Merry Christmas from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a few thoughts on what Christmas means for me. Let’s get started!
Many a Christmas tale stars a jolly, old man who lives at the north pole making toys to hand out every year using his sleigh and team of magic reindeer, but even Santa is rarely portrayed as anything more than a steward of the holiday attributed to the birth of Jesus Christ.
How does a self-existent God relate to His created beings? How CAN He relate? The Old Testament records a long line of flawed human beings locked in a try/fail cycle when it comes to obeying God, starting with our choice to reject God by eating the forbidden fruit. For around a millennium and a half of history, God is seen in story after story, book after book at work in the background connecting with people by framing his love through contemporary imagery. He fashioned one chosen family into a powerful nation, preserved them from extinction at the hand of the undefeated Assyrians and through Babylonian exile, and ensured their reinstatement into the land He had promised to their ancestors even as a parade of foreign empires conquered their territory.
It is one of the darkest chapters in human history. Israel has been without God’s prophets for hundreds of years, and the religious leaders are corrupt and self-important teachers instructing their students in falsehoods. Furthermore, the region is clutched by the iron fist of Rome. Soldiers from the occupation force can order you to carry their packs for up to a mile, enemies of the state are publicly executed nailed to wooden crosses along the highways, which are left in place as reminders not to rebel. Meanwhile, a movement of zealots work in secret to liberate their homeland, storing up supplies for when the pharisees’ messiah would show up in the temple and permanently reestablish Israel as a sovereign kingdom. If ever there were a time it appeared God had abandoned the world, this would be one such time.
Amid this landscape, Jesus set aside whatever job perks come with being Creator God and Master of the Universe to relate to one of us AS one of us. He was born as an otherwise normal baby into poverty. In a town crammed to the walls with people, the only visitors who took note of Him were lowly shepherds who received a special invitation and some unknown number of scholars from the east who were paying attention. His earliest memories would have been from living as a refugee from a regional king who murdered His peer group looking for Him. When He moved back home, his family landed in the regional ghetto, where He grew up with the stigma of being an illegitimate child learning carpentry.
If anyone were ever entitled to everything, it would be Jesus; if anyone ever went to the most extreme lengths to be relatable to everyone who’s ever lived – again, Jesus. He went through the absolute worst humanity had to offer and didn’t back down. Many details of the analogies He used to reach people in 1st century Judea are lost on us today, but the core message shines on. And it started in a town called Bethlehem just over 2,000 years ago, where God took on human form to experience our worst and to carry our end of the contracts He made with us where we failed.
Takeaway
While the date of December 25 was originally chosen to displace one or more Pagan celebrations, today it represents a unique opportunity for Christians as it is in this season that a general audience is primed to hear about Jesus’ most relatable story. He was born.
Final Question
What does Christmas mean to you?
I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Socials.