Christmas; The Light of the World

I live in Norway, in the northern part of Europe. It is a place of frozen ground all winter, and we normally get snow on and off from November and December. Some years we have a white Christmas, sometimes we don’t.

            White Christmas naturally refers to the snow, but White-Christ is an old Norwegian term for Jesus Christ at the time of introducing Christianity to Norway. Here, the term ‘white’ has a deeper, more symbolic meaning: The Christ of light, goodness, truth, is the victorious one who wins by righteousness and gentleness – not by the bloody sword. There is a new sense of light of the world.

            Snow is white, and it brightens up the landscape in the dark winter months. Christmas rings in a festival of light, of hope, new beginnings. The mass is in celebration of the Christ child, the Messiah, the anointed one of God. When someone is anointed, it is for a task, for making a change.  Anointed with oil – thing has the meaning of being instituted into a role, to perform tasks of a ruler. Christ Jesus is our King, the righteous King, who reigns with truth and justice and mercy.

            We hear the story of the birth of Jesus every Christmas, and we pause and ponder the effect of His coming. This world is essentially different place because of it. We celebrate the incarnation of God in man at Christmas. The very fact that God himself created in Mary a child who is both God and man, in order to fully identify with someone like me is too fantastic to fathom.

Gari Melchers: The Nativity

A child is dependent on his parents, his family. A child is so vulnerable. God chose to come as a child, as ‘a babe in the manger’. I am a mother. I have had little boys as babies. I have seen them grow to be young men. Jesus grew up in an ordinary human setting – in politically unstable times in the Middle East, where there was abuse of power, tragedies on a human scale. There were some tendencies to revolt against the powers of occupation; there were radicals of a different kind: the ones who talked about the apocalypses. It was like sending his only Son into a land like Syria today…with its anarchy and conflicts. Anyway, Jesus was born by a teenage mother, not yet married, and on a journey to comply with the government’s demand for a consensus. With too many people travelling, there was no room for them in a proper lodging, so she gave birth in a stable, with the support of her betrothed, being warmed by animals. I know God did this deliberately – and you may wonder why he did not make it smoother for everyone involved...I guess we think ‘smooth’ is more blessed. Perhaps we are wrong.

God knows what he is doing; because of his entry as a man, he showed his true humanity in his death on the cross 33 years later. And he showed his God-nature in his destruction of the grip of death. He rose from the dead, and so shall we – in his strength. That is the bright and shining light of my hope. This is life eternal, for all who believe on the name of Jesus the Christ.