Merry Christmas!

There...I said it.

In this modern age when we are so afraid of not saying the entirely appropriate thing that we fail to say anything of any value, I said it.

Merry Christmas!

To the defense of all of my friends who are more sheepish, I really do understand. In this increasingly multicultural and humanistic world, there are tons of reasons to steer clear of the social risks of the inappropriately placed Christmas wish:

• The Jews thought Jesus was a great guy and all, but not nearly as much of the warrior king type as they were expecting. He was not the messiah they were waiting for. They wanted a revenge guy…a guy to set things straight and put them on top for good. Jesus didn't deliver. For grief’s sake, he lost a simple popularity vote to that troublemaker Barabus! Why would he deserve a holiday?
• The faith of Islam also loves the Jesus child, the miraculous birth, amazing prophet, the whole package. But the whole “God becoming man” thing is a deal breaker for them. Admittedly, the world can be a pretty seedy place most of the time and it is a tough case to prove why the God of all creation would need to come down and get his fingernails dirty to clean it up. God could have just wiped us out, or better yet he could use us normal Joes (or Mohammeds) to do his work, right?
• You would guess, that the holiday would not bother an atheist or an agnostic, but strangely enough, we have to dance around these guys too. My understanding of their objection is a little uninformed, but it seems that people who believe that your existence has no meaning other than what you can do or get in the short three or four decades of a human life are somehow irreparably harmed by other peoples' beliefs and the offensive displays of the nativity scene. If nothing really matters, then why does it matter? I know that they feel that it shouldn't be forced on them or supported by the government in their view, but does it matter? We’ll all be dead soon anyway, right?
• And then there’s the Christians…they can’t say Merry Christmas because they are way too sorry for all the other times that they have imposed their beliefs on the world. We all know that the early Popes were a group of playboys and forget about that greedy land grab that history calls the Crusades. And the Inquisition…say no more! They are sorry for that, and for not seeing WWII coming, and for missionaries that made the natives wear pants. They are sorry for wanting God to be mentioned in school, and for the music being too loud, and for the ten commandments…all that stuff and more! They are sorry.

But, here is my thought. Stick with me a second…

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of a child; a child of carpenter and his very young wife, poorer than most of us could imagine and relocated temporarily from their home. I imagine Joseph going out into the town during the day to get odd jobs to support his family while Mary sat in the square or in the stables knowing the baby was coming soon. It’s not that hard to imagine. But this time it was different, people were expecting something amazing to happen and there was only this baby (in and of itself nothing exceptional, nature has done this trick millions and millions of times before and since that day). But this time the mother was said to be a virgin. Was it true? For now let’s just say we don’t know. Rumor has it that shepherds came from their fields and astronomers traveled from distant lands, some say as far as China, to see this baby.

Over the next thirty odd years the child grew up in his traditions, as we do in ours, learned a trade and became a man. But for him, as for some of us, it was not enough. He had always had an uncanny understanding of all things spiritual and loved to stick it to “the man” whenever he had the chance, just like a lot of us. But through it all, he never thought less of others in their struggle to get life right. He only had one running argument and that was with a group of people who kept trying to tell him who he was and how he should behave. So, all said, he wasn't that different from you and me...except at the end.

Any historical account will tell you that he hadn't committed any crime worth dying for...but die he did. He died believing that he had no choice...that he had to die to save...us. He didn't know you...he couldn't imagine all the small, petty deceits that we would commit two thousand years later...but he died...believing that he was doing it for you. Crazy, huh? Indisputably, a man was born two millennia ago who would go to his death with your eternal soul as his foremost priority. That is amazing!

The rest of the story we will argue about if you want. Some say he was a fraud, a lunatic or both..others say he is the Son of God. Believe what you will, I think that he was amazing.

On this day we celebrate an innocent child who would die an innocent man...except for our sins...sins that he asked for...sins that he bore without committing. And that kind of man is worth celebrating...no matter what you believe.

Merry Christmas.