This is a follow up to our recent post on Holy Madness, in which we discover it is all secretly a Christmas theme.

The god moved his arm and galaxies swayed.  He blinked and the universe shifted.  It expanded and contracted with his breath.  His light filled all space.

He smiled.

He said, “let there be a day and a night and a day without any darkness,” and it was so.  He said, “let there be a new star,” and it was so.  He said, “let there be choirs of angels singing,” and it was so.  He smiled wider, and the millions of trillions of stars shone brighter.

“And let me be a helpless baby,” and it was so.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid

Peace, but not as the world understands peace. His peace is different. The world sees peace as the absence of violence. They make a desert, and call it peace. The Savior makes the desert blossom like a rose, and calls it peace. His peace is a synonym for victory.

But not victory as the world understands it either.

The victory that is won by God as a newborn babe.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

We’ve had a lot of errands to run at night, around town and out into the empty.  We’ve been looking at the Christmas lights.  We have decided we have a lot of respect for the single strand of lights.  It usually runs along a fence or sometimes an eave or around a window.  It often looks a little tired.

But a street with single strands on nearly every house has more cheer about it than a street with one house lit to the nines.

I like a house lit to the nines.  My own house is an elegant and tasteful blaze.   Yet there is something affecting about that little strand of lights.

It is someone showing their devotion to a celebration and a standard even if that standard doesn’t make them look good.

It is the equivalent of what some sociologists call the decent poor.  It is the nameless virtue (#namelessvirtue)

It is the Christ deciding to become a mortal, starting out as a baby.

Santa Claus is fatherly but old.  Appropriate.  Because Christmas has a family sweetness about it, but it also is fleeting.

Much of the images of Christmas are either cozy and domestic–inside, by the fire, the family gathered around the tree–or aerial, like the song above.  Soaring through the air.  Great open spaces covered in snow under a vast and starlit night.  That is also appropriate.  I have noticed that at moments of great family closeness, everyone else seems a million miles away.

We got a Christmas card this year that said something like “celebrating the birth of the great I AM.”  It is a juxtaposition that startles if you let it, a little baby being born and the great I AM, Jehovah Lord of Armies and a helpless infant.

As a holiday, though, Christmas is just about Him.  At Easter, we do and should think about our personal benefit in tough and intimate terms from the Saviour’s victory over death and sin.  At Christmas, its all about the baby.  So its appropriate that we celebrate Him in all his aspects.  It’s appropriate that it makes for a great party.

Enjoy the season, enjoy the Christ child, enjoy your family. And if you have a moment for some cozy quiet, curl up and enjoy one of these links.

“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

Enjoy these goodies. (more…)

Tomorrow I will have to get the paper bags that I forgot, and maybe one or two other things.  It will probably be crowded aisles and uncrowded shelves.  The people will be tired.  Not jolly, but mostly kind.

You last minute shoppers, I salute you.  You care enough to put together a Christmas even when its frantic.  You care enough to vow you’ll get going sooner next year, and when you invariably don’t, to decide to do the best you can with the short time you have left.  You love Christmas too much.  The great hopes you have are too merry for this earth, so you put your prep off until you have no choice, and you head out to follow the star and see if it will lead you to something wonderful even in the chaos and mess of a stable.

The angel choirs practiced for millennia.  The shepherds came as they were.

Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? or naked, and clothed thee?

Joseph and Mary would not have asked this question.  They knew when they had done this for Jesus.  They did it in Bethlehem.

Jesus’ helplessness as a little baby made their care for him meaningful.

And because what is done to any is as if done to Christ–“inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren,” he says, and he experiences all of our woes and, I believe, our joys alongside us–our care for our own little children is meaningful to Him also.

People who act need things and people to be acted upon in order for their actions to be meaningful.  These can be the helpless, like infants.  At the other end of the scale, the fully adult and fully divine risen Jesus, full of power, is also someone to be acted upon.  All our actions act upon him, therefore all our acts our meaningful.

It is interesting that our lives seem to go full circle.  The most helpless and the most powerful both occupy something of a similar role in our lives.

