The Rev’d Deacon Raul Ausa-Velazco
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Christmas Day
December 25, 2019
May I speak to you in the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Merry Christmas! Or, as some of you may prefer, Happy Christmas!
As a child learning English, I always found the distinction quite confusing. In my native Spanish, it was simply “Feliz Navidad.” And yet in English, I noted how every year, I would hear “Merry Christmas” at school, from friends, and on television; but our English family friends would always sound just a bit different when they wished us a “Happy Christmas.”
So I was always quite curious about this slight difference in word choice. After all, happy and merry mean the same, or at least similar things. Merry sounds like the more older, more formal word, and some of us might associate formality more with the UK than with the US. And knowing the common religious and linguistic origins of American and English culture, it just seemed strange to me that at some point “merry old England” began to eschew its merriment. So I sat down and did some research.
We know that “merry Christmas” is the older usage—it’s attested to from letters and songs dating back all the way to the Middle Ages, including the still-popular “We Wish you a Merry Christmas.”
We also know that at some point, there was a deliberate move in the 19th century, especially among the upper classes, to down-play the “merry” aspects of English Christmas culture. Indeed, “making merry” was quite different in medieval England than anything we have probably experienced. Their Christmas was not a quiet day of church, presents, and dinner with the family.
Rather, after a season of prayer and fasting through Advent, Christmas was a raucous 12-day festival of drinking, feasting, and dancing in which everything was done to celebrate and imitate the world being turned “upside down.”
In churches, boys were given the mitre and staff of their bishops, and declared ‘boy bishops’ through the festival. More significant was the Lord of Misrule, who was a peasant elected by lots to be in charge of the revelries of Christmastide, who would then lead the poor peasantry in drunkenly parading to the doors of the rich to demand that they pay “tribute” or taxes, as lords did throughout the rest of the year. Often there was a tacit threat of violence should they refuse. It was for these reasons that the celebration of Christmas was banned by Puritans and Congregationalists in Connecticut and New England, in some places up until the 1800s.
Yet all of this-- That the old orders were now inversion of old orders, heeding of children, the poor drinking and eating their fill, the wealthy and powerful paid tribute to lowest among them--
All of this was to celebrate the amazing reversal and inversion, the turning-upside-down of world that had already occurred, and which John describes in this morning’s gospel.
Unlike Matthew and Luke, John doesn’t offer us a narrative of Jesus’ birth, despite the fact that he almost certainly had come across the Matthean and Lucan narratives. We don’t get any angels, shepherds, or wise men. There’s no shining star or dramatic flights in and out of Egypt. Instead, he offers an amazingly beautiful piece of poetry that has become so beloved and so central to us Christians that for centuries it was read at the end of every mass, as we do in this parish during high mass in Advent.
What is it about these words that moves us so? What is it about this message that led our forebears in the faith to forget the many cares of their lives and party for 12 straight days as if the world had suddenly been transformed?
Echoing the words that begin the Book of Genesis, “In the Beginning,” John brings us back to the beginning of the human story. In the beginning, God created a perfect order that he called “good,” an order in which all creation lived in harmony and humankind walked with and shared their life with God. Then, through sin, we fell away from that perfect creation and became separated not only from God, but from each other. Time and time again, God called us back to that life which had been intended for us: through the law, through the prophets, through God’s very voice coming down from the heavens. And yet time, and time again, we failed to listen and seemed to fall even farther away from the Creator’s loving embrace.
And yet our God never gives up or abandons us—instead, God decides to do something new. God decides that if we will not come to God, God will come down to us.
This is the turning point in the biblical redemption arc:. This is the moment when God reaches out Godself and does that which we have been unable and unwilling to do—in Christ, God bridges the gap between heaven and earth and begins the renewal of all creation. This blessed morning is the beginning of the miracle of salvation whereby this same Christ by his cross and resurrection will save and transform the world!
And this is the great joy and hope of Christmas: that while we sit in darkness, the light comes to us and even all the darkness of the world cannot overcome it. That though we live in a world blighted by sin, suffering, and injustice, God does not leave us to fend for ourselves, but breaks into it and renews and reorders it. God gives us God’s very self—all powerful, almighty, and omnipotent, in a weak, vulnerable, precious child, that we might adore him, fall in love with him, and give ourselves to God in return.
Orthodox Christians sometimes critique Western Christians, and especially Anglicans, for our emphasis on Christmas as our most-celebrated holy day, rather than Easter. We might think they have a fair point, especially when we compare our rich history of Christmas carols and Christmas Eve celebrations with the fact that The Episcopal Church didn’t even have an authorized Easter Vigil liturgy until the 1970s. But when we read and meditate on St. John’s prologue, when we consider the amazing thing that occurs this blessed morning and all that will come after it, when we realize that this marks the beginning of the new creation that will be heralded in by this blessed child, perhaps we can be excused for our excitement! And perhaps we may even wonder why we don’t do more in our own time to make merry and celebrate the fact that this morning, God has indeed turned the world upside down.
In the words of John Sullivan Dwight,
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn….
Truly he taught us to love one another;
His law is love and his gospel is peace.
Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother;
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we
Let all within us praise his holy name.
Amen.
Merry Christmas.