Christmas Eve, 2010
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.”
“This will be a sign for you: You will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
What is it about Christmas that makes it so special?
We know what it is about Christmas that can make it a hassle.
Rushing around to take care of those last minute details—forget the fact that you started to get ready months ago!
Getting the schedules of family and friends to mesh enough so that everybody ends up in the same place, if not on the day, then at least on a mutually agreeable day.
“…finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer…”—how easy it is to start sounding like Ebeneezer Scrooge!
There are lots of reasons why Christmas can be a hassle.
But putting your finger on what it is about Christmas that makes it so special is a little harder to do.
Thank heaven, there are some clues.
Each of us has something, often half-buried in our memory, that makes Christmas special for us as individuals.
We may think of these “somethings” as largely sentimental, but they are important.
It may be a certain food that you just naturally expect on the menu as part of your Christmas dinner.
Or a custom you’re used to observing: Maybe Christmas isn’t Christmas for you if you don’t go caroling in the neighborhood.
(Gee! When was the last time I did that?)
Or open gifts, whether on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, but at a certain time, maybe in a certain order, depending upon how many people have crowded into the living room.
Or maybe it’s something really irrational, like my insisting every year on having a tree that is taller than I am.
These are all highly individual expectations, of course, but if they aren’t fulfilled, we find ourselves saying: “Christmas doesn’t seem like Christmas this year.”
When our expectations are fulfilled, on the other hand, they add up to a special kind of atmosphere, which we who “keep Christmas” feel it absolutely necessary to create and maintain throughout the season.
Each one of us may have his or her individual preferences—things that help make Christmas more like Christmas—but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the lights.
What is it about Christmas that makes it so special?
It’s the lights.
I bet some of you thought I was going to say “snow” instead of “lights”.
I’ll admit, I, like most people, will take a white Christmas whenever I can get one, like the pretty good one we’ve got going out there right now, because there weren’t that many white Christmases back in Jersey where I grew up.
But if we don’t have snow on Christmas, well, we can get by—barely—but we can get by.
We can do without snow, but can you imagine celebrating Christmas without the lights?
Can anyone remember a time when you celebrated Christmas without lights?
Walk or drive up and down the streets of any town or city and look at the thousands of lights on display—house after house, wherever you look.
If people haven’t strung lights on their houses or put them in the windows, they’ve set up their Christmas tree so that it can be seen outside.
That’s a lot of electricity, I know, but even if we were to have a power failure, people would still put candles in their windows the way we’ve put them in the church’s windows tonight.
Think about the rows upon rows of luminaria you’ve seen lining so many streets and driveways.
Christmas is a festival of lights.
So what if the holiday itself is a makeover of the celebration of the winter solstice, marking the beginning of the end of winter!
Even the ancients could sense that they were participating in something beyond their understanding when they lit their fires to coax the light of the sun back to a wintry earth.
Indeed, what else are we doing when we outline our streets and houses and festoon our trees with brightly shining lights—what else are we doing but trying to coax a little bit of heaven, as we imagine it, down into our lives?
If we cannot pave our streets with gold, then at least for a brief time we can line them with light and catch the stars of the sky in the evergreens and make the doorways of our houses into glowing beacons for travelers in the night.
And why we go to all this trouble to transform the everyday into a vision of heaven is the thing about Christmas that makes it so special: There has never been a time when God has come closer to us than when Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, when the light of God’s love came into the world as a helpless child, himself in need of love and care, as well as food, clothing, and shelter.
Wrapping him in swaddling cloths, as we wrap a newborn baby in a receiving blanket today, is all that his mother Mary could do for the Christ of God, when he was born.
And setting the night aflame with glowing lights and flickering candles is the least that you and I can do to celebrate the holy birth, to light the way for the Christ child, to bring ourselves as close to God as we possibly can.
Remembering God’s closeness to every human being that first Christmas.
And the wondrous light that shone in the darkness so long ago—never to be extinguished.
May the lights of Christmas that surround us this night awaken us once again to the light of God’s love—God’s gift to a needy world—and may that gracious light shine forth not only in our streets and in our homes, but in our hearts and in our lives this Christmas and every day of the year!
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