"Fog" for Christmas

The spirit of Christmas is elusive.  It is beyond our grasp.  The beauty, the love which is Christmas hovers over and around us.  It’s so real and so near, we think we can hold it in our fists.  But when we open our hands, it’s not there.   Like fog.

Carl Sandburg wrote a very short poem about the fog.  Twenty-one words.  Pansy knows my strong interest in Sandburg, so several Christmases ago, she had that poem matted and framed for me.

His “Fog” poem starts this way:

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

In that same silent way, the spirt of Christmas settles upon us -- often in spite of ourselves.  We are wrapped in it for a brief time.  Like the fog, the Christmas spirit leaves its imprint.  As with the fog, so with the spirit of Christmas: We feel it, we bask in it, but it doesn’t linger.

Notice, Sandburg likened the fog to a cat’s quiet entrance.  You don’t hear the kitty as she comes into the room.

The carol, “O, Little Town of Bethlehem,” speaks of the silent coming of Christ:

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

Sandburg also points to the fog’s silent exodus:

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

If you've ever walked in the fog very long, you’re probably glad to get in out of it.  You may feel soggy or soppy.  You may feel that way about Christmas:  Glad when it silently moves on.


But the true Spirit of Christmas is the Spirit of Jesus.   Unlike the fog, and unlike the fleeting feelings of the holidays, Christ’s Spirit always surrounds us. We may not always be aware of the Spirit’s presence, but we need to be sensitive to silent moments as He comes “on little cat feet.”

I'll Be Home for Christmas

[From my book, Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy, available through amazon.com]

The call to come home is as old as the human race. In the holiday season, that voice reverberates through the echo chambers of our souls.

As my Mother’s brood of six got married and moved away, she often would cite two criteria when neighbors asked whether she had a “good” Christmas: If the weather was “pretty,” and if most of her
children were home, she had had “a good Christmas.”

With those two standards looming large, I learned I was expected to be home for Christmas. So I was with my parents every Christmas for 34 years.

In those 34 years, I had graduated from high school, college, and seminary; I had worked full-time as a minister, college professor and writer-editor; I had taken myself a wife; I had lived in Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia.

Still, every year, I returned to my native Texas to be with my parents and assorted siblings, in-laws, and niece and nephews.

Only after I was a father myself did I begin to see “home for Christmas” from a different perspective: home was where my wife and our sons and I lived, rather than half a continent away where my parents lived.

Even after I became a father, a strong inner voice silently yelled, “Let’s go to Texas!” for as long as my parents were alive. Sometimes that call still comes, though Daddy and Mother both have long
since gone to that Eternal Home.

When Johnny Mathis gives out with “I’ll be home for Christmas; you can count on me,” in my mind's eye and in my heart of hearts, I am once again part of a happy throng of six brothers and sisters,
spouses, and children, overflowing one of the modest houses or apartments Mother and Daddy called home over the years.

Now and again, as Russell and Jonathan were growing up, we made the long trip across several states to be with my extended family. But, for the most part, we have been home for Christmas in the various places the four of us have called home: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, New York and South Carolina.

Many times over the years, not just at Christmas, I have felt I was the black sheep of the family. With the exception of years my younger sister Marie and her family spent in Ohio, the rest of the Webb clan could say, “We’re Texas born and Texas bred, and when we die, we’ll be Texas dead.” Marie and Don eventually wised up and went back to our Holy Land.

I have missed a great deal over the decades by not being around my brothers and sisters and their spouses. My one niece and most of my nephews have married and raised families, and I have not
been around to watch that next generation grow up. My sons have little awareness of their extended family.

Now, our sons have followed my example as they live and work in distant cities, far from their parents: New York and Chicago. They have their own individual patterns for the holidays, and I say,
“God bless them for it.”

Russell lives and works in lower Manhattan. He rarely comes South, for Christmas or otherwise.
Jonathan followed my pattern of returning to the nest at Christmas, never missing a season his first 27 years. When he missed year 28, it was not through his choice but through ours.

