Like every family this time of year, we have been knee-deep in the nostalgia that comes from binging on beloved Christmas songs and Christmas movies. It’s one of my favorite things about the season. I love experiencing the rush of emotions and memories from hearing Bing Crosby sing out “Silver Bells”, or watching Kermit scatting with Robin as they portray Bob and Tiny Tim Cratchit in the “Muppet’s Christmas Carol”. My secret delight is triggering this in others. I find immense pleasure in picking just the right song or movie that makes my wife or daughter gasp and say, “Oh my goodness! I remember this!!” They then smile and glow, usually for a lot longer than the runtime of the entertainment itself.
On our way home from church service I pulled up Spotify on my phone and selected the song “Walking in the Air” from the classic animated short “The Snowman”. It holds a very special place in my daughter and my’s heart. She gasped, as I hoped she would, and then she sang out louder than she normally would. I love my daughter’s singing voice, but she often keeps it hidden due to a teenager’s typical self-consciousness.
I started to wonder about these Christmas classics and what makes them so special, so magical, so worth remembering. She has only seen that short once, maybe twice, in her fourteen years and yet it triggers such a significant emotional reaction in her.
I began ruminating on this, listing off all the classics that routinely cause that feeling, and noticed a common thread. Whether we are talking about “Frosty the Snowman”, something Santa Claus related, “The Snowman”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, or any number of Christmas classics, they all have one feature in common.
The magical or supernatural comes into the ordinary for one day, or one season, and changes things for the better.
Whether we are talking about the Christian or secular expressions of Christmas, this theme is quite obviously predominant. I hear a lot that Christmas is about family getting together or it’s “for the kids”, but I think the reason so many of these things are classics is that we all have this instinct, this sense, that there is in fact something true about this. For the Christian, it is certainly true. For the secular person, there is a deep seated desire for it to be true.
In many ways for the Christian every day is Christmas.
God, a supernatural being, came to earth, invaded the everyday world, did supernatural things for us and in us, and then broke through into our personal everyday lives.
In a way, snowmen do come to life. Scrooge springs to mind as the coldest and most unfeeling of fictional men. We all know a Scrooge. They are frozen in their three sizes too small hearts. But then a Spirit shows up and warmth, life, and joy come crashing in.
Gifts magically appear on the regular in the life of the follower of Jesus. Most often this is in the form of fellow believers who have just the right word, just the right encouragement, just the right wisdom at just the right moment. We also share with others the unique gifts we possess from the Holy Spirit (in many ways our own Father Christmas). When matured we are filled with warmth, joy, peace, love, and generosity; all hallmarks of the season. We are blessed with these miracles in our lives to such an extent that we then become a miracle pouring gifts into someone else’s life.
While the birth of the Church can be traced to the resurrection, or for others technically at Pentecost, I firmly believe that its conception was at Christmas. Heaven touched the Earth. The supernatural blended with a natural kick-start to a new world, a new possibility, a new expression of life as it was always meant to be. One reached out to another, which reached out to more and multiples of more in a similar process of cells replicating that we see following human conception.
We are the Mass of Christ; His body manifested for all to see.
Faith, Hope, and Charity are our very breath, our inhale and exhale.
Jesus tells us that the hallmark of His disciples will be their deep affection, their familial feasting, and giving of gifts, both physical and spiritual to one another; their Love for each other. That is the telltale sign. That is what the World is supposed to see and is meant to cause them to declare that we are clearly God’s.
That all sounds every bit like Christmas to me, but instead of a moment, instead of a season, the ideal is a life metaphorically dressed in the colors and perfumed with the smells peculiar to this time.
Christmas the Christian’s New Year’s Day when our external expressions become aligned with heaven. We put focus and intention into practicing the ideal for a time, and remind ourselves that we are capable of these elements. Each successive year we try to make it last longer, take it a step farther, take our candle and push back against the darkness with our joined lights.
There is so much myth, so much symbolism in Christmas that points to the True. We want it to be Christmas all year long because it is, in fact, precisely who we can be and are…if we choose it. It is who we were meant to be from the very Beginning.
We are a feasting people. We are a giving people. We are a joyful people. We are a hoping, believing in the impossible made possible through supernatural union, people.
We are a Christmas people.
We are and this is the Mass of Christ.
Finding Narnia 
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