December and Christmas

            December began with endings. JUC finished its term in early December this year. Students and friends trickled away for home and country. Two fellow grads and I were given the task to care for campus while the rest of the staff went on holiday leave; so by the middle of Hanukkah the campus was empty and quiet, save three.

Plenty of chores and holiday activities kept us all quite busy as we continued with our own respective communities off campus. I have been doing a bit of preparation for the Olive Branch Institute's Israel tours that I have scheduled for January while trying to gain momentum on my school work.

It shouldn't be too surprising that the holiday allows for more opportunities to get away from the routine. The city, after all, has been full-up with celebrations. Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the long-lasting oil; this, a provisional symbol of God's approval with the Maccabees' revolt. During this Festival of Lights, each new day is begun by lighting another candle. This year Hanukkah started December 8th and lasted until the night of the 16th. 

Christmas has a similar intrigue; secular and religious folks celebrate, albeit in their own way. The overlap, Christian and Jewish, secular and religious, spills into the streets and lights flicker all over the city express with connections to one of two holidays.

For us also, this time of year ushers in the best of spirits. It’s familial and meaningful, colorful and bright. The holiday has all but usurped the month, too. We wish our days faster, prepare with ornaments and symbols, buy and write in preparation for a brilliant celebration. 

And celebration ought to be thick with luster because celebration is a really good thing; a day or season to venerate important sacrifices and memories. However, isn't it our tendency to embellish and recreate? Andrew Peterson’ song “Labor of Love” starts out, “It was not a silent night, there was blood on the ground.” This is a stark kind of realism that routes-off fantasy away from incessant recreations. Our tendency, I think, is to mythologize and embellish until all that are left are the narrative’s names and places - to celebrate silly things and trivialize the more important bits.

A lot could be said to help Westerners filter out images of Motel 6-no vacancy and wooden stables and mangers because the stories greatness, after all, is not in what is made up about it (I never did like flannel-graph), but it is in what is so mysteriously real. Here, the raw moments that accompany the human experience are shrouded in God.

God humbles Himself by restraint and imposed limitation – placing His heir in a woman’s womb. She has to travel an awfully uncomfortable journey in and out of rain all for government dues; and this only to find their family's accommodations a bit less kind, you might say. 

This birth and His life will be terribly normal. Of course, this is what is so exceptional. He suffers the silliness of learning; learning to eat, speak, and walk with all the imposed ignorance of an infant. A story of common cycles envelopes His life. And then, after having succumbed to something so far below Him, He establishes his ministry restraining so much in his own attempt to help the world see that He is Emmanuel. This harsh reality takes on greater terrors when He is met with rejection and curse. That it, though. He offers Himself up… according to plan... at the right time. 

 This, after all, was what Jesus said to Pilate, essentially, “I was born for this!” We celebrate, now, the undoing of every dark thing, venerated in the connection this celebration has with His life lived on our behalf and His death died in our place, vindicated by an approving Father who raised Him from the dead. Everything sad is going to come untrue. Is not this what Christmas is all about, anyway?

Hope yours is lovely and meaningful - Merry Christmas!

Seth Hague