In putting in a plea for Christmas to be taken seriously, it may be necessary to ask at the outset that we be not misunderstood. We mean seriously, not in the sense of solemnly, but of realistically.

      We would not discount joy at this season; rather the contrary. Our deepest wish is to discover it in its reality and spread it in widest commonalty. But the joy of Christmas will be only artificial and simulated until we enter into the real meaning of the sacred season, and let that meaning take practical effect in our lives.

Noisy, but Hardly Merry

      How little the true meaning of Christmas is commonly comprehended! It has been confiscated as a carnival for commercialism. Leonard Feeney is not extreme when he writes:

      For some, so utterly secularised has the season become that they actually resent any suggestion of its spiritual significance. A woman was admiring the Christmas decorations in one of the great departmental stores in London. The management had introduced a representation of the manger and the Baby Jesus. But when this woman saw it, her face fell. 'What do they want to drag religion into it for?' she asked.

      One does not need to be a sour-faced Puritan to see the community as Christmas approaches as a kind of Vanity Fair, and to feel the aptness of Thackeray's description of it as 'not . . . merry . . . though very noisy. A man as he goes about the show will not be oppressed by his own or other people's hilarity. An episode of humour or of kindness touches or amuses him here and there, but the general impression is more melancholy than mirthful.'

Escapism

      In truth, so much Christmas celebration seems to be nothing more than a gigantic effort of excited escapism, to cover up the stern realities of life and forget for a while the fears with which this uneasy world is infested. Only a resolute grappling with the Christian meaning of Christmas can bring the reality of the joy we so pitifully pretend.

      This criticism, however, must be carried further, into Christian circles. Christians, too, commonly miss the revolutionary significance of Christmas, and consequently fail to display its real practical power to the world.

      Must we not plead guilty to allegorising the whole Divine Drama, confining its message to vague, unearthed 'spiritualities,' and transfixing its stark practical challenge under a stagnant varnish of mere sentiment? So much of our churchly celebration of Christmas has also been escapism, if we only recognised it.

The First Christmas

      What is Christmas really about? We need to discover that, first. It is always sound sense to go back to beginnings; so let us see what we can make of the first Christmas. If we approach it in its historical setting there is a strangely contemporary feel about it.

      Augustus was rationalising his Empire on 'sound business lines,' and making, on the whole, a very good job of it. He decided on a general census in order to assess his resources. The notoriously touchy and arrogant Jew presented a ticklish administrative problem, until some well-meaning numbskull thought he saw a way of doing it which would please the Jews by conforming to what he mistakenly supposed to be their tribal custom.

      So, householders had to trail to their tribal centres--some, no doubt, infuriated, and others patiently marvelling at the abysmal ignorance of the Gentiles--for the dubious privilege of filling in, in quadruplicate, complicated income-tax papers with the expensive assistance of professional scribes. So, the over-crowded little town of Bethlehem, in a background of form-filling and firm, benevolent, bureaucratic ineptitude, a child was born.

Romance or Reality?

      Not a very romantic picture? Then let us do the best we can to tone out the harshness and ugliness and pretty it up. Let us concentrate on the child--on the helpless babe in the manger--as so many do! How easy it is to ride away from reality as we patronise that innocent little child, as we group the angels and the shepherds and the stable and the star into a picture beautiful and remote as a stained-glass window in a dim cathedral. How easy to put it then with the childhood stories of Cinderella and Robin Hood, How easy, and how foolish, not to take it seriously!

      The other way of celebrating Christmas is, instead of going back two thousand years in delighted imagination, to determine to bring that Incarnation onwards two thousand years into this present world so filled with sorrow and foreboding.

The Saviour of the World

      The clue to the meaning of Christmas is in the plain fact that the Child born at Bethlehem became a Man; and there is only one way of making sense of the Man He was and the things He did. He was not simply one more in the honoured list of the noble teachers of mankind, caught and broken by the evil ambitions of the mighty. He was a Person who offered a way of life inextricably linked with the proclamation of His own Divine nature; who voluntarily accepted death, endured the lonely passion of the Cross, and rose again from the dead, being seen of many witnesses.

