An Advent for All

"The Adoration of the Shepherds" by Gerard von Honthorst, 1622

Peace. Love. Joy. Goodwill.

The meaning of the Christmas story—the ancient and beloved event we call “The Nativity” and the season called “Advent”—is one of such depth and complexity that it can scarcely be summed up by just one or two of those particular words, themes or phrases common in these last days of the year. It is profound and it is complex, and yet we often fall back on a specific and limited vocabulary to describe the atmosphere surrounding this simple, joyous holiday. It seems easy, after all, to associate particular words with this season, as if in those words and their modern meanings may be wrapped up the whole meaning and impact of the Christmas story.

Peace is one such word. It is easy to take the words of the angel chorus to heart and with them define the whole of the Christmas story: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.” One may indeed take great comfort in asserting that the Christmas story is one in which a true peace enters the world through the birth of Christ. As I wrote previously, however, it seems almost equally valid to say that the birth of Christ brought about the very opposite of peace. As Christ Himself said later, He came not to bring peace, but a sword. Brother against brother, parents against children. Siding with Him was siding against the world. The peace proclaimed by the Heavenly Host was quite real at the moment of his birth and it remains very much real today, but it is an eternal peace, rather than a worldly one. At Christmas we celebrate not a real, tangible, worldwide peace—it represents neither an end to war nor to human sin and suffering—but rather the hope and belief that such a peace is both forthcoming and inevitable. As we are reminded so often, and rarely more tragically than the events of this past weekend in Newtown, Connecticut, the peace we are promised has not come in its fullness. The peace of "God with us" remains something that can be and felt and experienced inwardly, but will only be truly understood in time. In that sense, Christmas very much is a holiday of peace, and we can say so with confidence even as we are bombarded by news of pain and suffering in our world.

We might also say (and often do) that this is a holiday of love. Such is a theme (like peace) woven throughout the various Christmas hymns and carols that pervade this season, and indeed it is certainly present in abundance within the Christmas story. So sums up the Apostle John in perhaps that most famous of all passages: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” Christ was the love of God manifest, of that there can be little doubt. And indeed, among skeptic, pagan, and Christian alike, the season is awash in manifestations of a sort of humanly love that seems eerily absent throughout much of the rest of the year. Call it a product of excess commercialism or of some sort of herd mentality if you wish, but it is both present and visible, though it is only a pale, blurry (yet still beautiful) reflection of the true love of God. People give more to those in need, they find enjoyment in blessing others, their face shines with kindness and mercy… it truly is a season of love.

And what about joy? What about glory? What about salvation? What about the unsurpassable miracle of childbirth or the glorious, inexhaustible beauty of God Incarnate?

There is certainly no shortage of themes within the Christmas story; and it is this very fact that makes the holiday fundamentally unique among all the holidays and traditions of all the religions in the world. In Christmas alone is embodied those features that make Christianity—whether Protestant or Catholic—wholly unique among the world’s religions, for Christianity does not strive to be merely a religion that preaches peace, love and joy; it strives to be the very embodiment and perfection of those things on Earth.

This audacity makes Christianity unique among the world’s religions (more and more as our world loses its absolutes). It is remarkable, but it is rendered even more remarkable at Christmas, when opposites can truly coexist. Christ is love, but following him means that we may be hated. Christ brought peace but the gesture was something very much resembling warmongering. The nativity was joyful, but made the sorrow of Good Friday inevitable. It is the Christmas story wherein every disparate piece of human society is both physically and symbolically brought together to a single location in a single moment. Mary and Joseph, the common, faithful, orthodox Jewish parents are there, of course, along with the fearful working class shepherds and the mystical wise men from the east. These latter individuals, with their peculiar gifts (could they even have realized at the time the dramatic, messianic symbolism of the gold, frankincense and myrrh?), provide perhaps one of the most easily forgotten symbols of Christmas.

To think that a people of such great intellect—scholars, philosophers, mystics, or some combination of all three (as the wise men are believed to be)—could be drawn over such great distances in hopes of satisfying not a spiritual hunger, but a very human curiosity and scholarship, is something worthy of awe. The wise men were drawn by little more than intellectual fascination with a certain celestial aberration and arrived in Jerusalem only to be confronted by the King of Israel himself. After passing whatever test Herod had in store for them, perhaps by some demonstration of the faith of their own nation, they descended on Bethlehem and were at once brought to their knees, worshipping with exceeding joy, being led to true belief in the presence of nothing more than a baby born in the humblest of conditions imaginable. It is here, in this lowly child, that they found precisely what every other philosopher sought but had never dreamed of actually achieving—an all-encompassing philosophy of everything. A true quintessence in which all other thoughts and theories could be enraptured and made whole and complete. To quote Chesterton yet again, the Magi had found the truth: “The philosophy of the Church is universal. The philosophy of the philosophers was not universal. Had Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle stood for an instant in the light that came out of that little cave, they would have known that their own light was not universal.”

The role-call at that improbable little event, then, is worth noting again and again: There are the parents (and their all-important child), the shepherds, and the Magi, all present at some point somewhere within the vicinity of that first Christmas (though the visit of the Magi might have happened as many as two years later). And then we mustn’t forget that there is the King of Israel himself, who was not physically present at the time of Christ’s birth, but might as well have been, as knowledge of his existence couldn’t have been far from the minds of Mary and Joseph, especially as word from the Magi arrived to them of the monarch’s secret plans. Herod was very much present at the birth, looming over that sorry lot like an evil, infanticide-prone shadow from his palace in Jerusalem.

Those who first embraced the Christ-child for who He truly was formed a diverse lot, unquestionably, but they also had much in common. They shared their devotion to the child, for certain, and they had their desire to know Him—in this alone they might have found sufficient cause for brotherhood, but there is much beyond this. They also share common ground in that, in their striving after the Christ child, they—each in their own way—utterly defied the world’s expectations of them. The father would not be confined to social conventions, but took Mary, whom he had never known, to be his wife. He chose accept (perhaps even gladly) the mockery and exclusion of his caste for the sake of his seemingly-dysfunctional little family. The mother, likewise, bore the brunt of social expectation; gladly, though not by choice. The shepherds, working-class men engaged in their labors, abandoned their flock and, at least for a time, ceased to be shepherds for the sake of seeking the truth found in the words of the heavenly host. The magi, for all of their reason, must have seemed utter fools to cross the face of the earth; to defy a king; and to offer valuable Earthly treasures in exchange for the opportunity to reach out and touch the face of heaven with their own hands.

Only Herod played the expected role, and it was he who was most resoundingly defeated. In fact, it was not only Herod, but all earthly kings and rulers who were defeated by the birth of the king at the incarnation. Just as Malcolm Muggeridge noted that the crown of thorns worn by Jesus at the time of his death proved a mockery to every crown worn by every monarch, past and present, the manger that bore the Christ-child may have seemed lowly, but ultimately proved more grand and more exalted than the greatest of thrones.

The Christmas story, therefore, cannot be summed up merely in saying that it is a time of peace, or of love, or of joy, or of selflessness. Rather, it is a time for something much more, and all of these things echoing words and phrases are merely vague, shadowy manifestations of the truth.

Christmas is a time when scholarship and religion collide and are suddenly found to mesh into one powerfully strong fabric. It is a time when every disparate class of society may be found suddenly and unexpectedly unified; worshiping together in a cave in Bethlehem.