It’s no secret that I hate winter. I announce it whenever I arrive anywhere after I’ve been out in the cold. I tweet about it. I tell people I’m not a fan it when it’s 110 degrees outside in the summer and they begin to reminisce about cooler weather. Winter makes my body ache as if I’m an old man. I can’t tell you how much I slip and fall on ice. I very recently landed both my tailbone and my iPhone immediately after exiting my car. Normally, I can at least laugh at myself when this happens, but the shattered phone screen made me irrationally ragey.
I share all of this because, in spite of my immense disdain for all things cold, I have to admit that I love Advent and Christmas. I love tacky Christmas decorations like the hard plastic Santa Clauses that can probably only be found at thrift stores anymore. I love giant inflatable reindeer and snow globes that have to be staked into my neighbor’s yards, else they might blow away during a winter storm. I love tinsel and garland and angels and stars atop trees. I love string lights. So much so that I’ve been bundling myself up to the point that I can’t put my arms down and have been braving the weather to wander my neighborhood each evening, filling my thermos with either hot tea or if I’m honest, this nice merlot I’ve been enjoying lately.
As commercialism and sentimentality seem to stretch out the Christmas or holiday season as much as it can, there really is only a small window of time for us to enjoy this stuff. So, into the cold, I go. Because I enjoy it all, so much. Even the kitschy Christmas stuff. Maybe especially so. I quietly thank my neighbors for their light displays as I totter by their homes on icy or un-shoveled sidewalks.
My sister loves it, too. But her taste in Christmas decor is more discriminating. For example, she only puts white lights on her tree and around her roofline. No garland. Matching ornaments. No. Blinking. Lights. It kills me, just a little, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. At its best, this stuff is of no consequence. At its worst, it’s a distraction.
I believe Christmas music is of more importance than all of the lights, and Santas and everything else we dig out of the attic for the season. Many Christmas songs are actually worshipful and this matters. The best point to Jesus so much more than any tree, plastic or real can. Again, I love the tacky and senseless ones as much as I do the genuine and sincere, but one, in particular has caught my attention more than the rest. All of this so far has only been an introduction to what I really want to share with you, my thoughts on a few lines from O Holy Night.
O Holy night, the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
Fall on your knees
O Holy night, the stars are brightly shining
We begin in the darkness of night. Of course, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit created night when the darkness was separated from the light. God then called the light good, without any such commentary on the dark. In fact, just a few verses later in Genesis 1, God installs the stars and moon to govern the night. The Bible doesn’t have anything good to say about darkness. It’s the light that reveals the brokenness inside of us and the light in which we’re encouraged to walk.
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth
The light of the world was born into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it. And in him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
The error is that we call sin good and still, it doesn’t fulfill. Our pining is not strong enough but instead is too weak, giving in to temptation before the full weight of it can be felt. Not knowing that something more satisfactory is present. The thing we have been made to most delight in isn’t a better recipe for cake or sex, or something wrapped in bacon and stuffed with bleu cheese, it’s God.
Til He appeared and the soul felt it’s worth
This line always hits me with blunt-force. It’s traumatic and knocks me off-kilter. We all have friends or family who we believe waste money on ridiculous things; pleasures and knickknacks that we could never justify spending money on. We judge them and if we’re exceptionally good friends, we mock them. If beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder, it’s in their pocketbook.
The value of a person is great in that we bear God’s image, but outside of that, what have we to offer? Are we totally without guilt or debt? We were bought at an exuberant, even terrible price. That the Word- God himself took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood and that’s not all. I’m reminded of eager parents purchasing Furbies at extravagant prices in the height of Furby Fever in December of 1998. Did God overpay, by willfully sacrificing his own incarnate life? Or did he pay the only price there was to pay? Could he have haggled with Himself and His own sense of justice over the wages and the cost of sin and death?
We are plastic and hardly collectible but have found our worth in the blood of Jesus Christ. It’s in his eyes that we are made beautiful, by His Spirit.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
What does a thrill of hope feel like? Defibrillators, applied to the soul. Electricity jump-starting our own spirits back to doing what they were designed to do in the first place. This hope is at once both strange and familiar.
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn
We call that time when the sun itself is no longer visible in the evening but somehow, the whole world is aglow twilight, but that same thing happens in the morning. There’s light coming from just over the horizon and we see dimly, knowing that at any moment, the Son is going to come into sight and everything will be illuminated to both our joy and terror.
Fall on your knees…
Indeed, fall on your knees, but not your bum. Because it’s more worshipful and your tailbone and phone will appreciate it.
And we can end there for now…