      On this our faith is founded. Only in the glorious light of the Resurrection can we see truly the Babe of Bethlehem. And so we sing, with all the joy of those who set sober truth to melody, nothing less than this--

      That is what Christmas is! 'The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.' 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.' We know that at Bethlehem, the eternal entered the temporal, for 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.' At this point in history, amidst form-filling and over-crowding and imperial ambition, life, abundant, eternal, triumphant, flooded into the death of this world.

      There are so many ways of saying it, and all of them are true: He is Life, Light, Way, Truth, Saviour, Redeemer, Lord. Bethlehem and Calvary ring with the good news of God's amazing love and transforming grace. 'For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.'

Of the Whole Life of the World

      The manner of that salvation is essentially simple, though its full meaning passes our understanding. It is that, seeing the glory and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, we love Him with, heart and mind and soul and strength, and in the inspiration and power of that love, love our fellows as ourselves. One necessary consequence of this act of God is that every social activity, every human relationship, will be .redeemed and transformed as men and women accept and share the forgiveness of God and live together in confident obedience to His will.

      It is salvation for the world, for the whole world, for the whole life of the world. 'The government shall be upon His shoulder, and . . . of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end.'

All is Sacred

      A preacher in a market town in the Borders of England went one Market Day to speak to the farmers. He was allowed to mount the auctioneer's box in the selling ring, where the farmers had been busy with their bargaining, and the place was full of the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the sheep. How was he to gain a hearing against that background of noise and in that unlikely place?

      But is not that very question an indication of a false conception of Christianity? Should it not be fully at home amid the noise of the world? Should it regard any place at all as unlikely to it?

      So the preacher raised his voice and said, 'Friends, this may seem a queer place to listen to the message of a Christian minister; but, after all, the event which gives me any message at all took place in a stable, with the noise of sheep and cattle for accompaniment.' A strange sense of sacredness seemed to fall upon every man, and the preacher was heard in reverent silence, silence which the noise of the animals hardly seemed to break.

      The preacher might also have gone on to tell how the Babe who was born among the cattle, when He grew to manhood, was found once more among the cattle, standing up with courage and strength against corruption and fraud.

      The distinction between sacred and secular is false. All is sacred, for all is God's, and all must be ordered in obedience to His will.

Trying to Save Ourselves

      But there's the rub! We want the transformed community all right; but we want it for our own ends, not for God's glory; and we want to achieve it in our own way, not His. We refuse to see it as an outworking of faith; we can contrive it for ourselves, with plenty of short cuts. 'This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.' Love and obedience are too bitter pills for the pride of man to swallow, so we seek another way.

      We do not want a Saviour. We prefer to save ourselves. Surely we have enough intelligence and skill to create, by ourselves, a just and peaceful human society! We know well enough what we want--a reasoned balance of freedom and equality, a safeguard against tyranny, and an opportunity to enjoy the good things of the world. If only we could get started, a generation yet unborn would see the end of this mighty work--the supreme achievement and crowning glory of Man, Master of the World!

The Promise That Fails

      And so we delude ourselves. In generation after generation bright ideas blaze hopefully for a season and then die. Benevolent despotism, parliamentary democracy, scientific progress, Marxian Communism, the brilliant tutelage of experts, or the common will of the ordinary man after another they promise us the bliss we long for, if we will but attempt one more Herculean labour.

      There is good in all of them but the bliss is never realised. With a tragic inevitability the sin and pride and sloth of men soil and draggle the glowing promises, until they become the mockery of a succeeding generation. History remains the story of the rise and fall of empires, of the burgeoning and decay of civilisations--great cycles of time made up of a million broken lives and disappointed hopes.

      In our generation, Communism has wakened the slumbering conscience of the world to a belated realisation of the intolerable conditions in which the mass of mankind lives. Once more the imaginations of men in many nations are being kindled by the vision of Paradise Conquered, and the promise that this time the conquest is assured. And once more, in the wake of the promise, comes the bitter reality of fading dreams, communities enslaved, and of individuals degraded to the indignity of units in a Super-Plan.

