In Dr. Seuss’ classic children’s Christmas tale there is the grinch who is a lonely, miserable, selfish character who can’t stand the Christmas cheer that goes on in who-ville. He is seen as the antithesis of what Christmas is about yet in reality he is exactly the type of person that Christmas is for.
The news of Christmas will ring the most sweetly in the ears of those who are in despair, whose lives are broken and in shambles, and those who have made a mess of things. Christmas is all about God sending his son into a desperate situation to bring hope and salvation into people’s lives.
The world into which the first Christmas came
The Romans were very advanced in some ways (such as designing roads and aqueducts) but their treatment of the people they conquered was brutal and barbaric; they killed anyone who dared disagree with them, they taxed the people into poverty, they frequently raped and kidnapped women and slaughtered any men who stood in their way.
Not only did the Jews face constant threats of danger and poverty but they had the added injury of being crushed under Rome’s might when they had once been a powerful and glorious nation that drew awe from countries far and wide. They were God’s special people in God’s chosen nation but under Roman rule they would have felt very distant from those wonderful promises.
The people to which the first Christmas came
Just as the setting for the first Christmas was grim and lacking in fanfare so the first three groups of people who were let into the amazing world changing news were not who you would expect either.
The people who God chose to entrust his son to, lived in Nazareth which was a small town that nobody cared about and in fact, people looked down upon. In John chapter 1, verse 46, when Philip goes to tell his brother about Jesus of Nazareth, he replies, “‘Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?’ Nathanael asked.”
The parents of Jesus – God the son, King of the universe – were a couple who lived in a small town that apparently had the reputation of having no redeeming features about it.
The next characters in the story are an older barren couple whom God had miraculously blessed with finally conceiving a baby in their old age. In that time and culture, family was everything and having no children was one of the biggest burdens a couple could have.
Yet this formally barren woman was the very next person to be let into the wonderful secret that the saviour that all Israel had been longing for and expecting for centuries had come!
The third group of people who were told this amazing, world changing news were a group of shepherds on the hills near Bethlehem. Shepherds were very plain working class people and from spending so much time outdoors and with the sheep they probably smelt and looked a bit scruffy, definitely not the type of prestigious person you’d normally have front and centre for when royalty visited.
Christmas brings hope and light to those in despair
Christmas is centred on such an amazing, wonderful, world-changing, life transforming event that the more desperate and impossible things seem, the more the heart will rejoice in Christmas and everything that it means.
We don’t have to be happy to enjoy Christmas. In fact, it is those people who are broken and despairing who are fully able to grasp the joy of Christmas and what Jesus did by coming into our broken world to bring hope and salvation to all who trust in and turn to him!
This was something that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow understood and sought to put into words with his poem (later put to music), “I heard the bells on Christmas day”, which is about the struggle between the cheery Christmas atmosphere and singing of ‘Peace on Earth’ and the reality of the ongoing violence and injustice happening in the American civil war.
He finishes the poem with a recognition that, “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.”
Another great Christmas hymn that captures this brokenness and joy is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” - “O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.”
The song captures the longing that the Jews would have felt for the promised Saviour and the joy that would have been felt after such a long wait and also reflects the longing we as Christians have for his second coming.
Christmas is a wonderful fun-filled season but the most important thing about it is not all the happiness and fun it brings but the fact that it brings hope and peace and the promise of Salvation for all those who trust in and follow Jesus – the one who came to make all things new, liberate the slaves and change our hearts from the inside out!
Jesus came not for the important or the ‘good’ but for the outcasts, the downtrodden, the hopelessly caught in sin – and that is what makes Christmas amazing no matter what else is going on in our lives or in the world - “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” (Luke chapter 2, verses 10-11).