In 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun newspaper. "Dear Editor: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.' Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”
Like Virginia O’Hanlon, wondering about the existence of Santa Claus, people have wondered about the existence of God. Or, if he does exist, how we can know him. C.S. Lewis was so convinced of his agnosticism that he once wrote: “Man cannot know God any more than Hamlet could know Shakespeare.” He conceded the fact that there is perhaps an author to life. However, if we are part of a cosmic story we could not know God with any certainty, just as the characters in a play could not know the playwright.
Lewis, a little time later, became a follower of Jesus. He was approached by a colleague who reminded him of his previous agnostic stance and asked, “Didn’t you once write a paper defending your agnosticism?” Lewis replied, “I was right – Hamlet could not know Shakespeare” but he continued, “Unless Shakespeare wrote himself into the play of Hamlet and introduced himself.” What was it that C.S Lewis discovered? In a word, Christmas. Not the holiday as we celebrate it, but the movement of God in history that precipitated the holiday.
A common perception of God is that he is the “man upstairs.” Life is viewed as living in a high-rise. We live on the lower floors and discovering God is a matter of going to the upper floors. If we go high enough we will find him. The problem is, God is not higher he is other. He doesn’t live in the same building. He is not a part of this created world. Going higher will be of no avail. It may provide a nice view but we won’t run into God.
To know God he must reveal himself to us. He must break through into our world, pull back the curtains, and let us know he is there. That is the meaning of Christmas. God introduced himself to us. Previously, he had spoken through his appointed messengers, the prophets, as conveyers of self-disclosure. Even creation points to his eternal qualities. But nothing shows us who he is like the Christ of Christmas.
Christmas is God becoming flesh and moving into our building. Christmas is God writing himself into human history through his son Jesus. God became flesh so we who are in the flesh could meet him and know him in an extraordinary way. Jesus stepped out of heaven and planted his feet on the earth.
Beginning life as a baby, born in the village of Bethlehem, God showed up on the planet. When Mary changed his diaper, she was changing God’s diaper. When Joseph taught him how to use a hammer, it was God’s hands that gripped the mallet. When the baby cried and kept his parents awake at night, it was God who caused them to lose sleep.
Christmas is a big deal not because of the decorations, food, family gatherings, gifts or goodwill. It’s a big deal because the author of all that exists walked onto the stage of human experience. Jesus who has eternally existed with the Father became a player in the drama of life. It was the Christmas pageant performed 2,000 years ago.
Not such a big deal? Imagine if we had to become a slug, enduring life with other slugs, doing slug stuff. Not a very appealing or comprehensible existence. Consider this, the distance from Jesus to human being is exponentially greater than the distance between us and a slug. That is a big deal.
So why did he do it? The prophets of old could only do so much. They were killed, run out of town, or at the least misunderstood. Creation can be discounted as an act of random change over time. Christmas is God revealing himself to us in the way we could best understand, as another human being. God, as an all-personal, all-relational being, wants us to know him, so our lives can center on him. We were created to enjoy a relationship with him.
Yet, the brokenness, heartache, and misery of this world can be traced back to the self-serving interests of the human heart. God had a radical plan to draw people back to him. He entered our world to communicate with us, in word and deed, by showing us a Life of self-sacrifice and giving. Not ignoring our condition, he entered into our experience of brokenness, heartache and misery. Christmas changes everything.
The saying, “like father like son” applies to Jesus. To know Jesus is to know God. His life showed us what God is like. If a character had been written into Hamlet that talked and acted like William Shakespeare, Hamlet could begin to know his author.
Deep in every human heart is the desire to know that we are more than, as Kierkegaard wrote, a “cosmic bum.” There is a longing to know that our lives matter and that our lives are more than matter.
The meaning of Christmas is that our lives ultimately have meaning. God entered our world to demonstrate his great love for us by revealing himself to us beginning as a tiny, fragile, dependant, vulnerable baby. Aren’t those the places we often find ourselves? Those are the very places God decided to join us in our story.
Christmas doesn’t answer all of our questions with certainty. Does God exist? Or, those deep, heartfelt questions that often begin with “Why?” However, it does explain the relationship of God with the world as we’ve inherited it. It is his story that helps us make sense of our story. Maybe Virginia’s papa was on to something. “If you see it in THE SON it’s so.”