After Pansy and I both retired, we started talking about another trip to England. For various reasons, the earliest we could get away that year was mid-December.

Knowing Jonathan would probably be expecting to come down from Chicago, we tried to break the news gently: I wrote him a letter, which he never received. So gentle went out the window when I casually mentioned our travel plans in a phone call – first he had heard of it.

After the initial shock of not having home and parents to come back to, he seemed to take it in stride. I invited him to join us in London for at least Christmas weekend. I offered to pay a good share of his expenses. But the whole idea of no home to come back to at Christmas was more than he could adjust to on short notice.

So he stayed in the Windy City, spending extra time with Vicky, the young woman he was thinking of asking to marry him. He didn’t propose just then, but soon he did ask her. She agreed, they got
married, and now they have a son and a daughter.

People often ask, “Don’t you wish your sons would come home for Christmas?” I usually just smile or grimace, but I think to myself: “I would love to see them, but they are at home. They’re away from us, but they have their homes in Chicago and New York.  They have their lives. They have their responsibilities. It isn’t easy to travel long distances, especially with little children.”

In his poem “The House of Christmas,” G. K. Chesterton described the call to come home this way:

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Those lines suggest that every human being is away from home.

The Christmas story, after all, is about One who left his Father’s home, who was born in a manger, who in adulthood had no place to lay his head, who was buried in someone else’s tomb, who
identified his family as larger than his mother and birth brothers and sisters, a family “born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

So, whether we are with our human families this Christmas or spending the time alone or in a nursing home, we need to listen for the call of God, welcoming us to the warmth of His family. Jesus came to earth in order to call all his brothers and sisters back to his Father’s house.

When I said, "I love you," her first words were, "I don't know whether I love you or not."

[This is a true story from my book, Christmas Memories From Seven to Seventy, available in paperback  from Amazon.com.]

 I gave Pansy an engagement ring a few days before Christmas 1964. But you could say it began at Thanksgiving.

It was the day after Thanksgiving when I first told her I loved her. And I remember her exact words in response: “I don’t know whether I love you or not.” That response stopped me cold in my
tracks, but not for long.

She was teaching high school English in Charlotte, North Carolina. All through the fall months, I had made trips up from Anderson, South Carolina, about 120 miles away, where I was teaching at Anderson College, a small junior college sponsored by the Baptists.

I was beginning to feel something deep within myself which I had never felt for another woman. Because I hadn’t been down that road before, I had little to compare it with, but I thought this was
love. I felt comfortable at the thought of spending the rest of my life with her, and I was hoping and praying she might feel the same toward me.

That began to seem likely when her sister and brother-in-law, Gay and John, invited me to stay with them in Charlotte a couple of nights at Thanksgiving. So, up I went. We had a big traditional
turkey dinner at John and Gay’s. Though I wasn’t in the kitchen to see for sure who was the chief cook, I was optimistic that the sisters were at least equal partners.

The four of us spent some time together, and Pansy and I spent some time alone. Our last moments together were on Friday morning before I headed for home. That’s when I told her how I felt and heard her noncommittal response.

Admittedly, I didn’t choose the most romantic time or place. I was thirty years old, but I could have been a gawky adolescent on his first date when it came to mapping out a plan for opening my heart. 

About all I knew of Charlotte was the route to the place where Pansy was living. As I drove around town, I looked for a safe, quiet place to stop. I discovered a college campus which I correctly
guessed would have no classes during the holiday weekend. So I drove around the campus and found an empty parking lot in broad daylight.

We sat in silence as I was trying to find a way to say what was in my heart. After an eternity, Pansy broke the silence: “A penny for your thoughts.”

I said, “Is that as high as your bidding goes?”

She smiled and said, “Two pennies?”

Then I said, “I was trying to think how to tell you I love you.”

“Are you telling me?” she asked in a voice which did not sound encouraging.

“Yes. I love you.”

More silence. Then her reply which made my heart sink.

