by Brett Manero
Many years ago, someone asked me: “Why doesn’t the Church have a Feast of the Incarnation, to truly honor the fact that God became man?” I thought about it and wondered the same thing: why doesn’t the Church have a specific feast celebrating the coming of the God-Man? It took the input of another person to remind me: the Church does indeed have such a feast – Christmas. But perhaps because of the secular’s world’s takeover of Christmas and the countless traditions built up around this time of year, we’ve forgotten that this holiday is exactly about that: God becoming man, and the unimaginable miracle this is. The Prophet Micah, speaking in c. 700 BC, spoke of the coming Incarnation:
For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his place,
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth (Micah 1:3).
Perhaps if we renamed it “the Feast of the Incarnation,” its true impact would be felt all the more. God has entered into our world, something which has forever changed human history. The Incarnation is the very center of human history: everything leads up to it, and everything leads from it. Even if we’re not having such a “Merry” Christmas, we need not worry, for God entered into our wretched, broken world to not immediately wipe out evil, but to walk among us in the midst of it. If we’re not having a joyful Christmas, we can remember that His birth and early years were even more troublesome: His birth in a manger, His escape from Herod’s murderous tyranny into Egypt, the immense stress that Joseph and Mary must have felt. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being joyful at Christmas (and if you are, that’s great!), but for those who struggle with joy at this time, perhaps that’s okay – the Incarnation does not immediately end all suffering, but starts the process of transforming it into something that can be for good.
Thank goodness Christmas is a season of twelve days, and if you really want to stretch it, it can be considered as lasting all the way until February. To be honest: I really struggle with the Christmas season: the endless festive songs starting in early November, the pressure to have the perfect holiday, the toxic family drama, the shopping, the travel…. and on and on. I usually start out enjoying the Christmas music and I try to get into the spirit of Advent, an attempt which lasts for a few hours, at best. My favorite time of the Christmas season is after December 25th until the early New Year, while it is still the “twelve days of Christmas” and much of the pressure has calmed down. This is when we can really unwind and celebrate the fulfillment of Micah’s prophecy that God has indeed become incarnate in our world, and our world is forever changed for the better because of it. If the Easter season is the “season of Resurrection” with springtime, flowers and leaves blossoming, and signs of life showing themselves everywhere, then the Christmas season is the “season of Incarnation,” where the daylight is getting longer, the darkness is getting shorter, and the hope of spring and Resurrection are growing stronger.
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