“Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One. Angels with Shepherds glorify Him, the wise men journey with the star; since for our sake the eternal God was born as a little child” (Kontakion of the Nativity).
In Western nations, the Feast of the Nativity is one of the most widely celebrated days of the year — so much so that even non-Christians are drawn to it. Despite themselves, they celebrate the day, and by that very fact they are showing some sort reverence to Christ, some, to be sure, far more than others. The day is set apart from the rest, and is cherished as being something special. The fact that Christmas is treated with awe and reverence demonstrates the way Christ has brought the light of grace to the whole of the earth, and no one who is touched by it is left the same. Post-Christian humanity can only be what it is because of what Christ has brought to the world. Secular humanism would make no sense, with its attraction to individual or personal rights, without humanity being drawn to recognize the value and good of the human person- something which Christianity brought to the world through its Christological and Trinitarian debates. The significance of the person was to be raised in light of the revelation of the Trinity, for it is the mystery of the three persons as one Godhead which led the West to explore what it means for someone to be a person. Honest men and women, Christian and non-Christian alike, recognize this, and work to promote the Christian heritage in the world because of it. But in others, those who have a hate for all that is Christian, there is a desire to hide this truth from the world, possibly with the hope that by doing so, they can render Christianity insignificant.
We should not make the mistake and view this as a cultural battle, where we fight non-Christians as enemies to be hated and vanquished; rather we must recognize the spiritual conflict which is brought to light by the advent of Christ, and work, with and through Christ, to help people overcome the darkness within. When the light of truth shines forth, that which once was hid in the darkness is brought to light. The response to the light is to either accept it and what it reveals, or to struggle against it and to find a way to extinguish it. One’s reaction to the light reveals something about oneself. When the darkness within is revealed, Christians should provoke it, because that ends up making it stronger, allowing it to spread and find a home in ourselves. We cannot follow the ways of darkness to fight against the darkness, for all that will happen is we become one with the darkness itself. Instead, we must follow the way of light, the way of love, and attract people to the light so they will set aside the darkness, and then let the light of truth shine within.
In the time of Christ, Herod tried to destroy Christ, to end the first Christmas. The Holy Family fled to Egypt, and went on to live out their lives there without seeking for God to render vengeance upon him. And yet, the Holy Family, and those who came to them, celebrated Christmas, letting the love of God shine in their hearts without any concern of what others were doing about it. Today we find another effort to bring the celebration of Christ to a halt by two otherwise antagonistic sources: radically fundamentalistic, anti-Catholic Protestantism and secular humanism. The fact that one claims allegiance to Christ and yet wants to override the celebration of his birth should tell us something about their fidelity: it is illusory and of the spirit of anti-Christ. “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already” (1 John 4:2-3). The feast of the nativity celebrates God’s coming into the flesh in Jesus Christ; a denial of this celebration is related to the denial of the central core of Christianity: the incarnation. It is understandable why atheistic secular humanism would deny the incarnation and, in its militant forms, would seek to suppress any public proclamation of Christ’s birth. But for those who claim the Christian faith, and yet are hostile to those who find joy in Christ’s birth, what else can it be that leads one to this than some form of apostasy?
The claim of some, to be sure, is that Christmas is a pagan holiday, and so Christians should have nothing to do with it. It isn’t hard for one to see how puerile such a charge is. While it is clear that the 25thof December was an important day for many pagans, Christians were able to use the symbols associated with the day as pointers to Christ, showing us why Christmas cannot be said to be pagan, just as the Bible itself is not pagan despite the fact that the very idea of writing was invented by the pagans. Christians have long understood that pagan traditions and ideas often lead to Christ, thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit preparing the nations for him. Christians can use and employ pagan symbols, because Christians can transform them under the grace of Christ for Christian use, even as a pagan can themselves be transformed by the grace of Christ into an adopted son of God. Jesus was the expectation of the nations, showing the ultimate hopes and dreams of the people of the world were acceptable by God, and that they find their fulfillment in Christ. He brought forth a new era, not by destroying the things of old, but by perfecting them. And if we seek the perfection of the things of the world in and through Christ, then we must look to others, those who oppose Christ in one form or another, and seek for their well-being, which cannot be accomplished as long as we see them as hostile enemies to be overcome. This does not mean that we should hide our joy from others, and hide our celebration of the birth of Christ if someone complains: far from it. Christ is the light of the world and has brought that light into our own lives. “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel, but on a stand, that those who enter may see the light” (Luke 11:33). It is for this reason that the celebration of Christ can be, and will be, public, because the response to God’s guiding light in our life is one of love which lets that light continue to shine forth and be shared by others. We must not forget this, and so we must remember that our demonstration of our love for Christ should be that: love for Christ, and anything else beyond that diminishes our own response to Christ.
