IThis year my Christmas will look very different. Not just because it will be the first without my family but because I am in a different culture entirely.
I thought that I had a good Christian view of Christmas. But being in a country where the possibility of a white Christmas is pretty much nil.
Also in a culture where you are very much Christian and yet don't go to church on Christmas day is alien.
It has lead me to ponder the bare bones of Christmas. What it is and why we celebrate it. The other day I saw the Grinch stole Christmas for the first time and I wonder if that is the secular perception that it is just consumerism gone crazy.
Christmas comes from the mass of Christ we celebrate his birth that is not new news to most people. Most people have random childhood nativity memories. I as Mary in my nursery nativity play swapped josephs half way to Bethlehem. Because Joseph one decided that he would rather be a shepherd with guys brother. I know of stories of the first innkeepers saying come in we have cable or wise men running off with the gold.
But where does that leave us with unto us a child is born unto us a son is given. Because god himself intervening in human history to change it and our fate in a world where everyone had turned away (psalm 53:2-3) was not enough? The creator and architect of our very universe would wear human flesh and come to earth as we do cocooned in our mother. Vulnerable, dependant and naked. He showed us what it means to love to be close to god and the life that he would have us live. Perhaps that is the point him and only him our god is with us.
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