more than watchmen for the morning

A Christmas Talk

I gave this at our annual Christmas Carol Service in the back of the pub last night. The audience was university students here in England. 

December 6, 2011

Last week you might have been here to hear Caleb speak of the gift’s of his youth on Christmas day.  He spoke of the disappointment he faced on a particular Christmas morning when we did not get his way.  While Caleb failed to receive the gifts that he desired, the careful observer has to ask, “Why?” Why did Caleb not get what he wanted for Christmas? I can tell you. It’s because we all know that Santa has a “nice” list and Santa has a “naughty” list and I think we all know where Caleb safely belongs. 

I, on the other hand, was a model child. I would ask my grandfather to defrost the roof so that the reindeer hoofs weren’t too cold whilst standing up our brick, ranch style home.  I would think up different ways to rescue Christmas back from the Grinch he ever were truly successful in stealing it.  I would usually write letters to Santa asking that he would give my gifts away to poor children. 

Okay, that’s not really true, but you could imagine that I was still a lot better of a child than Caleb, one that had the true Christmas spirit radiating inside of him. 

That’s probably not true, either. I was probably pretty horrible and greedy.  I probably felt entitled to a certain standard of gifts every year. Yet even still there were certain things that I just believed were beyond me.  

I remember it was the Christmas of 1989.  You were probably, as they say where I’m from, knee high to a grasshopper at that time.  Which is to say you were no more than the dream of some little winning sperm to be.  I was 7 years old and just that year there was one new toy that had just been released that all the kids were talking about.  This was: 

The original Nintendo Entertainment System. It came complete with two control pads, an orange gun, and a copy of Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt.  There was no greater magic than being able to point a gun at the tiny screen in my bedroom and somehow be able to annihilate poor digitized, pixelated ducklings. Indeed, this idea still gives me chills of excitement, which is a proof of my American citizenry greater even than my accent. How many of you have ever actually played Duck Hunt? 

Okay, so you remember that if one of the ducks got away while you were firing at the screen that this hunting dog would peak up from behind some sort of shrubbery and laugh in the most condescending way at you for your failures.  This led to me, a 7 year old boy, firing the gun as many times as he could at the dog on the screen in revenge of being mocked.  Some of you are horrified, but some of you know what I’m talking about. This is why I basically don’t allow myself to play video games anymore. I didn’t like the person that Duck Hunt was causing me to be. 

At any rate, I never entertained the notion that such a gift, the Nintendo, could be mine. I don’t even think I asked for it because it was just too far beyond me. I knew there was no way I would ever have something like that. 

On that Christmas morning I unwrapped my gifts, solitary as I was at my mother’s house, feeling pretty happy with whatever it was that I received. I can’t remember what it was to be honest.  

But I was then excited to get in the car and head to my grandmother’s house where I would see aunt’s and uncle’s and grandparents who would no doubt continue to shower me in wonderful toy bliss.

We had packed up the entire car with all the gifts for our extended family. Except, there was one gift that remained under the tree. A gift without a name on it.  I asked my mother about it and she said, “Who do you think it’s for?”

I told her that I thought it was for my Aunt Kathy because she always gets the really big presents. 

But my mom said, “I don’t know who it’s for. Why don’t you open it and find out.”

Of course, I wasn’t very smart so I didn’t catch on.  I pulled back just the very little bit of paper in the most careful way because I didn’t want to have to waste valuable time rewrapping it before we left. 

But in that one little unobscured patch, I saw “Nintendo” emblazoned across the side. There’s no way my aunt would want a Nintendo. I was beside myself. 

In my early days I was fairly spoiled, but then in the later years things got relatively tight around our family.  I remember there was one year, at an age that I should have known better than to be a brat, that all there was for Christmas were a few small gifts.  There was no large electronic gadgetry to be found. No Game Boy, No Nintendo. There was no Star Wars life sized model of the Death Star that I could run around the house pretending to blow up little planets of sofa cushions or the occasional stray cat. 

I remember that there wasn’t much at all— and truthfully, I was very disappointed. I was sad that there wasn’t more to all of it. That I had torn the wrapping from a few underwhelming gifts and found myself looking around the house searching for more… more.. but there wasn’t anything else.  I’m still a little bit ashamed of myself for that, to be honest.  I still feel a bit of a sting when I think of myself on that day. 

Because what I wanted there to be more of turned out to be empty.  I had placed myself within a story of wanting and getting. I thought I would be happy if I had enough shiny new things to call my own, things that would quickly lose their appeal and be cast aside for more new and shiny things.  Often, it seems that we have replaced those old toys with others. Degrees, money, cars, having a girlfriend, having a boyfriend…. all the things that go with our culture. All in the hopes that it will make us happy. Yet, somehow, those things always come up short. There’s still a hollowness, isn’t there? If I get this score on my A levels, then I’ll be happy. If I get into the right university, then I’ll be happy. When I graduate, all finished with this awful work, then I’ll be happy.  When I find a job, then I’ll be able to relax. When I inevitably can’t find a job and therefore go back for a post graduate degree, then I’ll be satisfied. When I meet the person that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, then I’ll no I’ve made it. Then I’ll be secure. When I have kids, when I’ve lost enough weight, when I buy a house, when I get a car, a dog, a second mortgage, a retirement check- then- finally- I will be happy. 

It doesn’t work. Listen to me, my friends. It’s all a trick. A lie. People I know who are very well educated and very good looking plunge themselves into all kinds of despair and debt every year because we have a need to chase after something that’s missing in our hearts. 

The amazing thing to me about Christmas is that it’s all about this story of hope springing up out of nowhere. It is a proposal of the strangest kind: that a baby born in the wilds of ancient Palestine could somehow cure our sickness, could somehow fill this hole in our hearts that we’ve thrown everything else into with no return.  

If you were to invent a religion, it would seem like you would make the son of a king the leader of the faith: the divine.  As a matter of fact, in that time, there was someone who had done that very thing: his name was Caesar Augustus, and he considered himself to be god. 

Yet, and I know this all sounds crazy, but there is something truly wonderful about the Christmas story. Perhaps it’s too good to be true.  Perhaps it’s ridiculous to believe that God took the form of a little baby, rising up out of helplessness, out of complete vulnerability, to one day radically love people in a way that they never knew was possible.  Not through the force of an empire or through money or through fame but through love. Maybe it’s ridiculous to believe that the entire hope of the world, the longing of fulfillment in our hearts could rest on such a small child who would die a gruesome death.  Maybe, maybe…. 

But what if what these early witnesses said was true?  What if all the hopes we ever had, all the dreams we could possibly conceive, every search for a meaning outside of our protons and electrons swirling in our bodies could be held in a manger? 

Crazy? Maybe.  But beautiful as well. 

The birth of Jesus probably didn’t happen on December 25th.  Some say it was sometime around March, others say August. Yet, I love the pure symbolism of the time of year that we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  

The time of year in which we celebrate Jesus’s birth is amongst the darkest nights of the entire year.  The night seems to go on forever in late December here in England. 

Yet how fitting is it that in the darkest of times, when all hope of light is at her scarcest, when all of our pursuits for fulfillment and happiness have come back hollow and dark: that in this moment the greatest light in our collective story of humanity was finally born into the world? 

Ridiculous? Maybe. But it’s beautiful. 

Merry Christmas, everybody.