A Merry Little Christmas

 I don’t seem to hear it as much as I did when I was much younger, but the words, “Did you have a big Christmas?”, remain with me as the season draws near. I never liked them. Those words seemed to measure the holiday I loved in the wrong way and begged for comparisons that would only leave someone feeling as if he were less than others. Growing up, our Christmases were never big as far as number of gifts. We always had presents, but it was, at times, difficult for Mom and Dad to do very much gift giving. I still remember going with Mom to make payments on her layaways and with dad to the Rock Hill Printing and Finishing Annual Christmas Party to pick up an amazing bag of company-supplied toys, but Christmas was never really…“big”.

I’m glad it wasn’t. I learned to love and appreciate the little things, simpler times, and the love of family. I even treasured the small brown paper bag containing fruit and hard candy that I received at our church on the Sunday before Christmas every year. Twenty years ago, I observed a church as it attempted to return to those days by giving out similar treats on a Sunday. The kids who received them used the apples and oranges as hand-thrown projectiles in the parking lot when the service was over. They didn’t appreciate little or small and probably would have been equally unimpressed by a baby lying in a feeding trough!

I’m afraid that our love for “big” holidays, over-the-top decorations, and humongous events has missed the point of the humility of Jesus’ birth. He has entered humanity by “emptying” Himself so that His rich treasure would not scare away the humble and the poor. That truth has been verified at His birth announcement with the admonition to…“Fear not!”

About her part in this wonderfully unfolding drama, Mary said:

“He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
⁵² He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
⁵³ He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:51-53

There are no large or fancy trappings in Judea.  No big Christmas is mentioned as happening there. The proud, the rulers, and the rich are not the recipients of God’s favor. It is the humble, the poor, and the hungry who are favored on the night of His birth. It is the ordinary shepherd who first hears the angelic proclamation and responds to its invitation. Today, it is for us to make ourselves small through understanding our weakness, admitting our poverty, and humbly bowing before this animal feeding trough to worship Him.

Where will He be found this Christmas? Jesus lodges with the sick and hurting, with the poor outcast, and with those who have had the darkness to blot out their hope. He still finds His home with the ordinary and the humble. Go there, and “have yourself a merry little Christmas!”

                                                                   HATE HAS NO END

My dad wasn’t a preacher or a teacher, but he surely knew how to get a message across in a powerful and unforgettable way. On a Sunday when I was a young boy, he piled my two brothers and me into our car.  After five minutes on dirt and blacktop, we stopped at a house that was familiar to us all. Each Christmas, we would go there to share a portion of the gifts we received from Rock Hill Printing and Finishing Company’s annual RPFC Employee Christmas Party. The inhabitants of this house were Black, and they were our friends.

As we departed the vinyl seats of our Chevy, I immediately noticed a strange sight which I began to understand as the purpose of our short road trip. In the front yard of the small frame house was a large wooden cross wrapped in burlap and smoldering. I really didn’t understand what I was seeing. The cross was sacred in our home. My mom was raised in a devout Catholic home in Panama, and the crucifix was always displayed in her bedroom…and my dad loved to play his guitar and sing about “The Old Rugged Cross” upon which Jesus died.

But our dad had not brought us to see a mere curiosity. His desire was to teach us a lesson about hatred. Instructing us to look at the smoking wooden beams, he said, “I want you to see what hate looks like. This kind of hate doesn’t know how to stop until it has destroyed everything. Those who hate will hate you because of your mom just as they hate themselves.” With that, we loaded back into the car and returned home. I don’t remember ever again talking about what we had seen that day.  We got the message.

My prayer for our nation is that we will all get the message about the never-ending cycle of hatred, violence, and retribution and how it eats at the core of who we are as human beings. It is Satan’s work to deface the image of God in man and to erase every trace of His goodness. Racism and bigotry does that work of diminution in every form of its manifestation.

I am a believer in Jesus Christ, an American, and a son of the South. This is not that for which we were created! Born and raised in South Carolina and presently a resident of Georgia, I acknowledge our historical failures especially as they relate to racial sin.

Last Fall, I reminded a gathering of our ministers that slavery and racial injustice were never meant to be a part of our heritage.  Between 1735 and 1750, Georgia was the only American colony to ban slavery. This decision was led by General James Oglethorpe who opposed it (and opposed rum) on moral and economic grounds after having witnessed first-hand the devastation caused by the prisons for English debtors and the evil slave trade. Simply put, Oglethorpe believed that slavery and drinking rum made men “sorry” which down South referred to those who were inferior in quality or less than persons or things should potentially be.

Oglethorpe’s dream for a free state of Georgia, an American dream of equality, was far from perfect and, sadly, did not last. Like Eden, it was lost to us. That fact left us, in many respects, less than we should potentially have been.

I implore you!  Let us dream and work together for a better and brighter day…a day when hatred, violence, and injustice no longer rule our minds and ruin our hearts.