A Homily for Christmas
Vigil Mass: Isaiah 62:1-5 Acts 13:16-17, 22-25 Matthew 1:1-25
Mass during the night: Isaiah 9:1-6 Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14
Mass at dawn: Isaiah 62:11-12 Titus 3:4-7 Luke 2:15-20
Mass during the day: Isaiah 52:7-10 Hebrews 1:1-6 John 1:1-18
It is said that we can credit our moms for the magic of Christmas, although one American classic tells a different story. In the movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” (1989), the father of the family, Clark Griswold (played by Chevy Chase), labors like Sisyphus to give his family, as he puts it, the “hap, hap, happiest Christmas.”
Is Christmas about finding the perfect tree? Clark loads his family into the largest station wagon ever built to forage in the woods. His refusal to ignore the poor driving habits of others puts the family wagon under the carriage of an 18-wheeler, but a tree is eventually ensconced in the family home, so snugly that its top half must be cut away so that it fits under the living room ceiling.
Is Christmas about holiday lights? If so, Clark is prepared to turn his spacious suburban home into one giant, glowing bulb. There is a life lesson that needs to be learned. There are only so many cords you can string together. But like many of us, Clark cannot let it go. He will create the perfect Christmas, whatever the cost.
A few days before Christmas, Clark goes to the attic, still in his pajamas, to hide presents. He discovers one from Mother’s Day, never retrieved. Another lesson: Do not move so quickly through life that you do not have time to live it.
Clark is mistakenly locked in the attic. It is a Christmas grace that should come to more of us because it forces Clark to let go, at least temporarily, of his Christmas fantasy. Some never do, which is why Christmas Day is often a letdown. We try—we really do—but we cannot make the magic, and the day after Christmas, moved by melancholy, we are eager to remove all traces of the season.
The Griswold attic is cold, and Clark must forage for clothes. In a fur throw, turquoise turban and pink opera gloves, Clark settles in to watch the home movies he discovers. The first is labeled Christmas ’59. With a tear visible on his cheek, Clark watches his young mother pull her son through the snow in his new Christmas sled. On Christmas ’55, Clark first receives the sled. His mother and father unload a car trunk full of presents before entering a family party. It is full of adults, who toast the camera and mug for it.
Call it grace, nature or both, but we often see the magic that was there all along only when we are fortunate enough to revisit our lives in memory. The sacred was always there, surrounding us, nurturing us. We just could not see it.
Clark will plummet back into contemporary Christmas when his wife returns from shopping and opens the stairs to the ceiling attic. But locked away in the attic, Clark realizes that Christmas is a magic that descends to earth of its own volition, quite often despite our strenuous efforts to squeeze the season into our expectations, so fraught with anxiety and care.
Of course, that is the message, the meaning of the original Christmas. We did not create a place or a time to welcome him. God did that. We had not merited his coming. “But the grace of God appeared, saving all” (Titus 2:11). Most people lacked the awareness even to know that the child had come. Animals, shepherds and foreigners—those banished from the bright lights—were the ones attuned to the great work that God had begun.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone (Is 9:1)
How sad, tragic really, that we have created a modern Christmas that almost obscures the original meaning of the event. The well-intentioned Clark Griswold, who lives in all of us, is convinced that without heroic efforts, the magic of Christmas will not come.
Kudos to those laboring on rooftops, baking in kitchens and struggling with those “if one goes out, the rest stay lit” Christmas lights. We need you, and we are grateful for what you offer us. But no one can manufacture Christmas, make Christmas magic. Christmas is not compelled by effort or technique.
No, there is only Christmas grace. An awareness that all is gift, that God loves us, just as we are. God is determined to show that love by becoming one of us, just as we are: cold and poor and naked in our needs. Sometimes, it takes darkness—the plains of Bethlehem, the cold Griswold attic—before we can see the light.
“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us” (Is 9:6). O for the grace to stumble, to stare and to ponder.
