The Arrival | Advent 2023
Third Movement: Better Than A Happy Ending
Mathilda Mathema | Mahwanke, Zimbabwe
Find an audio reading of this Black Eyed Story above.
I am convinced that the reason Christmas has remained while other traditions and celebrations have faded from history is that the story sells itself.
Of course, it’s also true that it endures because the Church endures. But tell me, when was the last time that only the faithful partook in holiday glee? Unless they’re hosted by a church or a religious organization, what office parties are known to gather in reverence of the birth of the Savior?
For better or for worse, the Church lost it’s deed to the Christmas season long ago. The yuletide season is no longer privately held but full of shareholders and board members. Even the Christmas story has been covered and reimagined by every genre (yes, including those intended for adult readers only).
But still, why Christmas and not Easter or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa? Why hasn’t Valentine’s Day turned into a whole thing with its own music category and Hallmark channel movie empire? To be sure, it’s the capitalistic nature of a holiday built on a story that significantly features the act of gift-giving. But also, it’s the story. The story endures. Weird and fantastical as it is, it endures.
Haven’t you ever wondered at that? This bizarre, unbelievably far-fetched story of angel visitations, a virgin birth, a geriatric birth, a non-verbal priest, some shepherds, a census, some Far-East Asian astrologers, a tyrannical ruler, a baby massacre—and a partridge-in-a-pear-tree—endures.
It’s weird that we’re all expected to eventually outgrow stories of sugar plum fairies, red-nosed reindeer and jolly old elves right around the time we’re expected to embrace this wild and reckless story of Jesus’s birth as canon and inerrant.
Story Time – Ann Arbor Public Library. December 1937
If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have raised Max to believe in anything at all.
When Max learned the truth about who was behind our family Santa lore (which included pranks by naughty elves), they felt so violated by their disillusionment, I thought they’d never trust another word I ever said. I’d been that convincing. However, they had no problem dismissing most every Bible story I practically coated, breaded, and shake’n’baked them in.
For those stories, rather than suspending belief, they had questions punctuated with a hard side-eye. And because I had questions of my own, I was never able to conjure up a lore suitable enough to satisfy them - or me. They would ask their questions and I would stammer something like, “I guess some thing’s are just… ummm… a mystery?”
Listen up, kids with little kiddos: you should know there’s no such thing as “a guide to parenting.” There are ideas about parenting, theories about childrearing, and slabs of opinions about raising up well-balanced good citizens. But no expert is definitive. No one person’s way, strategy, tricks, hacks or techniques are guaranteed. So go your own way. If for the most part you’re earnestly nurturing and loving your kids, it won’t matter if you turn right or left at whatever crossroads you come to along your journey. Should you choose homeschool, private school or public? Free-range or clingy? Breastmilk or formula? Santa or no Santa? Basted-in-faith or just a side of faith for them to apply at their leisure? I promise you it doesn’t matter, because your best parenting decisions will be made in retrospect – years, maybe even a decade, after the fact.
If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have raised Max to believe in anything at all. I would’ve raised them to swallow good and beautiful and complicated Bible stories whole without bothering with faith or belief or eternity or damnation. I would’ve allowed them to breathe them in, inhale and exhale verses like prayers. I would’ve allowed them to approach it all with wonder. And when they asked their inevitable questions, I would’ve shown them how the humanity of their questions would lead them to their answers. We could have sat together while I broke open Bible stories like we did Shakespeare and Tolkien. Instead of OT and NT, I would have said, here are some tragedies, some comedies and some histories (some elves and some orcs). Instead of having them memorize verses, I would’ve given them more headspace to reflect – to ponder as Mary did. Is this a play, a poem, a song? Is it a satire, a farce? Is Job an allegorical character or a historical character? We could’ve had more fun. We could’ve turned the Genesis of creation into a scavenger hunt:
Read Genesis 1:4 and go find light breaking into darkness
Read Genesis 1:21 and go find a sea monster
Read Genesis 2:2 and go find God at rest.
Bookmobile – Mrs. Rosetta Martin's Story Hour. Boston 1961
I would’ve gladly traded the story of Jesus’s happy ending of salvation for the story of Jesus’s hopeful ending of “peace on earth and goodwill toward all humankind.”
As for this holy story of great tidings of great joy, I would’ve asked them to count all the differences brought together as one. Like Sesame Street, I would’ve prompted them, “One of these things is not like the others/one of these things doesn’t belong… Do the shepherds belong here? Do the wise men? Does baby Jesus?” Suddenly, it wouldn’t have been a story about eternity or salvation, but one that showed them what happens when up comes down and inside things go outside, and outside things come in. I would’ve asked them, “Where have you seen shepherds and sheep and stars all together singing?”
It wouldn’t have mattered if they believed if Santa was real or if Jesus was real. All that would’ve mattered is if they felt that the story was one they wanted to keep like they’d kept story of the hobbits in the Shire, or the story about a house called 124 being spiteful, or the one about the meaning of life being the number 42. And it probably would’ve done them a better good than insisting they believe that every outrageous story in the Bible was absolutely true. Even if it’s sacred, it’s still a story, and I think they could’ve just loved it because they’ve always loved stories.
After all, I never told them they had to believe in Stargirl, and yet they have so believed in the core message of that story that their copy is in tatters. I wish I’d done the same for every Bible story — just given them the wonderful characters and places of the stories, like when I gave them Harry at Platform 9 and ¾, Paddington at Paddington Station, Howl in his moving castle, or Dorothy in Oz.
What if instead of feeling a need to answer their frankly unanswerable questions, I’d allowed them to wonder, to hold unknowing, to believe in believing like we did the wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia? — Where did it come from? How did it get there? How did it become a portal? We can find those answers, but they don’t matter as much as how the story makes us feel.
But because faith stories require not only our blind believing but also a happy ending (otherwise what’s the point?) its hard to just be allowed to hold a magical, mysterious story just because it’s magical and mysterious and that magic and mystery magically and mysteriously makes us feel whole.
What if I’d read those stories to Max not aiming to save or redeem them? What if I’d read them with the sole purpose of allowing their imagination about all things God to run wild without a single one of their questions ever being resolved? I would’ve gladly traded the story of Jesus’s happy ending of salvation for the story of Jesus’s hopeful ending of “peace on earth and goodwill toward all humankind.”
I could’ve said, “Look, Max, the animals are sharing the manger with God and the rich and the poor have all come to see. Everyone and everything belongs. Look – see? The shepherds, the angels, the star, the frankincense, gold, and myrrh – the Palestinian mother and father, their exiled baby, and the Gentile astrologers. And you and me, too. We all belong, the inside out and the outside in.”
Look. Listen. Wonder. That's all we need to do connect to the Divine and to one another. Everything inside is already built in and ready to receive. Thanks for this beautiful Advent meditation as we wait in joyful hope and wonder...
This is really lovely. As a pastor, I always struggle with whether to preach on Christmas Eve, or not, and usually conclude what you say: the story tells itself. There's nothing I can add to make it better. Thanks for this.