For the first time in my memory I experienced Christmas without a home church.  I went to the Christmas Eve Service at Pilgrim UCC where I am still technically a member and am known and welcomed but where I don’t have any leadership role.  I helped Leroy light the many candles and then he recruited me to help as an usher and I did my part to try to hold up the words of the hymns in the face of that mighty organ, but I am a visitor, not a pastor.

So I am experiencing Christmas in a different way this year.  I am less a participant and more an observer.

I have seen a couple of articles which question what it means that, “there was no room in the inn.”  But practically speaking this seems to have more to do with the crèche scene than the theology of the nativity.  Indeed, the theology of the nativity seems to have very little to do with Christmas as we celebrate it.

Which is quite okay with me.  We have created the holiday we need in the face of the stories Matthew and Luke have given us.  And it is a great holiday.  It is about family and giving and love for all and acceptance.  It is full of colors and light and smells and music.   It is about exuberance and excess.

But all of this manages to pretty much miss what the gospel writers were trying to say.  So while we think we are remembering Christmas, we are obliterating the fundamental messages.  What they told us was that the life of this human person Jesus was a revelation about the nature of the divine and of who God is and how God enters into life… into our life.  It is a stark contrast to the cultural values not only of ancient Israel but of modern America.  It is not about something amazing that happened long ago to someone else.  It is about what is happening right now… and now… to me and to you and to us.

One thing we have got right.  It is about abundance; an abundance of love.