It is good to be with you. It’s good to be part of your Christmas Tradition. That’s what brings us here tonight, right? Tradition. Things we always do this time of year.

Traditions can be helpful. They help us mark time. They keep us together. Traditions are good excuses to get together with friends and family we might not see the rest of the year. Ritual and tradition can ground us when our lives seem unmanageable. When the world seems dire and scary, traditions can give us a sense of normalcy.

Yet traditions can be… weird. Comedian Jim Gaffigan points this out by saying, “I love our holiday traditions, like the Christmas tree, where we go out and we chop down a tree and we put it in our living room. Kinda sounds like the behavior of a drunk man, really. Some woman wakes up..
‘Honey, why is there a pine tree in our living room?

‘I LIKE IT. We’re gonna, we’re gonna, decoraaate it..for Jesus! and then I’m gonna hang my socks over the fireplace.’” [1] Maybe someone will put candy in them.

Gaffigan points out how backwards our traditions can seem at Christmas how we bring trees that are outside, inside and put inside lights outside.

Traditions can be absurd. They can also hold great meaning, for whether our tree is a live tree, or fake… or aluminum.. or ceramic.. There are warm memories we may have, of times spent around the Christmas tree.

Friends of ours have pizza and champagne when they put up their tree. They went out and got a tree when they were first married and bought pizza and champagne and that’s what they’ve been doing ever since. The kids are in on it too with sparkling grape juice.

Traditions can hold a lot of meaning. They can tell a story. Like my friends, it’s part of their love story. It’s good to keep remembering the story that spawned the tradition. Sometimes we forget. It’s like that old parable.

A family always made a roast at Christmas. When they made the roast they always cut the ends off. As they are teaching the youngest in the family, the children ask, “Why do we cut the ends off?” The parents don’t know. It’s what’s done. So the parents ask the grandparent, “Why do we cut the ends off of the roast?”

“I don’t know,” says the grandparent. “It’s what’s done. Let’s ask my parent.”

So the great-grandparent is asked the question about the ends of the roast. Is it some secret, old world recipe to keep the flavor? Is it a religious thing? Why do we cut the ends off of the roast? To which the great-grandparent replies, “Because it didn’t fit in the original pan. We lived in a small apartment. It was a half-sized oven which meant a half-sized pan. We cut the ends off because it didn’t fit.”

One of our old traditions back in Toledo was to visit the Manor House in Wildwood Park. It’s this big mansion where every Christmas each room is decorated by different designers. It’s amazing! Here’s a room with Santa Clauses from all over the world! Here’s a 1950s Christmas. Here’s a room decorated like the Peanut’s Christmas Special.

It was there I read a quote that stopped me in my tracks. It’s a quote by author G.K. Chesterton. “Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”

Wow.

Then it hit me. We do all this stuff… all these Advent and Christmas traditions to welcome the arrival of the Christ-child. Of God coming into the world. We put lights up, bring in trees, hang stockings over fires. We tell stories of St. Nick and of reindeer that can fly. We make special dishes and watch special movies. We have parties. We do all these things and have all these meaningful and wonderful things… But if Jesus was born today, we wouldn’t even know about it.

He was born in an out-of-the way place and laid in a manger. The manger is the feeding trough, it’s not the stable itself. Luke makes no mention of a stable, no draughty stable with an open door. No lowing animals are mentioned. Our tradition has put those there. Frankly I like them.

In our modern age, Jesus could be born on the side of the road in a beat-up car. Or in an abandoned barn or building that Mary and Joseph found, for there was no room, for them, in the inn.

Nor do we really question why they would stay in the inn. Isn’t this Joseph’s home town? He would surely have family in Bethlehem. And when family is in town, they stay with you just as you stay with them when you’re in town. Maybe you are in that situation tonight. But Mary and Joseph have to seek out an inn. Eastern hospitality wouldn’t have dreamed of putting family in an inn, that’s where stranger and foreigners stay. But even in the inn wouldn’t take them.

And there’s another way to read that. There was no room for them in the inn… which means a “No Vacancy” sign was on the door. Yet Monica Coleman points out there’s another reading. Monica gives the black church reading… There was no room… for them… in the inn. Meaning there was vacancy, but their kind wasn’t welcome at that establishment. This is born of the black experience of the Jim Crow south where hotels and motels would not give a room to a black family even if the whole place was empty.

If Jesus was born today, we wouldn’t know. God came to us in secret. In harsh circumstances. Not in a bright, clean hospital. Not a home birth with a doula. Not into some pristine Rembrandt painting. Jesus is born in everyday life. The child of hope and promise, welcomed by shepherds who would be out in the elements too. Today, our shepherds would be the plow-drivers out clearing roads who stumble upon the holy family and celebrate the birth.

There are stickers and cries to “Keep Christ in Christmas.” To make sure your holiday traditions focus on Jesus and not rampant consumerism. To make sure Christmas doesn’t become like the family’s roast where they didn’t know why they did what they cut the ends off of their Christmas roast. I’m all on board with this. So if you don’t already, maybe start a new tradition of reading the second chapter of Luke before you open presents. Or to sing happy birthday to Jesus before you eat your breakfast. Or to listen to Handel’s Messiah after this service. Keep Christ in Christmas. It’s a great phrase.

And maybe by observing these traditions, we’ll keep the story alive and in front of us. And by doing so, we might just keep Christ in Christians. I’m more interested in keeping Christ in Christians.

Christians who bring good news to the poor, for every church should have a letter of reference from their community’s poor in order to stay open.

Christians who bring hope to the hopeless. Christians who strive to see Christ in their neighbor and treat everyone they encounter with kindness, for some have entertained angels unaware.

Christians who by their very actions proclaim that Christ is born into our world.

Christians who know as Thomas Merton did, “Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.” It is we, the church, the body of Christ who must welcome him into our world and proclaim his birth.

We must find Christ in the out-of-the-way places he is still being born. Sometimes that means our traditions will be interrupted by this uninvited birth. Sometimes that means we… we will be interrupted. Yet that means the story is still active, still being born. For when those angels herald HARK!, you will awaken again to God’s presence in our world. And they will know you are a Christian by your love.

May it be so. Merry Christmas. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Jim’s comedy special, Beyond the Pale: https://youtu.be/xJAxRVeKnTE