Because I hadn’t “been there and done that,” I hadn’t thought through the various possibilities of how she might respond. So I swallowed my Adam’s apple and my pride as I asked, “Well, could I come back to see you next week?”

She said, “That would be fine.”

As I drove along I-85 toward home, I started mentally composing the first real love letter I’d ever written – the first of several I would write during the week, before I would see her again.

The next Saturday, all afternoon and evening as we were together, I kept thinking, “Is this a good time? Is this a good time?”

I tried to say something while we ate supper, but she turned the conversation away. That made me feel less than confident.

When we came to the house where she had a room with an elderly lady, I parked the car and said to myself, “Well, let’s see what happens.” I figured she would at least let me walk her to the door before shaking my hand and telling me, “It was nice knowing you.” I turned off the engine, and we sat in silence a few seconds, my nerves a-jangle.

She looked over at me with her deep, dark eyes and said, “Lawrence, I love you, too.” In the quietness of that moment of our first embrace, I felt sure her landlady would be awakened by
the sound of my heart pounding like a jackhammer.

I never asked, “Will you marry me?” She and I both understood the meaning of my declaration of love the week before and her reciprocal reply that night. So, instead of hurrying to her door, we
sat in the car, exulting in our newly declared mutuality, making preliminary plans for our wedding.

So it all started at Thanksgiving. Or, could you say it started the previous summer when we rediscovered each other, thanks to some mutual friends?

Pansy worked that summer at Ridgecrest, a Baptist conference center near Black Mountain, North Carolina. Those mutual friends asked me to come up to the center on Saturday and Sunday to help
with a workshop they would be leading.

Jim and Dottie and Pansy and I were all in seminary together a few years earlier: Pansy and Dottie were roommates, and Jim and I were close friends.

So I guess you really would have to say it began in seminary. Jim and Dottie got married after seminary. Pansy and I knew each other there but had not dated. Women were a tiny percentage of
the student body at most seminaries. That was true of our school in Louisville, Kentucky. So most of the unmarried men were aware of most of the single women.

After seminary, the next time the four of us were together was at Jim and Dottie’s wedding – Pansy a bride’s maid, and I a groomsman. We acknowledged each other’s presence there, but that was about it.

Pansy had worked at Ridgecrest a summer or two before that year when we all converged for what proved to be a weekend of destiny. I had seen her in those earlier summers and chatted with her when I attended meetings at the center.

I accepted Jim and Dottie’s request to help with their sessions during the summer in question, not suspecting they were praying and scheming for something more significant than my helping them
for a few hours.

Dottie was subtle enough in her Danielle Cupid role: “You remember Pansy Hopkins, don’t you?” she asked me.

“Sure. You and she were roommates in Louisville, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and did you know that she’s working at the registration desk here?”

“Well, I haven’t seen her yet this trip,” I said. “But I knew she worked there other summers when I’ve come up.”

Dottie didn’t say much more than that. She didn’t have to.

I’d gone with a number of girls in college but never had a real steady. Then, during a year of teaching in a small North Texas town before going to seminary, I didn’t find many available young women. In seminary, it was the college story again: some dating but nothing regular.

Still, I never intended to remain a bachelor. I’ve often said, if I didn’t believe anything else in the Bible, I would believe Genesis 2:18 –”Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone.’” 

But how did it all begin for Pansy and me? It almost certainly wouldn’t have happened if I had gone to seminary in my native Texas instead of coming east to Kentucky and if Pansy hadn’t taken a two-year detour from school teaching to go to that same seminary.

Whatever the ultimate starting point, our plans for life together began to take more definite shape a week or so before Christmas when Pansy came to Anderson for a weekend.

I hadn’t been confident enough to buy the engagement ring before I heard her say the magic words. But that night in my car in front of her house, I offered her my college ring. My knuckles are so big that Pansy could almost put two of her fingers in my ring.