From all eternity, God chose when and where he wanted the incarnation to take place; since God has a just reason for all that he does, we must admit that it took place when God felt it was most fitting. We might not understand why it was done when and where it was done and not some other time or place, but, from God’s vast understanding, God knew when the incarnation would have the greatest functional effect (ontologically, one could say any time would have equal value). “But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!‘” (Gal. 4:4-7). The law (and here, we mean, the Torah) was a good established by God, but, like many goods, its purpose and end was misunderstood by many who lived under it. The law was a means by which God prepared the world for the incarnation; it was established and put over the children of Israel so they could be a sign unto the rest of the world about God – about God’s holiness, about human dependency upon God, about God’s desire for justice, about God’s loving heart. And because its demands were just, the law was capable of showing the whole of humanity how far it was, by itself, from fulfilling the expectations of God. The hopes and dreams of Israel were to find a special place with God. He told Israel that their desires would be met through the law. In the incarnation of Christ, this promise was fulfilled in a way beyond the expectations or comprehension of the children of Israel. The law was used to establish the land, and the genealogical line, in which the God-man, Jesus Christ, was to be born. Fulfillment of the law was not, as was believed, to be a thing of mere obedience, but rather an eschatological event. Once it had been fulfilled (an accomplishment based upon the whole life of Christ, from the time of his conception to that of his death and resurrection) its function changed, and, like John the Baptist, it is to find itself diminished, to give up claims of authority, and to put itself to the feet of Christ. It is not to be rejected but respected for what it has done in salvation history, and its final act was to be that of kenosis, of giving itself over to Christ, so that Christ can lead the world to new and greater things.
Interestingly enough, if we look to history, we note that the first nativity of Christ was celebrated by pagans, and because of this, we should not be surprised that the feast day is one which is, in part, united to pagan sentiments. This is not a bad thing, but rather, shows how God draws all to him according to where they are at. God was the one who used pagan traditions to lead pagans to him, even as he used Jewish traditions to lead the Jews to him. The wise men, probably Zoroastrian astrologers, saw a sign in the heavens which they understood as having cosmic significance: a special child, a king, whose great destiny even the stars declared. “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him’” (Matthew 2:1-2). Despite the guesses of scholars, we do not know what star it is they saw, and all attempts to find a specific star fails to understand the point. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps. 19:1-4). The star in the heavens, which the magi read as being a sign for them to go and search for Christ, did not have to be a new star, but it could have been an old one for which the magi found a new meaning. A partial truth (that of the fact that the heavens proclaim the glory of God) led to the “science” of astrology; it was because this truth was there, despite the way humanity had perverted it, that the magi were able to be led to Christ by astrology, and, in that encounter, be forever changed. “Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world as the light of wisdom. For by it those who worshipped the stars were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Orient from on high. O Lord, glory to Thee” (Troparian of The Nativity).
In the incarnation God the Son, the Logos, became not a general man, but a particular man, that of Jesus Christ. To be human, the Logos had to take all that was of human nature upon himself. He had to be conceived in the womb of the Theotokos, he had to be born, he had to live through childhood, and he had to die. All of these are a part of the common destiny of humanity. Just has death has taken on a new meaning because of the death and resurrection of Christ, so has all aspects of human life, including its birth, been given new meaning. “Christ does not simply repair the damage to nature inflicted by sin; he raises nature to an intimate union with God.”[1]He became man so that we can all partake of the divine life, but he also became man and lived out all that is proper to human existence, so all aspects of our life could find their proper place in the eschaton. Christmas is the celebration of birth, not just the birth of Christ, but all birth, for all birth finds value in the birth of Christ. All birth is shown it has a divine value, because all birth finds itself as being a part of what it means to be in the image of God. While the eternal Son, eternally begotten of the Father, was born in the flesh, this economic action presents to us the eternal truth of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Triune-life of the Godhead. The Son became man and was born in time because the Son is the eternally-born one, born of the Father throughout all ages. Christmas celebrates the temporal manifestation of an eternal event – once we see this, we can see the glory of God in the Christ-child in the manger; the worship of Christ in the celebration of Christmas must be seen as the only proper response to this.
Christ is Born!
Glorify Him!
Footnotes
[1] Avery Dulles, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 55-6.
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