So someone else beat me to the punch this year, but happily he didn't write about the musicality of the season. Check out his article on the storied ghosts of Christmas here, much recommended! I know Charlie Brown really tried to get the true meaning of Christmas, but it's depressing. I know the Grinch hinted at it, but the roast beast just doesn't cut it. Even my local Christian radio station seems to be missing the boat, literally playing things like "Let it snow' and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" endlessly but ignoring the many great sacred classics save an occasional instrumental nod from the Trans-Siberian Light Orchestra, at least there's no Santa Baby, that's a plus, right? It sounds more like a seasonal mall sound track than anything else, especially a Christian station at Christmas! While I don't mind that stuff, sadly, like Charlie Brown, I am more than a little frustrated with our whole culture focusing on the tinsel and the glitz and ignoring the glaring ache that this season entails for many. It seems we can either be insipidly happy or alone in our grief which often manifests as anger towards the season in its entirety.
But if you hate Christmas because you hurt, you aren't alone! It is a problem native to all humanity, not just the modern post-christian west, our problem is the same as the ancient pre-christian east or even the insipidly pseudo-christian America of our nostalgic recollection. While Charlie Brown thinks he hankers after that nostalgic, idyllic ghost of Christmases past, there is no such history, no such reality, because that has never been what Christmas has been about nor is it the ache that haunts his heart like Marley in Ebenezor's bed chamber.
Many of the secular Christmas haters are happy to proclaim that Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th and that we're simply recycling an old pagan holiday, and I'm most happy to agree with them, and their point is? Men have always been religious, keenly interested and much afeared of the supernatural, at least until our materialistic modern age with its electric lights to forever drive off the dark of superstition and the utter night of ignorance, thinking we are quite something, as if we invented the physics behind the phenomenon, content in our assumption that it 'just happened,' and never questioning the Light behind our light and little realizing that by blinding their own eyes thereby, they are now the ignorant! That is why we demand a Light in the darkness, and celebrate its coming at the darkest time of the year, not because we know Jesus was born on that particular day but rather that His coming at the appointed time relieved the spiritual darkness in which the whole world languished and we celebrate the fact as his first coming at the darkest time of the year.
But our problem is we forget why we celebrate His coming, yay a baby, a light of the world, but why is that significant? His birth, while miraculous and marvelous and bright, is nothing, does nothing, rather it is His sinless life, His atoning death, and His conquering of death and darkness and sin forever by rising again to new life that we can sing and rejoice and make merry this time of year and all the year long! But we'd rather sit with our glitz and jingle, aching inside, making merry without, and wondering why we can't be happy when everybody else seems to be as well.
This is where the great sacred Christmas hymns come in, look past the first well known verse or chorus or the haunting instrumental and delve into the depth, the mystery, the sorrow, the joy, the meaning of this babe's incarnation, the very word made flesh. Only therein can we find meaning and true joy in this paradoxical season of utmost joy and aching loneliness and unrelenting sorrow, only in Him can all find their true 'comfort and joy.' Santa and Grinches are fine and fun, but let us not forget the true meaning behind it all!
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