Fr. Bob’s Greeting – December 2024 Enews

It cannot be denied that we have commercialized Christmas, and we have sanitized it. Take, for example, the Christmas card and the image of the nativity, a scene which is always presented as a tableau of angelic choirs. A babe in a manger, Mary and Joseph in clean clothes, and humble sweet shepherds with well-scrubbed and properly posed animals and richly dressed wise men with fabulous gifts: It all looks like a Radio City Music Hall production, but it is not an accurate portrayal of the first Christmas.

To begin with, take the shepherds, they were the dregs of the earth. On the whole, shepherds were conniving thieves, a nasty lot, the lowest of the low. Then we have the magic, certainly wise men of a sort but not people of the covenant. They were looked upon as outsiders not to be trusted. Mary and Joseph were poor peasants who wore travel-worn dirty clothes. Bethlehem was not an upscale town or city like Beverly Hills but a scruffy village of no account. The manger was not a nice crib from Ethan Allen but a feeding station for animals. The nativity story is dressed up to look like a set you would see in an animated movie!

We are missing the point of incarnation, and just what is the point? It is that God came into and among our human existence with all its limitations and flaws. Christmas is a sign of God’s desire to embrace our brokenness, to feed our hungry souls. Christmas truly shows us love among the ruins of our lives. Then this child grew up, and he taught us to embrace the lost and the broken. He broke bread with sinners, he went out of his way to talk with the Samaritan woman at the well who had five husbands, he gave a second chance to Zacchaeus, a corrupt politician, he touched an untouchable person with leprosy, and he died between two thieves who were most likely shepherds.

I suggest that the only way we will find the meaning of Christmas is to discard the pretty Christmas card images of the birth of Jesus and rediscover that Christ is here where he has always wanted to be among the straw hanging out there because he knows that is where we hang out. That is what the stable scene of Jesus’ birth is all about. The word became flesh among us and for us Jesus wanted to be close to us. He brought love among us and the ruins, the ruins of a broken world. That is what Christmas is all about. It is an enormously unrelenting kind of feast. It is not sentimentality; it is not soft; it is God’s heartfelt longing desire to be with us. Why? Because he wants to spend eternity with us.