Making Christmas Endure

Making Christmas Endure
Wednesday, January 13, 2021 by Susan Lyttek

My decorations are down. Karl is home. My birthday is over and done with. Christmas is essentially over.

Or is it?

I keep some Christmas decorations, primarily Nativities, up year-round as you can see in the pictures.

One of my favorite TSO songs echoes the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge, “I will endeavor to keep Christmas all the year,” when they beg for a way to make Christmas last throughout the year. And to an extent, I have always done this. Christmas is my favorite holiday because it reminds us of God’s intervention in history. He is not some distant or ambivalent deity watching what we do and shaking his head. No. He comes right into the thick of our messiness and says I am with you.

Sometimes I feel guilty that Easter isn’t my favorite holiday. After all, the resurrection is what guarantees and provides eternal life for the believer. Since Jesus conquered the grave, he became the firstfruits of the new heaven and new earth that we will one day enjoy. Since he paid a price that we could never pay, we have hope. I treasure that and I understand the significance of it. But Christmas? It is the beginning of that story. Without being born as both God and man, Jesus couldn’t have fulfilled prophecy.

As a writer, I love foreshadowing. I strive to work it into all of my stories so that when someone gets to the end they say “I didn’t see that coming, but it makes sense.” This is Christmas in its purest form. Even though Daniel prophesied the time the Messiah would arrive, they didn’t see it coming because it didn’t make sense. Even though Micah prophesied that he would be born in Bethlehem, no one expected him to show up with the animals or be worshipped by shepherds. Why would the Messiah, the conquering king, be born as a poor child in a carpenter’s family? Why on Earth would he grow up in Nazareth of all places? Galilee was not where the who’s who of Judah lived. No. Instead that was the poor and the working class.

Nothing about Christmas made sense to the theologians of his day. It didn’t make sense, just as the suffering servant passages of Isaiah didn’t make sense, because they expected one coming of their savior. They expected him to come in might and power, as is predicted for his second coming.

And, perhaps, it is with that second coming in mind that I keep my eyes on Christmas.

There were a few who recognized and honored the signs. I think of Simeon, Anna and the wise men. They weren’t bothered by the pieces that seemed different than the expectations of the crowd. If it didn’t violate what they knew of the word of God, they allowed for Him to be bigger than their ideas, and for Him to fulfill prophecies as He saw fit.

Many of us strive to understand God. And if what we know of Him doesn’t make sense, we remake him in our image or put him into a box that we can analyze.

My question as I keep my eyes on Christmas is this, how can the created understand everything about the creator? How can the mite understand the elephant?

Yes, we should do our best to understand him, to learn about him and learn his word. Just because we can’t know everything about God should not shut down our intellect.

But still, we need to allow for our ignorance. We need to remember, day by day, that he is the God who made Christmas possible. He is the God who holds all time in his hands and will fulfill prophecy as he sees fit.

To that end, I will keep Christmas in my heart throughout the year.

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