Christmas Eve

“What does Christmas think about you?”

The Rev. C. Dean Taylor

It was one of our most favorite games, played when our kids were just old enough to talk, and to use their imaginations. We called it simply “The Music Game,” and it was pretty simple. The music was “classical”, but of course that might mean hundreds of different kinds of music.

What you do is to put on a few minutes of music, and the parent asks, “What does this make you think about?” Put on the theme from the old Lone Ranger Show, and it makes them think about horses running, and they get to run around the room and play horses. Put on the broad and majestic Great Gates of Kiev, and it makes them think about Giants or dinosaurs, who walk with great big steps, and everyone gets to be a dinosaur. “What does this make you think about?”

But one Christmas season, our youngest child threw us a curve, without even knowing it. It was a couple of days before Christmas, and she was just old enough to play, and our music was, I think, probably from the Nutcracker. And so I put on the dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, and I ask, “Lucy, what does this make you think about?” but she answered, “I don’t know—what does this think about you?”

What does this think about you? Which is, of course, utterly backwards from the way the game is supposed to be played. However, as I have considered this Christmas season over the years, I wonder if possibly she might have been onto something without even knowing it.

Not, “What does this make you think about?”, or even, “What do you think about this?” but rather, “What does this think about you?”

I wonder if that’s the basic mistake that we make spiritually about this holy season of Christmas. We think that it begins with us. That it’s up to us to have that feeling of holiness or rightness with God.

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But what if the spiritual life is actually the other way around? What if it’s not so much how we feel about God, but more about how God feels about us? Which turns out to be the Good News of Christmas: that God SO LOVED the world, that he gave his only son…”. That’s how God feels about us.

The message of Christmas is so surprising, that we may not believe it, especially when we think that it’s totally up to us to “make Christmas happen” this year. The message of Christmas is this—that God’s deepest hope is that every human soul might experience joy in this world.

Joy to the world. That’s not just our hope. It’s God’s hope. It’s truly, truly, what God thinks about us. On this night, our hope and God’s hope meet together in this symbol of creativity and possibility. It is a story that begins in shame, heartbreak, and tragedy, continues through “no room in the inn”—the supreme symbol of “no room in our hearts”—yet ends up with that mystery of all mysteries, when no one becomes someone. God creates something good out of it.

As God does in our lives. And in our world. Christmas is one of those “thin places” as the Celts put it, where the separation between human and divine is very, very thin. And in that transparency, we can see that our hopes are met with God’s hopes for us. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

So, on this holy night, this “thin place”, what are your hopes for your future? What new possibilities will God give birth to in your life this year? Will you be expecting good things? Will you be asking not just about your hopes, but about God’s hopes as well?

That is, will you be asking not just, “What do I yearn for, what do I desire, what do I hope for that will fulfill my life?” but also, “What does God yearn for me; what does God desire for my happiness and fulfillment in my life?” Perhaps the best news of all might be that those are in the end the same answer. So, let me ask you, “What do you think about Christmas this year? And you may well answer back, “I duuno, what does Christmas think about you?”