December 1998 Issue

Matthew 1:18-25

It is a commentary on our situation in life that the biggest problem most of us have with our Christmas shopping, aside from finding time to do it, is that most of the people we shop for already have everything they need. "I don't know what in the world to get my father this year," said one woman. "Last year I bought him a pearl-handled backscratcher, and the year before that it was a gold plated cherry pitter. This year I'm fresh out of ideas."

We can imagine the scene in a fairly average household on Christmas morning. When all the expensively wrapped gifts have been opened and the room looks like an explosion in a Chinese paper goods factory, the following inventory is taken: Father received two bathrobes, six shirts, eight ties, four pairs of socks, including a pair of argyles for the golf course, a miniature TV set for use in the bathroom, a car vacuum that plugs into the lighter socket, a bowling ball, and a set of knitted booties for his gold clubs. Mother acquired a peignoir set, three slips, six pairs of panty hose in hues of pink and blue, four bottles of perfume and cologne, a microwave oven, an automatic popcorn popper (from Junior, who loves popcorn), a copy of The Joy of Sex (from Suzie the teenager, who thought she ought to read it), a folding hair dryer, and the latest complicated sewing machine, which she will never learn to use. Junior racked up a Radio Shack computer, six electronic games, an oversized tennis racket, two running outfits, seven recordings, three shirts, a Harris Tweed jacket, two books, which he will never read, a portable electric typewriter, a Bible (from Suzie, who thought he ought to read it), and a high-powered dirt bike. Suzie came off with a robe, three sets of pajamas, a fur- trimmed coat, portable electric hair curlers, a color TV set, a copy of Jack the Ripper (from Junior, who thought she ought to read it), a diamond pendant, a new set of skis, and a roundtrip plane ticket to New York City, which she will use to visit with friends after the holidays. It is rather obvious, in short, that this typical American family has everything. They have helped to keep the economy on an upward spiral, gratifying both the local merchants and the Administration in Washington, and they have cluttered their household with many more things that are destined for the school auction or the garage sale when they move or find that their home is simply too overladen for living. They could not possibly want for anything they don't have.

But let's look at them again, more closely this time. Dad's hair is getting thin and the worry-lines on his face are getting thicker. His promotion to vice president of his company has not come as an unmixed blessing. He has had so little time with his family lately that now, on Christmas morning, he feels like a stranger in his own home. He is out of touch with his own feelings. Several times, during the pre-Christmas season, he felt twinges of nostalgia and almost managed to get a hold of scenes and images out of his childhood memory bag; but each time his energies and schedule were so pre-empted by other things that he had to let them go before he actually re-experienced them. He has been very much aware of mortality since his predecessor in the vice president's office had a sudden heart attack, but some days he is so tired of the ratrace that the idea of his dying presents itself with more attraction than repulsion.

Mom, too, is growing older, and seems to be at a very nervous stage of her life's journey. She couldn't wait till the packages were opened to light up a cigarette. In fact, she's already had three this morning. And now she's opening the liquor cabinet to pour herself a steadier. She belongs to two spas, a diet club, and an exercise group, but she is twenty pounds overweight and takes enough pills of various kinds to fill several beanbags every week. Her hand shakes, her voice quavers, and she cries a lot, often for no good reason. She frequently shouts at the children, curses herself, and locks herself in the bathroom to be alone with her problems.

Even the children have their troubles. Junior is into drugs and has twice in the past year been so sick on beer that he threw up all over himself. He's barely hanging onto a D in Math and has already thrown in the towel in Chemistry, so will probably have to go to summer school. He worries about the pimples on his face and feels betrayed by friends whenever they forget to invite him to a party, and at sixteen wonders how he could mess up his life any worse than he has. Suzie is only fourteen, but she's already experimenting with heavy sex and smoking an occasional joint. She wanted to be a cheerleader but is too unpopular with the kids to get elected. She curses like a sailor to show everybody she's a hip young woman and makes obscene signs at the teacher when the teacher's back is turned. Already she's running too fast to know who she is and never slows down to look back.

Are they people who have everything or people who need everything? What do they really need this Christmas?

They need simplicity—time for sorting out their lives, time for being together, time for getting to know one another, time for sharing themselves at the deepest levels of human communication.

They need holy time—a sense of life's deeper dimensions, of eternal mysteries breaking in upon finite existence, of the God of righteousness whose being conveys meaning to all of life's actions and relationships, of the blessing of a world that wants to bless us if we'll only let it.

They need space for seeing life as it is—for seeing the millions of people in the world who are starving to death, and the millions who are dying of simple diseases, for realizing how shallow life is when it is lived merely for the pleasure of the moment without any regard to the future or its consequences, for standing back and looking at their own lives, so that, like Scrooge when the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present and Christmas Future whisked him away, they will have a chance to mend their ways, to become wholesome, to become worthy, to become children of God.

They need the Christ of Christmas and renewal of their inner spirits. That is what it all comes down to, isn't it? They need to hear and receive the message of Christmas, that God has entered the human arena to dwell with us, that his presence is consequently here and available to us now, that we are not alone, spinning out our destinies on this third-rate planet about to be blown up by our own brilliant stupidity, that all our days are spent before the Holy One of Israel, who poured all that he was and is and will be through the funnel of a miracle into the child born in the manger of Bethlehem. They need to surrender their lives to Christ, who is the real gift of Christmas, and in the end so overshadows all others as to be the only one.

They—we—for in a sense I am talking about all of us.

The late Dr. David Roberts, a psychotherapist, told the story he had read somewhere of a French soldier who was suffering from amnesia. His face had been horribly disfigured by a shell blast at the front, and all his identification was blown away. When he recovered from his injuries, there was no way of telling who he was. The social services located three possible families he might belong to, on the basis of his general physical description, and made arrangements for him to visit each of the families, in different parts of the country, to see if the families recognized him. The first two visits ended sadly, with no glint of recognition on either side. When he stepped off the train in the third village, something about the station and its environment seemed familiar. As he walked down the street, it all began to come back, and he turned this way and that, growing increasingly surer of where he was, until he arrived at the cottage where his family lived and knew that he was home.

That is the way it ought to be for us at Christmas. Most of us have been lost in the busyness of our existence, trying to cope from day to day, and have quite forgotten who we are—or whose we are. But as we draw nearer to Christmas, and pass through the familiar landmarks of the season, we should begin to remember our real identities, until, coming down to Christmas Eve itself, we know that we are home, home where we belong, in the loving arms of God. And then we, who thought we had everything, realize we have nothing, and, realizing we have nothing, stand ready to receive everything. For he is our joy and peace.

John Killinger