Christmas Come and Gone?

Our very own Andrew Dragos, architect of Seedbed.com from the very first days, director and producer of Seedbed’s Seven Minute Seminary, and the imagination and expertise behind Seedbed’s theological content vision—will be the author of the annual Wake-Up Call Christmas series. I am thrilled to welcome him to the helm for the next several days. I’ll see you back here January 1, 2023. (J.D. Walt)

Matthew 2:1–2 (NIV)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

CONSIDER THIS

Did you know the magi visited Jesus later in his childhood—up to two years later? While modern celebrations have collapsed the magi’s quest to worship Jesus into the Nativity, their homage to the newborn king was in reality offered in a home. Traditionally, the church observed the magi’s visit on January 6, known in the Christian calendar as Epiphany. This feast day celebrated the point in God’s salvation story where the expanse of his love reached the Gentiles, represented here by these unnamed, unnumbered pagan astrologers (see more on how that may have happened here). January 6 also serves as the bookend of Christmastide—the completion of the Twelve Days of Christmas. For most Christians in ages past, Christmas wasn’t a “one and done” ceremony.

But by now, the day after Christmas, most of us are itching to pull down the greens. Traditions specific to our families abounded. We delighted in the children’s delight, and we did our best to satisfy the sugary sentiments we hosted in the lead-up to December 25.

As I puzzle over how we can resist turning a holy feast day into a frenetic season with such a jarring conclusion, it brings to memory one of my favorite traditions from childhood: the caroling that reached far into Christmas morning. Beginning late in the evening on the night before Christmas, my church’s youth packed into cars and drove the snowy roads around to families in the church. Stepping out of our cars and onto on the host’s lawn, the youth would then erupt into carols and hymns. The church members would greet the youth at the door as they rubbed the sleep from their eyes. But eventually they’d join in the merriment and pass plates of homemade sweets to the multitude of young people singing their hearts out, announcing the good news through song.

I’m sure neighbors drew back their curtains, the street’s children mistaking the commotion for Santa and his elves. But any children in the host home would listen in with wonder, lining the steps that carried them down from their bedroom. And the year you were old enough to join the procession through the neighborhoods was as large a rite of passage as anything else in my community. It was a splendid, intense tradition. It is still practiced today in my parents’s church. In many ways, it defies our modern sensibilities, and likely hearkens back to urban cobblestone streets and villages in the countryside. There was room for door-to-door merriment back then, even the kind that lasted until morning.

But it’s impossible to be merry at every moment of life. Festivals serve their purpose. Still, we tire of unending pomp, and now, the new year beckons. But what happens if we treat Christmas like we treat the ornaments on our trees? Christmas is not something to put on with care, then pull down in haste as we shuffle through the days of our lives. All of the indispensable Christmas virtues we’ve learned along the way, either from Charles Dickens, our hometown church, or our family of origin, can obscure rather than awaken us to the reality of God and his kingdom. The day after Christmas can cast our souls down further whence they first began. As we approach the New Year, perhaps some of us wrestle with walking the season alone, or wonder if, along with Mr. Scrooge, some day our memory will go on unmourned, or even worse, unremembered.

That’s why God is not interested in merely enhancing our customs and sentiments, however inescapable or special they may be. The first Christmas was an intrusion, and one that wouldn’t go away. It carried forth. In Jesus, God joined himself to human flesh, and upon completing his earthly mission, he lifted our humanity with him heavenward.

Far from merely making our Christmas better, God makes it holy. And this holiness, uninhibited by the artificial boundaries we erect to mark the the end of our festivities, wants to seep deeper into our lives. Christmastime unmasks our cosmic reality and reveals it for what it is: menacing yet finally surrendered, frail yet always held together, frivolous yet full of meaning. In other words, subservient to its King.

The magi embarked on a long journey westward. They followed the star, and saw it through until they beheld the king of the Jews. May we glance at what we’ve made of Christmas, yet save our gaze for Jesus. Better still, in our looking at Jesus, may everything else come into sharp focus, and be seen the way it’s supposed to be.

THE PRAYER

King Eternal, you who assumed a body with all of its boundaries that we might be filled with life overflowing: I fix my eyes on you. Orient my heart to the ever-expanding love you have for me, and purify my time, my habits, my celebrations—indeed, all of me, with the presence of your Spirit. Fortify my soul that I might be conformed to your image, this day and everyday. Amen.

THE QUESTION

How long does the Christmas celebration last in your home? Does twelve days feel too long? How would you characterize the time between December 25 and the New Year, and your posture toward it? Indifference? Excitement? Apprehension? Melancholy? Is Jesus Lord of that time, too?

For the Awakening,
Andrew Dragos

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