      No man can deny the facts of exploitation and injustice; no generous heart can be unmoved by compassion for the unnecessary suffering of a countless host of the oppressed. These things ought not to be. But when shall we learn that there is no way of salvation in those who promise liberty, but are themselves the slaves of time and sin?

Is There Hope in Christ?

      To whom then shall we turn? Why not to the Conqueror of sin and Lord of eternity? So often at this season we have knelt with the shepherds in adoring wonder--and then we have remembered the fierce anger of Herod and the patient cunning of Augustus, holding the world in fee. We have turned sadly away from the manger, afraid that the Gospel of love is a lovely but impractical dream, and have sought to match the anger of Herod and to outdo the cunning of Augustus. We have stumbled through the centuries from crisis to crisis, following the mirage of the perfect society whose founder and builder is Man.

      We dwell at this time in a world terrible with weapons of destruction, scarred with ancient hatreds and new fears. And still we have neither the sense nor the humility to accept the proffered salvation of God. Still we refuse to repent and believe the good news that love is stronger than sin and death.

The Unquenchable Light

      But one thing is certain, and that is that the purposes, of God will not fail. On the first Christmas Day a light shone in the darkness that the darkness can never extinguish. A Saviour came who was willing and able to save.

      We Christians have not an old, sweet story to tell for the passing pleasure of mankind. We have the word of healing and of hope f or the nations. The coming of Christ was heralded by the triumphant chorus: 'Peace on earth!' and by the, assertion: 'Unto you is born this day a Saviour.' The two belong together. The message of Christmas is as simple, as stupendous, and as inescapable as that.

Proving the Claim

      But we must not only make this claim. We must prove that it is so. The first Christians did. They set about it in the most practical way. Mary's song at the Annunciation, which came to be called, from the Latin of its opening words, 'The Magnificat,' and which the early Christians loved to use in their worship, has been described as more revolutionary than the Communist Manifesto. It certainly is in theory; we must show that it is in practice.

      That the early Christians did something more than sing about 'scattering the proud in the imaginations of their hearts' is shown by their complete abnegation of racial prejudice, class consciousness, and pride in material possessions. Having thus begun by scattering the proud delusions of their own hearts, the followers of Christ could not avoid going on to attack vested interests that were preventing others from entering into more abundant life.

      If, as some scholars believe, the Acts of the Apostles was an apologia addressed to a high Roman official, and was designed to show that Christianity in its purity and innocence had from the beginning enjoyed the protection of the Roman courts, there is something amusing in the examples Luke gives of Christian living strictly within the law, and in a spirit of perfect meekness creating social earthquakes that threw whole districts into roaring disorder.

      Every evil thing the Spirit of Christ will challenge; and because the sins as well as the virtues of peoples become embodied in their customs, traditions, and laws, Christians must be socially disturbing as well as integrating agents.

Continuing the Incarnation

      Christmas is more than a "spiritual truth." It is an actual Incarnation, and it must keep on "becoming flesh" more and more, in every practical way. God has acted decisively, radically, sacrificially; so must we.

      In our Christmas worship we are challenged by every evil thing that stands over against it in glaring and blatant contrast. Regarding each injustice, corruption, and cruelty, the spirit of realism shouts at us: "Your worship is a mockery until you tackle this thing and do your utmost to change it in the Spirit of Christ."

      Christmas calls, not for emotional worship, nor pretty preaching, nor even vague lip-service to Christian ideals, but for serious purpose, systematic study, and practical and persistent effort to apply the one programme that can turn the world "upside down," and so set it "right side up."

      As Dora Greenwell sang (and let us take her words in the most literal and active way)--

      Yes, Christmas morning will come, if Christians will only rise and act!

      J. ERNEST BROOKE was born at Wallaroo, S.A., and graduated from the Federal College of the Bible, Glen Iris, in 1932. After several ministries in Victoria, he returned to his own State for a period, and served the churches at Broken Hill and Cottonville. He returned to Victoria in 1950 and is now conducting an effective ministry with the church at Balwyn.