I have, over the years, come to the conclusion that there are two different Christmases — the cultural Christmas, with its presents and parties and television specials, and the religious Christmas, that which springs from the life of the Church.  My time with the words of Bruce Epperly and Howard Thurman have convinced me that there is a third, never-spoken-of Christmas, the one that knows no time or place, the one that waits to be born in you and me and in this world each and every day:

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,
And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,
Where little children age before their time,
And life wears down the edges of mind,
Where the old person sits with mind grown cold,
While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
Where fear companions each day’s life,
And Perfect Love seems long delayed.
CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:
In you, in me, in all humankind (72).

That idea, too, has made it to popular culture.  In the classic Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Kris Kringle (the department store Santa on trial to prove that he is the real Santa), says to Doris Walker, the woman who hired him, “Oh, Christmas isn’t just a day, it is a state of mind…”  And even for Kris, in this movie anyway, that frame of mind is slipping away — that is why he has come in person to change it.  Sound a little familiar?

For much of the world, right now, this moment is not a time of “peace on earth” and “goodwill to all humankind.”  For many of us in more comfortable circumstances, not living amidst war or in  poverty, there is still loneliness and disease and apprehension.  Fear, indeed, is the companion of many through this season and others.  But if I understand nothing else from what we have read of Thurman’s reflections on Christmas,  I have come to understand this:  Christmas comes despite everything around us, if Christmas lives in our souls.  We have the power to choose love in the face of trauma.  Love does not sweep away heartbreak or even fear, but it reminds us that there is a power greater than those particular responses to life.  It offers us a chance to be changed, and to make changes in our world.  As Epperly so movingly writes:

We are tempted to become hopeless and heartless ourselves. Yet, in such moments of despair, the quiet providence of God whispers that life can be different. … Regardless of the morality of our leaders, we can be citizens of a world in which Shalom-Peace reigns supreme and a little child shall lead us. We can raise the bar of our own spirituality and ethics to embrace humankind and the nonhuman world and live as if Love is the only sustaining reality. … At the end of the day, no one remembers Herod or Caesar Tiberius, and we barely remember Pilate (the rulers whose quest for power and control led to Jesus’ crucifixion), but that Little Child lives on forever. He inspires our imaginations, guides our footsteps, and challenges us and our leaders when we place consumption and greed about planetary well-being and self-interest above care for the vulnerable (74).

You see, it is, in the end, all up to us.  Life can be changed. Will we embrace the internal changes that come with our acknowledgement that Christmas must be born in us, not once each year, but each and every moment of our living?  The hardest part of this knowledge is this:  that letting that child be born again and again and again in us is not magic.  That birth does not take away all pain and cure all suffering and lack, either in us, or in the world.  But that birth and rebirth does give us a kind of super-power — the ability to see through present trauma and politics and to chart our course towards the beacon of light that becomes oh so visible to the eyes of our heart.  Christmas, you see, is a frame of mind, says Kris Kringle, and the says our God.

Epperly’s reflection ends with the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s original poem, “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” written during the American Civil War. There are some difficult words in the second half of the poem, different from the version we sing as the beloved Christmas song by the same title:

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound the carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn the households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
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!’
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.’ (75-76).

I cannot guarantee that allowing Christmas to be born in you each and every day will lead to a world where the “wrong shall fail, the right prevail,” in Longfellow’s 19th century sentiments.  I can, however, tell you, that from my experience, the birth of love in my heart opens me to the possibility of peace everywhere, and gives me the strength to walk towards it with open hands.  Life can be different.

May that be the true blessing of Christmas for each and every one of us.