Is Christmas just for kids?

Advertisers want us to think of kids when we think of Christmas because they know that when it comes to our kids we will do lavish, sometimes crazy things.

The Christmas story though, invites us to look at life with adult eyes, like how do you negotiate life living in an occupied territory? It starts with a census because Rome needed money. Do the authorities care about Mary’s condition? Do they compensate Joseph for hours lost at the carpenter’s lathe? These people are living in fear, like many of us who fear everything from cancer to stewardship programs.

Right next to fear, they have to cope with homelessness, with no place to stay in Bethlehem. Maybe Joseph saw strangers pointing at him and his family and overheard them saying,"if he weren't so lazy and got himself a proper job he wouldn’t be homeless."

So this is a story about political oppression, harsh taxes, displaced people, homelessness, unemployment, vulnerable refugees and asylum-seekers. We shy away from seeing that our own political system and the demands of our own economy could have comparable effects on far-flung places, to those brought about by the Roman Empire and its client regimes all those years ago. 

Everywhere you look in this story you see people clinging on with their fingertips to life, to hope. Zechariah, who’s waited his whole lifetime for this moment, and when it comes he fluffs his lines. Then there’s Elizabeth, who’s waited all her life to have a baby, and it’s never come. Adulthood for her has been overshadowed by the monthly disappointments and the social stigma of childlessness. She’s simply defined by what she’s not. Being defined by what you’re not is the essence of poverty.

People here are searching, from wise men to shepherds, all scouring the heavens searching for meaning, and hope, peace and joy. They encourage us to explore the edges of our own convictions. The nativity story’s full of people searching, people wanting to believe there’s more than a just appearance and surviving and making a living and staying cheerful. They were looking for what’s first, and once they saw it, they worshipped.

There are good reasons to get children to perform nativity pageants. It’s good for them to learn the story. It’s great for them literally to walk a few steps in the clothes of a shepherd. It’s terrific for grown-ups to gaze on the innocence of childhood, and, in so doing, rediscover the wonder of life, but a big slice about being grown up is also about struggling, and searching. Because deep down we try at times to avoid all that. Sometimes being a grown up is hard work. In the end the good news of Christmas is just this: God is with us in all our struggling, and searching. Beloved friends - Christmas: it’s for you.