“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom.”

“Jesus, Lord at his birth.”

“For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”

Enjoy these goodies. (more…)

Once upon a time there was a kingdom so orderly that its laws and institutions had all sorts of branchings and variations, like a healthy, growing tree.

One of those odd little variations was the Christmas King. (more…)

Every year there is an end to Christmas day and an end to the Christmas season.  It is always a bit melancholy.  Each of us will have a last Christmas of our life.  That will be a bit melancholy too.

Our kind of Christmas will end someday too.  Someday there will be a Last Christmas within the circle of the world.

But this year I have had an intimation that at the true last Christmas, Christ will be there.  It will not be sad at all. (more…)

Each holiday has its own character and its own image.  Our American 4th of July is about sun, noise, grilling, healthy flesh.  The image of Thanksgiving is a good appetite and the stuffed extended family lolling about afterwards, desultorily playing at games.  Christmas is unusual–it has two main images

The first theme is the happy, domestic one.  It’s the family gathered around the  tree.  Lights are dim.  There’s probably a fire and a fireplace.  People are happy and smiling.

The other image is the spiritual feeling of the clear, cold night sky with the remote and beautiful stars.  Christmas spirituality is the spirituality of looking up at the night sky when everything is still.

Our normal image of the birth of Jesus combines the two.  We see the cozy stable, warmly and dimly lit by a lamp, with the small family gathered in around, and the animals gathered in, and the shepherds and such.  Then around them the night and the stars, especially the one bright star.

Easter is a morning holiday.  Christmas is perhaps more about Christmas Eve than Christmas morning. Certainly there are more rituals associated with Christmas Eve then there are our Christmas morning. Christmas Eve is when the candles are lit, when the children act out the nativity, when we dig dirt to fill our paper bags for luminarias, when we set up the stockings and put out milk for Santa.

The other night holiday is spooky.  Christmas Eve isn’t.   But the night, the clear, cold night, still takes the holiday out of the ordinary.

Sunrise and sunset are great for casual glancing enjoyment in passing. But if you really look at them they seem to demand something more. You see that there is a glory about them that approaches the transcendent.  You want to have an appreciation that is worthy of the site. You want to commune. And you can’t.  If you try–when I try–frustration results.

For many people, Christmas is a pretty frustrating holiday.  I love Christmas, personally, but I understand the frustration.  Christmas isn’t only a time to have a shindy.  There is a spiritual element there, a grandeur, and it demands that you reach out for it, and your reaching always never quite succeeds.  You never fully commune.

Today I told my family that I had had a dream.  When they were grown, I said, and I and their mother were gone, I dreamed that on Christmas Eve when all was quiet and still, when the only light was from the tree and the dying fire, I would be permitted to return.  I would be permitted to sit by the tree and remember when they were young.  Perhaps, I told them, if they briefly awoke they might hear the sound of rocking, and know that the old ties were still there.

The truth is that I already spend part of Christmas Eve night that way.  After the children are all gone to bed and I’ve finished wrapping and bustling, I usually sit by the dying fire for awhile.  I contemplate the lights, and think of Christmases that have gone, and the Christmases to come when my children will be grown.  My wife says I puzzle her.  For someone who loves Christmas so much, she says, I can get remarkably melancholic about it.

Remembering old days, my childhood days and my children’s, that will not come again, is part of the melancholy.  Another part is my inability to fully penetrate into the heart of Christmas.  I have never fully gone inside.

But I keep trying.  Because there is a voice that whispers.  It promises that someday I will be at the very manger, and all the old Christmases will be one.

Someone someday will celebrate the last Christmas. (more…)

Our ward Primary President introduced the singing of “Silent Night” this way: (more…)

Christmas is fundamentally a family holiday. We should celebrate the Christ child, but we don’t need to be lugubrious about it. We don’t need to suppress family fun because the family is in the image of the Holy Family and pleasing to God. Your family relation is part of the deep spiritual core of Christmas, as two overlooked passages of Christmas scripture show. (more…)