As I said near the end of that piece, “We don’t need to be a Christian to realize that this is something special; an atheist, too, can appreciate that this is an extraordinary story that warms the heart.” This remains true, and just as true is the fact that once again, Christmas is nearly upon us!
The article pointed out that for me, what is important in the Christmas story can be expressed in a phrase from the Nicene Creed: “He came down from heaven.” As I wrote then, that is the direction that God enters our lives.
We, as humans, always want to go up. Humans want to enthrone themselves in the heaven of their own egos, exalted in their own self-importance. And yet, as Proverbs tells us, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” It means we need humility.
But of course, there is more than one meaning to Christmas; indeed, its meanings are pretty inexhaustible. As we approach 2025 and review the perilous state of the world, we might consider: What’s another real message of Christmas that pertains to today?
The Importance of Hope
Hope was the last element left in Pandora’s box, after all the plagues and diseases had escaped to warp and corrupt human life. What is hope? Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and first president of the Czech Republic, gave us a good starting point when he said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
In more practical terms, hope is what allows us to thrive. In his book “Working with Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman noted: “Competence studies show that top performers in the human services—everything from health care and counselling to teaching—express hope for those they seek to help. ... In jobs like these, where stress is high and frustrations common ... hope is crucial.”
A key characteristic of a top performer is having hope. Therefore, in dealing with people, we need hope if we are going to make any difference at all. G.K. Chesterton observed that “first and foremost ... all doors fly open to courage and to hope.” Through hope, we can open doors!
The World Is Renewed
Yet Christmas is not a philosophical or theological abstraction, but a celebration of a real-life event that happened to seemingly ordinary people. Thus, our starting point must be to involve ourselves in the details of the story. Mary and Joseph were ordinary in the way that most of us are: We have bills to pay, we have to make ends meet, and in difficult economic circumstances, we have to shift around to make do. In the case of Mary and Joseph, the emperor Augustus demanded that all peoples return to their home towns in order to be counted and taxed. The story of there being no room at the inn and of the manger tells us how cramped life was for them in those times (and how dangerous, because it sounds pretty unhygienic at best), and the story of the fury of Herod adds to that sense of imminent peril: Life was cheap, and the consequences of crossing any tyrant were likely to be fatal.
We like to imagine, since there is little evidence either way, that the Nativity happened in the deepest dark of winter. But—and here’s where hope enters—the child was heralded in advance, his birth planned according to the purposes of God. Furthermore, signs proclaimed the importance of this child: in heaven, the star above, and on Earth, the simple, humble shepherds who knew what was happening, and more than them, the wise men from the East who came to testify to this child’s birth. And strangely, even the “hopeless,” evil actions of Herod proclaim the power of good, for Herod himself believed that this birth was a threat to his authority and power, else why would he go to such lengths to extirpate it?
In one important sense, then, the story of Jesus’s birth is like the birth of every human being who comes into the world. It comes attendant with the belief that a child can make a difference, do good, and make the world a better place. Speaking from my own life, my youngest son had a daughter, now 19 months old. What joy and hope he has for her, as do us grandparents! Every birth is, quite literally, a “new creation.” It’s the triumph of life over death.
But there’s another, and unique, aspect to the birth of Jesus. We see this through the contour of his whole life and what he achieved. I’m specifically referring to the effects of his life, after he left the Earth: the end of paganism in the Roman Empire; the death of the empire itself following its conversion to Christianity; the resulting breakdown of the barriers between men and women, between slave and free men; the eventual abolition of slavery (something unknown in the ancient world); and the recognition of the individual soul as being valuable—invaluable—in its own right. These are things we tend to forget today but that were long consequences of the establishment of Christianity—and the hope that attended the birth of that baby.
This is what we see and feel at Christmas. Life overcomes death, and we have every reason to celebrate. Being childlike allows the openness, curiosity, and innocence that naturally give rise to hope. So, too, is time away from adult worries necessary for hope, because without it comes burnout. Resting from adult responsibilities is restorative for the spirit and the community. As a Russian proverb holds, “In the kingdom of hope, there is no winter.” We can endure the deep, dark winter because Christmas gives us hope that we will come through it.
A profound message of Christmas is this: The real light of the world has come, and through that light, we all have hope—hope in children, hope in the fact that every human being is special, and hope in the idea that there is a great God-given plan and that we’re all part of it. What, then, is there not to celebrate? As we make our toasts, let’s all renew our hope for mankind and ourselves in 2025. You know it’s all going to make sense!
