This Christmas: Gathering in the Holy Light of One Another

When I was a young teenager — maybe 14, 15, 16 years old — I created my own Christmas ritual. In my small upstairs bedroom in our working-class neighborhood of North St. Louis, I created an altar, of sorts. A table by the lone window of my room held a candle, a plastic manger scene, a small Christmas tree and a King James Bible opened to the Nativity story from Luke’s gospel. On Christmas Eve, after everyone else had gone to sleep, I would light my candle, peer into the manger, and read Luke’s account of the coming of Jesus into the world. Something within me wanted to be there.

And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Then I would pause and look out the window to the world below, to the cars going by on Goodfellow Blvd, to the houses with their closed doors and curtained windows beyond the Nazarene church steeple across the street. And I would try to ponder all these things in my young heart, try to figure out what they meant to me at that moment, what they would mean for the life that was ahead of me, what they meant for those people sleeping in those houses I could see out my window. What can it all mean, this singular event all those years ago and all the distance that lies between first-century Bethlehem and North St. Louis in the 1970s? Something within us wants to know.

On that first Christmas night, the news of the birth of the baby in the manger was news of blinding light, reported only by angels. This news is still today words of life in the dead of night, delivered not to the elite, powerful and politically connected but to poor and humble shepherds among us, and to those of us looking down on the world from our own upper rooms, or out from our basement apartments, from our shacks and mansions and one-room cinder block homes in the poorest nations on earth. It doesn’t matter where we sit tonight. Something within us wants to see this new light.

This time of year, we gather in the holy light of one another. We light our candles and listen to the words and music. We look at each other and we look out on the world beyond us, and we wonder what it all means.  Christmas is, perhaps above all else, about light, and we can only know the power of the presence of light when we consider its opposite: Darkness. Gloom. Nothingness. But in the light of the Christmas story, we find more than relief from the absence of light.

We find hope. This is a new kind of light, just as the Jewish people of first-century Palestine were looking for a new kind of Messiah and King. Not a judge but a “wonder-counselor.” Not a military leader but a “God-Hero.” Not a partisan ruler but a “Father-Forever.” Not a bringer of war but a “Prince of Peace.” Different. New. Alive and alight with the promise of hope.