The audacity of Christmas

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the celebrated American poet and author of “Paul Revere’s Ride” was in deep despair. His beloved wife had recently died in a home fire. The eldest of his six children went off to join the Union Army, against his wishes. His nation was torn asunder by war. His faith was shaken. In December of 1863, after a prolonged period in which he could not put pen to paper, he scratched out a poem.

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” echoes the seeming dissonance between the message of Christmas and the gritty reality of fallen world. Consider these lines:

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Longfellow was struck by the persistence of the church bells, bellowing out carols that preach peace on earth juxtaposed against the bitter horror of war. Yet his reality is not much different than our reality, in which we pause for Advent in a deeply broken world. Last year I was in the war-torn city of Kiev, listening as Christians sang Christmas carols.

To celebrate this season really is audacious. How can we sing “Joy to the World” when the world, as narrated by our social media timelines and the images we see flashed in front of us, tell another story? We can celebrate Christmas not only because Jesus was born into a world every bit as troubled as ours, to a people oppressed by a totalitarian power, to a young fragile couple with little agency. Yet, those church bells peal because the baby in the manger was indeed the Son of God, the one whom the prophet Isaiah said was “The Prince of Peace” and upon whose shoulder every government in human history rests. There are sweet tidings of joy only because at his first Advent, he defeated sin, death, and the grave. There is a new world coming.

Mary knew. This young teenager, in whose body rested the Son of God, declared that in the incarnation, “God has brought down the powerful from their throne, and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:45-46). We can experience peace in a broken world because Jesus has bridged the gap between God and man. Christmas is about the one who “came to save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). To celebrate Christmas is an act of protest against the powers of darkness. It is to declare and believe that “light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 3:19). The light is hard to see, sometimes, obscured as we are by the pain of our reality. This might be especially true this time of year. The demons hate December. Violence seems to strike every time the calendar heads toward the home stretch, from Pearl Harbor to Sandy Hook to the horrific attack of Jewish people on an Australian Beach.

Yet the real, gritty story of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection is the only reason we can keep going in a world beset by evil. No other ism will do. It’s how we can speak up for good, fight for truth, and work to help our communities and country flourish. Not because we believe we can make the world a better place, but because we know that Christ is already making things new. No other ism will satisfy the deep longings of the human heart.

Our dissatisfaction with the way things are—the violence, the corruption, the sensuality—is a reminder that the world is not as it should be. C.S. Lewis was right when he said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

We were. One day, Jesus will come again, this time to fully consummate what began at Christmas 2,000 years ago. Until then, we can say with Longfellow:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”