Christmas: God on Earth in a Baby; the First Time.

I grew up in a secular family for whom Christmas was an event featuring a holiday scene across the mantlepiece, a tree hauled into the house on my father’s birthday and Coke in the stocking found leaning across the hearth Christmas morning. When we got older, we attended a perfunctory mass on Christmas Eve, joined a big party at a friend’s house and awoke the next morning to presents and an hour-long trip to Grammy’s house.

We’re Sicilian. We had pasta for Christmas dinner and always chocolate pie for Joan.

The Christmas I was fifteen, however, my attitude changed. I spent time at a local Lutheran church because of the cute teenage guys and the hard volleyball games the youth played on Friday nights. The Lutheran’s excitement over Jesus’ birth differed from my own family’s, “oh, yeah, it’s Christmas, I need to buy presents.”

Shocked to realize the babe in the manger was really the Creator of the Universe purposefully limited to the body of an infant, I began to reconsider Christmas details. While I naturally was familiar with Jesus, until that 1972 Christmas, I never actually KNEW Jesus.

The glorious musical canon proclaimed at Trinity Lutheran Church in San Pedro, California, drew me to the congregation. I had never “worshipped” in a service where folks broke into four-party harmony and sang with such gusto. As a small church with a homey wooden interior, Trinity Lutheran had an intimate, warm feel. The elegant soaring marble walls of the Catholic Church I attended with some of my family, felt almost cold and impersonal in contrast.

But at the center of both was the same Jesus. He just seemed more accessible to me the way the Lutherans told the story.

“Oh, come. Oh, come, Emmanuel–God with us.” I hadn’t known the meaning of the name Emmanuel. “God with us rang” in my ears–a soul awakening to the notion the baby in the manger wasn’t just a story but the changer of the world who ransomed me away from the sin that bound me to a life of unease.

Jesus’ birth, life and death seemed more significant the more time I spent with people who actively sought to know Jesus and to read what the Bible said about him.

That Christmas I heard new carols–as well as Handel’s Messiah for the first time. My heart soared with the words. Even today, the chorus of “Hark the Herald Angels Sings,” shimmers with a joy excelsis. I remember the piney smell of evergreen wreaths mixing with the rosy scent of candles lit to celebrate birth. The Advent wreath symbolized a church body looking forward to salvation and rejoicing along the way.

And there in the middle, the focus of all, was Jesus.

Confounding all mankind with the simplicity of his birth, the humility of his coming and the promise of redemption.

I staggered all through that first Christmas alive to the Gospel. Everywhere I turned, the halos shown, the angels sang, the shepherds celebrated.

And so did I.

Rejoice!

Emmanuel is come to us. Glory in the highest.

Or,

Merry Christmas.