assuming the physical limitations of a three-dimensional world and the daily hailstorm of our world's brokenness. But in addition, he was born into a crude station, wrapped in cloths and placed in a manger, which is a trough for cattle feed.
Shortly after birth, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus were displaced even further from home. They had to flee to Egypt because the ruler Herod was having newborn sons in the area killed, in an effort to wipe away Jesus, who had been the subject of prophecies that he would be a Saviour and Ruler.
The first Christmas was also lonely
Christmas usually comes with warm company and hearty conversation. On Christmas Eve I felt really boxed in. My wi-fi was down the whole day so I couldn't really make calls easily or even just surf the internet. I ended up sitting in silence for much of the day and doing crochet, longing for the sound of a real human voice.
The first Christmas was very lonely and dim—much more so than my Christmas Eve. When Joseph and Mary arrived at Bethlehem, none of the inns had space for them. So they ended up having to deliver in a barn (or, some think it could have been a room in a house where cattle feed was kept—either way, dingy and not at all comfortable).
Add to that the fact that for the past nine months, Mary was probably misunderstood and deeply shunned by those around her at the time for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. She was about to marry Joseph when she conceived miraculously as a virgin.
The first Christmas was even bloody
The ruler Herod was not happy about talk of the birth of a promised Saviour and Ruler. He thought it would wreak unnecessary havoc. He ordered for all baby boys below the age of two in Bethlehem and the surrounding region to be killed. This was described in the Bible as a time of "weeping and loud lamentation", for the dear children were "no more". The killing of babies en masse is not at all Christmassy is it? The first Christmas really wasn't very much at odds with the lethal weariness of 2020.
But there was some festivity
Nevertheless, many of our festivities still originate from events at the first Christmas. Not everything was dark. Angels appeared to shepherds and announced "good news that will cause great joy for all the people". A bright choir of heavenly beings appeared and praised God. The shepherds went home jubilant after visiting the baby. "Magi" (wise men) from the east made long journeys to see Jesus, following a bright star in the sky, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
The birth of Jesus was announced as the birth of a Saviour. This came after 500 years of moral, political, and spiritual decay and a general climate of a dereliction and hopelessness. The people of Israel held on to the promise of a Saviour as the tiny glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Here, finally, the Saviour was born, and he would provide hope for the whole world. This was the cause of rejoicing that first Christmas.
Where darkness met light
But there seems an uneasy rift between the rejoicing of the angel, the shepherds, and the Magi on one hand, and the pain of a woman and decree of massacre on the other. Christmas was the site of a messy meeting of darkness with light.
Today we seem to celebrate Christmas like it's escapism, a suppression of all awful things for a day. But Christmas wasn't meant to be that. We don't adorn our houses with fairy lights just to outshine darkness for a short-lived season. We don't feast on turkey just to forget hunger and scarcity for one indulgent day.
The Christmas carols show us that. They allude expressly to the brokenness of the world. But remarkably, they celebrate Christmas as our eternal remedy, not as mere morphine for the pain.
- "A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices / For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn" (O Holy Night)
- "No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground / He comes to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found." (Joy to the World)
- "Light and life to all he brings, ris'n with healing in his wings. / Mild he lay his glory by, born that man no more may die." (Hark the Herald Angels Sing)
Christmas 2020 has brought darkness and light very close together. 24 December was overcast by the shadows of a COVID-stricken world; midnight marked a hasty and artificial transition into (an attempt at) a bubbly Christmas Day; now, the midnight stroke into 26 December supposedly ushers us back into a broken reality. Where darkness met light on 24 December 2020, many homes saw it as a dreamy excursion.
But that's not what Christmas is. Where darkness met light on the first Christmas, it was no temporary suppression. The angel, shepherds, and Magi could rejoice in the messy circumstances because the birth of the Saviour offered a hope that transcended brokenness not merely by suppressing or outshining it, but by mending it.
The baby Jesus was God our Creator, in the form of a human being. He had decided to enter our broken world, on a mission to take on our sin upon himself as a human being. He did this by accepting an execution he didn't deserve, so that we now owe no outstanding moral debt. Thus he rids us of guilt, not by talking us out of it or bending morals flippantly for us, but by paying for the guilt himself. Because of Jesus, then, we can live in the freedom of forgiveness.
We're now connected with the God who made us, and not in a posture of fear but in a familial embrace. It is reverent as a chorus by candlelight, cosy as a huddling by the fire, gratifying as the receiving of gifts. Christmas was the beginning of this. 33 years later after Jesus was born, it was accomplished for good when he was executed and then rose from the dead.
This Christmas, festivities were broken. Carols sounded a bit too jolly. Fairy lights felt a bit too sparkly. Hugs felt a bit too close. But the first Christmas didn't swell sugar-high tunes either. There was pain and it wasn't forgotten. But instead, the pain was reckoned with, and produced a deep and honest joy anyway, because the birth of Jesus mended the brokenness after all.
2020 has really been something. This Christmas, how did the darkness meet the light for you?
