Every politician knows that kissing babies wins votes. Magazines, newspapers, television programs know that stories about children are sure of a good audience. No wonder, then, that Christmas has become the most popular of the church's festivals. Even without the fond parents at the Nativity Pageant, the children opening their gifts, the "sweet and silly Christmas things", there is something about the season which appeals to our minds and our hearts.
But do we really take it all seriously? Or has Christmas been invaded by snowmen, Santa Claus, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, robins, plum pudding and sprigs of holly, to the extent that we have lost sight of the Good News - that God had come to share our human nature, with all its burdens, and by sharing it, to open the way for those "who believe in God's name" (John 1:12) to share in God's own nature?
If we look in our Bible, we will see that those who forget are in good company. Consider Mary, who foresaw how "all generations will call me blessed". Yet despite her hearing from Gabriel that she would be the mother of a saviour, the Son of the Most High, whose kingdom would have no end, despite her listening to the report from the shepherds, "treasuring their words and pondering them in her heart", she showed no sign of this twelve years later when she scolded her son for staying behind in the temple in Jerusalem. And if she treasured his reply, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" in her heart, she showed little sign of acting on what she knew until after her son's resurrection. Luke's Gospel mentions Mary again only at 8:19, and only at Acts 1:14 does Luke show her coming to an active realization of her son's work.
And those shepherds, whose words Mary treasured. Everyone who heard from them about the message of the angels "was amazed". And after seeing Jesus lying in the manger, the shepherds returned "glorifying and praising God." But what did they do about their experience? Nothing.
Matthew's Gospel records the visit of the magi: astrologers bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh for the infant king. We get the impression of people dropping everything to follow the message of a star. And yet what did they do about their experience? "They left for their own country", and we hear no more.
Even Herod's mass infanticide seems to have left little impression. Did the people of Bethlehem write it off as just another atrocity by a notoriously cruel ruler? We are left with the impression that an event that changed the world was seen at the time as a six-day wonder - rather like some of the news that we see on our televisions and then forget.
"Knowing the story" is not enough. We may attend countless nativity plays, read and re-read the narratives in our Bibles or hear them at our festivals of lessons and carols, we may know Handel's Messiah off by heart, but if we are not changed by the realization that in Christ God has achieved reconciliation with a fallen and broken world (2 Cor 5:19), then we are in the same state as the disciples who, even after listening to Jesus throughout his ministry, "listened but did not hear" - until their ears were unstopped and their eyes were opened.
Christ's birth gives us, if we accept and believe, "power to become children of God." (John 1:12) We are Christ's body now (1 Cor 12:27). May our own ears and eyes be opened this Christmas, so that we not only hear the message of the angels, but take the message to heart and act upon it. May we be a source not just of tales about stars and mangers, shepherds and magi, but of real peace and goodwill - God's peace.
HD