I remember the Christmas we celebrated a year after coming to Canada with my family from the Netherlands in 1951. We'd moved from a farm in Athens, just outside of Brockville, Ont., where we'd first been boarded with a couple of Dutch brothers who had sponsored us, to a big, old clapboard farmhouse which my folks had rented for our family in the village of Tincap. I'd just turned seven, and was attending Grade 1 in the one-room country schoolhouse with my sister that fall.
When I was a teenager, I met a retired teacher at the Presbyterian church which we attended in Ottawa who told me she'd also attended the same school in Tincap, and she said the village had been named Tincap because the school had a tin cap roof. The school building was still standing in the 1970s when I visited and I took a photo of it – only, now it was used as somebody's home.
I remember we had a real tree that Christmas, set up in what I recall was a largely empty living room, by the front window. I think there were also some little white candles on the branches – which would be lit on Christmas Eve. The ornaments on the tree weren't much to write about. Just “off the boat,” I know we were still pretty poor. There were also three balls of pink popcorn hanging from the branches – gifts from a neighbour woman who ran the village grocery store and post office – and three oranges under the tree. Apart from these six items I can't remember any other gifts that year.
Closer to Christmas, I remember looking at these meager gifts and saying, “This has got to be the worst Christmas ever!” I suppose I thought back to the pretty good St. Nicholas Days we'd had in the Netherlands, with all kinds of goodies and gifts laid out by Sinterklaas on the evening of December 5th. Well, my mother must have overheard my mutterings of disgust, for I also recall a lengthy lecture on the real meaning of Christmas. (Mother never spanked, she only lectured, and that had a lasting effect.)
So what is the real meaning of Christmas? It is, of course, the story about the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. It is the story of God who came to visit us and save us. It is the story of the incarnation and the atonement of God. It is the story of God's kindness and mercy and compassion in Jesus Christ. It is the story that God is real and that he loves us and will never leave or forsake us. It is the story that God is with us in every situation in which we may find ourselves.
You may think this is “the worst Christmas ever” and I can't blame you. Maybe you've lost your job, or you don't like your job. Maybe you can't get what you need or want for your family. Maybe it's your first, or just another, lonely Christmas alone. You've lost a dear loved one. Your children have left home, or you have very few friends. Or, you've got someone very sick at home or in the hospital. There are all kinds of significant reasons far more legitimate than I have mentioned as to why “this is the worst Christmas ever.” I don't want to minimize or take away anything from the pain and pressure you may feel. It's real and it won't easily go away.
But have you heard, have you meditated on the real meaning of Christmas? “God is with us.” God came to visit us. God loves us. God came to identify with us, to be with us, to develop a relationship with us, to establish solidarity with us in our need. God became incarnate among us, in the baby who became a man. He was like “one of us;” yet, unlike all men or women that have ever been born. God came and lived and suffered and died among us and for us. God was risen in Jesus Christ for us and in us. Therefore, God understands us and our very human situation. God lives with us in our situations. And God can make a difference in our situations.
I hope the Christmas story will not be just some sentimental scene, or memory, for you. I pray it will be a real story of real “comfort and joy.” This is the story: God took up residence among us. “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into our neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” (Eugene Peterson, The Message)
