Have you ever had a less than ideal Christmas?
I have.
It happened during my junior year of college. We were a week away from our final exams and looking forward to an almost month-long Christmas break. I was working my way through school as a security guard, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to miss those weeks of work and still be able to come up with enough money to pay for my second semester of college. A few days before Christmas, my boss came to me and asked me if I had any interest in sticking around over the Christmas break to work. He said I would get paid double-time and that it would be pretty easy work. I wanted to go home to see my family for Christmas, and hang out with my friends, but I really needed the cash, so I decided to stay. It really wasn’t too bad for most of the time I was there. Most of the students and faculty were gone, and things were pretty quiet. It was just kind of lonely and desolate.
I remember getting done with my shift on Christmas day. Because the cafeteria was closed, I went back to my dorm room and popped a package of Ramen noodles in the microwave and watched old Christmas movies on TV. I took a bit of a break to go call my parents from the payphone at the end of our hall and wish them a “Merry Christmas.” Then I came back and just sat there. It was weird. I was used to being with family and friends, exchanging gifts, sharing the Christmas story, and all the other things that we typically think of when we think about the Christmas holiday.
Maybe you’ve had an experience like that: a time when you spent your Christmas away from all your family and friends. Maybe you spent Christmas in a hospital ward or overseas on a military post. Maybe you had a time when there weren’t any gifts to give or receive because finances were a huge barrier. Maybe there’s been a time when you felt estranged from your family and friends, and instead of a Norman Rockwell type family setting at Christmas, it felt more like you were standing next to cousin Eddie in National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation. In other words, a less than ideal Christmas.
Our culture does an incredible job of portraying the ideal Christmas. All the cards, movies, songs, displays at the mall, and advertisements portray a Christmas that’s so amazing. It’s like the holiday song Andy Williams crooned decades ago, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” But our lives often look more real than ideal. And in the same way, the story of Jesus’ birth, The Christmas Story, is real, not ideal, and that’s what makes it so hopeful.
Take for instance, Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had to convince her fiancé, Joseph, the village carpenter, that she had not been unfaithful to him, but that what happened to her was supernatural, that God Himself was the father of the baby she had within her. She had to convince her family that when she went to stay with her cousin Elizabeth and then came home visibly pregnant, she had done nothing wrong. She had to convince the religious leaders of the Jews in her village that she had not become pregnant outside of marriage, which would have made her a candidate for being stoned to death according to their law.
The situation also had to seem less than ideal to Joseph. Here was a guy doing the right thing, getting married to this young woman from his village, and now she’s pregnant. And everyone’s talking about it. And they’re talking about what a sucker he is to believe her story, and staying with her, when he could dump her at least, and have her put to death at most. But he didn’t do it; because God spoke to his heart. Although he knew the truth, it couldn’t have been easy.
Then there was the census. For some reason, the Roman leaders decided right about the time that Mary was due to give birth would be a great time to round everybody up and count them so they could tax them. So, Mary and Joseph had to make a ninety-mile journey, either walking or on the back of a donkey. Now, I’m not much of an equestrian—I’ve only ridden a horse once in my life—but while I was doing it, the thought never crossed my mind, “Hey you know who would really love this? My wife. And you know when she would probably think it was the coolest? When she was nine months pregnant!” But that’s exactly what Mary experienced. Whether she walked or rode an animal, it couldn’t have been a great moment for them; and definitely was less than ideal.
The ideal setting for Jesus’ birth was a bed, in a nice clean environment, with a midwife available, and the support of family and friends just outside the room. But that is not how Jesus came into this world. The Bible tells us He was born in a stable, in a place where animals stayed. Mary gave birth to her Child right there on a pile of hay in the middle of a stable, and that became the birthplace of the Savior of the world. Definitely not ideal.
Jesus’ birth doesn’t sound as much like Silent Night as it does the birth of Samuel Katz, Lillian Braverman, or Dorothy Melnick. They are three of the over 350 children born on Ellis Island as their parents emigrated from countries in the “old world” to be a part of the “new world” in America. In the middle of chaos, as thousands of people, speaking hundreds of languages and dialects, stood for hours and sometimes days, waiting for the opportunity of coming to America, children were born. And those children became a bridge between the old and the new for their parents. In the squalor of makeshift birthing wards, just feet away from people dying of various ailments and arriving after weeks spent at sea coming to America, they were the promise of a new beginning for their families.
Not too long after His birth, because of threats to His life, Jesus and His parents left Israel and fled to Egypt as refugees. They stayed there because there was an infanticide taking place in Bethlehem, as Herod tried to eliminate any competition to his throne. Jesus began his life as a refugee, as someone who had to leave His home and go to another place for His safety. As we encounter the refugee crisis that is going on in our world today, it should give us pause to think about the fact that Jesus began His life that way as well.
That isn’t how I would have written the Christmas story. I’m an idealist—I would have planned it out differently. If I wanted everyone to know Who Jesus is and put their faith in Him, I would have given Him a royal birth to elite parents in a significant period of history. My story would be ideal. Jesus’ birth was real.
All these things remind me of something hugely important that I sometimes forget: Jesus didn’t come here in an ideal setting; He came into our real world. It reminds me that He understands the reality of my world. The Bible says that Jesus, “was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain” (Isaiah 53:3, NIV). The Scriptures also tell us that Jesus is, “one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15, NIV). Jesus understands my hurting because He has known pain. He relates to my struggles, because He experienced temptation. Christ didn’t come to live in some ideal setting, but He came to live in the reality of the world that I’m currently a part of.
Christmas also reminds me that following God and trusting Him may cause me to be misunderstood, just like Mary and Joseph had to feel misunderstood as they did what God asked them to do. I’ve never had a dream when an angel told me that I should do something, but I’ve definitely had times in my life when I felt that God asked me to take a step of faith. And there have been times when I took a step of faith and the people around me didn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense. It went against the grain of culture or expectation. But it if it wasn’t for Mary and Joseph’s willingness to be obedient in the real, we never could’ve experienced the life that Christ offers to all of us.
Another thing that Christ’s birth and the Christmas story reminds me of is that life doesn’t always look the way I expect it to. I’m sure when Mary thought about her life as she grew up and being married someday, she didn’t picture herself standing at the altar pregnant and under suspicion. I’m sure Joseph didn’t expect that for his future wife, either. I’m sure it never occurred to Mary that the best place to give birth to her first child was in an animal stable, alone, in a place miles and miles from her home and family and friends.
The story of Christmas, the story of Jesus’ birth, gives us hope and reminds us that in less than ideal situations, when things don’t turn out how we believed they would, God is still with us. In this less than ideal situation, Jesus was born as Immanuel, “God with us,” and that’s a visible and tangible reminder of God’s faithfulness to be with us in every circumstance and situation. It’s a messier story than we often portray. There is a lot more uncertainty and risk than we sing about. But it’s a real story. And it’s a story that doesn’t just offer joy and hope during the holiday season; it’s a story that we can cling to when life gets real, all year long.