It is my habit - before sitting down to write commentary based solely on my own thoughts, and not as a response to some other's statements, to wander about my home and backyard, considering what and how to say what I want to express. I can tell you now that I am motivated to write this Christmas message and wish to Christians and non-Christian alike by my previous commentary about the lack of "Christ" in Christmas.
As I write this now, many a happy a memory is brought to mind and a few tears are in my eyes in remembrance of what Christmas means to me, with the overwhelming remembrance of one particular Christmas Eve when I was very young, and I had faith in both Jesus and Santa Claus in equal measure.
So long ago, in the early 1960's, I belonged, by default to St. Andrew's Lutheran Church, in University City, Missouri. Belonged by default, I say, because I was far to young to have been confirmed into the Lutheran faith.
Like all families brought up in the Lutheran faith, we celebrated the opening of Christmas presents on the 'eve of Christmas day, but not before attending Midnight Eve service. It is the memory of that service and my father's special attention to me, that cause me to cry even as I write this.
The night began, as daylight failed and evening lights prevailed, to the smell of my mother baking Swedish Tea Cakes to give away to visitors to our home over the next few days. As my mother spread cheesecloth on the dining room table to roll out the pasty, add the dried fruits and nuts, mixed with cinnamon and cloves and allspice - the traditional German spices - my mother still found time to dress me in my Christmas suit and clothes, against my wishes, for late night service at Church, which was but a few blocks walk from our home.
At the appointed time, we left "en mass" as a family and walked to Church through a cold, crisp but dry Christmas Eve. But before we left, knowing we would return after midnight, and the advent of Christmas Day, we left behind the cookies, milk and cheese offered by good german protestant children to Santa Claus, in the hope that, on his one night, he would forget our "naughty" and remember our "nice" in exchange for this offering of my mother's best Schnickerdoodle cookies and home-made "farmer's cheese."
One might have considered our church to be rather "high church." We had our pastor, assistant pastors, acolytes, altar boys, a rector to swing the thurible carrying our darkly secret prayer's to God in it's drifting fumes, and a Cantor to lead the congregation in song. The Church was dark and absent of any false light, even the Christmas tree, all of which were lit solely by the candles whose flames carried our prayers, that night, to God.
Whilst I squirmed to see all that there was to see, my parents along with all those confirmed in the beliefs of he Lutheran Church, on bended-knee prayed the prayer of the sinful wherein they asked God for the grace to participate in that which would come in through true faith of the Church.
Suddenly, brilliantly, beyond all imagination the Reverand Gerhadt Schmidt pronounced the words, "I am the light of the world" and the church was lit with so much light even Angels might bend, faces to the ground, to acknowledge that God himself had come into our presence, as a real and not imagined force; not, some abstract thought or desire, but the very real presence of God. I can not, in all the rest of the years past, remember an ocassion filled with such awe and wonder at the insignificance of my own small self.
The transformation was instant and transforming. God was indeed here with us so that we might all be transformed that night from sinners to those graced, and favored, by the Almighty. You might reasonably say it was well-staged theatrics but the effect was such that I have never forgotten it.
We sang that night they hymns that to this day I can not sing without a break in my voice and tears in my eyes. To this day I can only sing these hymns in a whisper for fear that my fellow congregates might hear my voice break and see the tears in my eyes. Led by the Cantor, with accompaniment by the choir and a thundering organ, we sang "Oh, Holy Night", "Watchman Tell Me Of the Night" and that greatest of all Lutheran hymns, "Silent Night."
I confess , here and now, that I fell asleep in church that night long before we received the grace and forgivness of God in the form of the Benedictum. Knowing we had been blessed with something special, but not sure what, we headed home that dark, late night, to our homes, free of sin and free to enjoy the presents from Santa Claus.
I was dreaming, probably while in church, of my private prayer; sinful child that I was. To this day, if you go to 6755 Chamberlain Avenue, in Unversity City, Missouri 63130, and look in to the glass of the window on the second floor bedroom facing southwest you will find in the glass the name "Rudolph" etched in the glass.
That night, as church service let out, we exited the building into a world made perfect, unmarked by man, through new pure snow on the ground and falling from the sky. Through that pure and untrodden snow my father carried me in his arms the few block to our house, whistling as only he could, on perfect pitch the hymns we had just sung and whispered in my ear that it was after midnight so Santa must have come and gone by now.
In truth, my father had left church service that night, made his way home to put out presents and eat the cookies and drink the milk left for Santa, made his way back to church in time to join us before the service let out and the snow covered the ground for our walk home. God, in his special attention to me that night, the first of many night there to come, had made my world a place where the blessed and the mundane could be as one; could be one without conflict. He has done so on many an occasion since in my life, which shall always remain private, between me and him.
So, what is Christmas to me and what is my Christmas wish for you?
Christmas is to me those mundane places of my life in which and through which I have and will celebrate those particular, sometimes peculiar, traditions my family offers up this time of year. It is also the mysterious presence of God in the same familiarity as that in which he appears to me when I need him, converses with me in private, sees my need and meets it, unexpectedly, like the gift of the pure fallen snow, through which my father carried me home and whispered in my ear, while whistling Christmas hymns, so long ago.
What is my Christmas wish for you?
I wish for you to understand and appreciate that God has placed each and every individual here on earth, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, any other faith, or even the heathen, because it serves his purpose that at some time they will do as they do, for reasons known only to them and God, some good or kindness; something unique, special and probably unknown to you and which does not require your recognition to have served it's purpose.
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