One of the most disturbing episodes of the whole Christmas season is the ancient and thoroughly outdated custom of Christmas cards. Those of us who actually keep those mythical “Christmas card lists” find ourselves wondering who on earth that guy was, trying to remember how long ago that girl moved away, attempting to generate hundreds of unique, sentimental ways to say precisely the same thing, and hoping we’re not going to cheerfully ask some bachelor how the kids are doing.
Worse, you actually have to go buy Christmas cards. Since it is Christmas and everything, you usually experience a slight inclination, however brief, to get Christmas cards that have something to do with Christmas. Instead, your options are more like a neon green snowflake or a Santa Claus playing basketball and rapping “Have Yourself a Narly Little Christmas.” There is an entire section featuring poinsettias alongside totally unrelated Scriptural quotes, some of which are probably from Apocalypse (I’ve never checked). There are peaceful winter scenes, always with snow, always at night, always in the country, and always with something on the inside like, “Now. It really is the best time to buy a house.” Mickey Mouse will happily wish you, “Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays, Happy Saturnalia, and Happy December to all you Buddhists out there! (giggle),” all in the same card, and then there is the whole question of a Bart Simpson Christmas.
I think they do still sell Nativity cards.
Problem is, they all look the same: an anemic Blessed Mother, piously frozen over a chubby Baby Jesus; St. Joseph, pushing seventy, brooding somewhere in the background; several barn animals, spotless and unmoving; and three or four shepherds, well-groomed, tall, grandfatherly, and majestically resembling Robert E. Lee. Your local church (assuming the absence of the neon green snowflake) probably has a crèche like this too.
Is this really how it happened?
No.
A Messiah invaded our planet to save us from evil, and after two thousand years, we’ve made a rescue mission into a banal Little Golden Book™. If Christmas has become as saccharine as a Christmas card, it’s not the fault of the story itself.
For one thing, when it was actually happening, it hadn’t happened yet. It’s not like all the other Jews trudging to the census nodded piously at the pregnant Mary. The villainous innkeeper didn’t think, “Hmm. Looks like the Messiah’s about to be born. Well, I don’t have any room anyway. Tough.” He was no worse or better than any other motel with a glaring "no vacancy". Probably he only gave them a second thought because the woman was practically in labor.
Then there’s the shepherds. Our subconscious notion of a Nativity shepherd is fantastically inaccurate: a rustic, earthy fellow in tune with nature who reads Wordsworth. The real shepherds were sweaty, grimy after days of work in the field, and probably irritable. When the night sky flamed brighter than lightning and those workmen rushed from the glory to find the promised King, what did they see?
They didn’t saunter into a Hallmark™ open-air stable with fresh straw. The "manger" was a close, dank cave filled with real live smelly cows. In this absurd, freezing hole in the wall was a baby lying in a recently used trough. Beside the baby was a woman, not a mannequin, a woman rapturous as any mother would be. Beside the baby was a man, probably with his arm around the woman, and probably less than forty-five years old. Maybe the shepherds were more shocked at the angels than at the baby in a trough. Or maybe they weren’t—especially if they believed the angels.
For it is a fierce Love that chooses this pathetic a birth.
If Christ came today, He’d be born in a tiny town off the highway in a Motel 6. There’d be no vacancy, so He’d be born in a utility closet between the yellow mop bucket and the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign. Joseph would wrap Him in a denim jacket and lay Him in a milk crate stuffed with old newspapers. And angels would soar past the comfy homes of bishop and priest to alight above greasy car mechanics as they changed the oil on an old station wagon.
Yes, it is a fierce love. But there is also sense of irony here, almost humor. That’s why Christianity wasn’t always the respectable but worn-out belief it seems today. When Christianity was born, it was a radical, passionate creed preached by a few crazy old fishermen. In the world of Yahweh and the great dead deeds of mythology, their uncultured and slightly ridiculous story was blasphemous, insane, or at the very least, odd. As Chesterton said in The Everlasting Man, no god had ever become a man. No god had ever chosen to live as man lived, suffer as man suffered, die as man died. Yet these fishermen claimed that God Almighty had ripped off His glory to become just a slob like one of us.
What did those Christians think of Christmas? Well, Christmas is on December 25th because early Popes chose Christmas to replace the wild pagan feast of Saturnalia. Christmas was strong enough to outdo the old despairing revelry in the new festival of joy. What if New Orleans Catholics tried to replace Mardi Gras with Christmas, minus the wrongs but not the wild festival? Can you even imagine the attempt? Of course not. That sounds pretty dumb. We know now that Christmas is about candy canes and Bing Crosby and spending time with family. It is nice. It is not wild.
Of course, those early Christians and we modern ones believe the exact same story.
Were they just crazy—or are we?
