Social media told me that Yorkdale Mall hired model Paul Mason, and “his glorious white beard,” to play Santa Claus this year. If you google #FashionSanta you’ll see that he might actually look a little more like the real Saint Nicholas than the Coca-Cola version of a very large elf in a very large suit.
The whole thing got me thinking about how we celebrate the birth of Jesus with all sorts of glitz and glamour when the Prophet Isaiah describes the coming savior like this,
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
- Isaiah 53:2-3
I’m all for having fun with Christmas, but in the midst of the lights and tinsel we can’t forget that we are celebrating the birth of God who came as a poor, homeless, helpless infant. I love how Brennan Manning writes it in a chapter called “Shipwrecked at the Stable”: “God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need. On a wintry night in an obscure cave, the infant Jesus was a humble, naked, helpless God who allowed us to get close to him.”
While we might celebrate Christmas with “unbearable glory,” that is not where we will find the One we celebrate. He is not in the lights and tinsel – he is in the stable. To quote Bruce Cockburn, “It isn’t to the palace that the Christ Child come, but to shepherds, and street people, hookers and bums.” (The Cry of a Tiny Babe)
As “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” says, “He puzzled and puzzled till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. Maybe Christmas, he thought... doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps... means a little bit more!”
It actually means a lot more – it means that God has come to be among us, to show us who he truly is: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.” – John 1:18
This Christmas, celebrate well! Get out the lights and tinsel, the turkey and the trimmings, but make sure that you find the One whom we celebrate as well. You won’t find Him in the lights – he won’t come in unbearable glory, he’ll come “in the way of weakness, vulnerability and need.” Among the rejected ones, that’s where you’ll find the Christ Child.
Merry Christmas!