But she took it as an earnest of a smaller, more feminine ring. In the meantime, she stuffed cloth or cotton in my class ring so it would stay on her finger. As I looked at the ring on her finger, the Beatles
song rang in my mind: “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Now, with sufficient confidence, I went to a jewelry shop on Main Street in downtown Anderson and had sympathetic support from a sweet, elderly Southern lady who had years of experience helping young men as each struggled to find the right ring at the right price for his Miss Right.

I was one of several faculty and staff members living in an apartment complex owned by the college. Among my colleagues, I discovered a veritable fairy godmother in Anna Hoover, a dorm mother who spent most nights on campus supervising female students. She offered her off-campus apartment for Pansy on the weekends she would come to town.

When Pansy arrived on that first visit, we went to a restaurant for supper and then to Mrs. Hoover’s apartment so Pansy could get settled in. Then, I removed my heavy college ring from her finger
and replaced it with a more permanent one.

On her first visit, the campus was full of the excitement and beauty of Christmas. The college had only a few hundred students, and I knew many of them personally. They knew I was single, and word had quickly spread that I had a lady friend.

That night, after I gave Pansy the ring, we went to a choir concert. As we entered the auditorium, I heard whispers of, “Hey, who’s that Mr. Webb is with?” I felt as if we were in a spotlight and all the students could see the sparkle of the ring.

After the concert, the women’s dorms had open house. Doors were decorated with candy canes and Christmas scenes. Others had shiny wrapping paper and bows, turning the room into a huge gift. I felt I had my gift at my side as girls in the rooms gave knowing grins.

Sunday morning, we went to church, then spent the afternoon giving Pansy a chance to get acquainted with some of my close friends on the faculty.

Later Sunday afternoon, we went back to the campus where we had left Pansy’s car. With the short days of December, it was dark before I realized it. Pansy said little about it, but I knew she was all
too aware that night had fallen as she anticipated two hours-plus of driving home alone on the interstate.

Rather than going directly to her car on the front campus drive, I delayed her departure a bit longer. I found a shadowed spot away from the students where we could kiss and embrace. I told her again that I loved her and heard her say once more, “I love you, too.” 

With those declarations, the sparkle of Christmas hope was in my heart as I held her hand and looked at the sparkling ring – a token of bright anticipation of our life together.

"Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies"

[This is a Christmas reflection from my book, Once for a Shining Hour, available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.com.]

The title words were written by 19^th century British songwriter Edward Caswall.  The builder in question is Jesus.  We don’t usually associate the Babe in the manger of Bethlehem with hammer and nails.  On the other hand, we know when Jesus grows up, He is identified as a carpenter (Mark 6:3).

These startling words about the Celestial Carpenter are from Caswall’s carol, “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” with the alternate title, “Hymn for Christmas Day.”

I first became aware of this song on a CD titled, Christmas from English Cathedrals. The CD, produced in 1998, features ten carols from four different cathedrals.  The St. Paul Cathedral Choir in London sings “See Amid the Winter’s Snow.”

The depiction of the birth of Jesus as happening in snowy weather strains credulity when you realize the little town of Bethlehem is approximately on the same latitude as Waycross in deep south Georgia, where snow is rare.  So our impressions of white Christmases come more from Jolly Old England or New England rather than from Holy Writ. But that’s not all bad.  If we see the coming of Jesus in terms of our own environment and our own times, that coming can be much more personal.  If we can picture His entrance into our own time and our own weather conditions, this transforms the story.  In that way, what we may have viewed as a pleasant tale from the ancient past has resonance and relevance for our own time.

Ken Gire seems to echo Caswall’s thought in a meditation on Mary and Joseph in his book, Intimate Moments with the Savior.  Writing of Mary and her newborn Son, Gire says, “She touches his tiny hand.  And hands that once sculpted the mountain ranges cling to her finger.”²   

These pictures from Edward Caswall’s song and Ken Gire’s meditation throw us off stride.  We say we believe Jesus is God’s revelation in human form.  But it’s hard to come to terms with these vivid assertions in song and prose, even though they are saying what we claim to believe about Jesus.

If we review the Four Gospels in the order in which they probably were written, the writers of the Gospels, each in turn, seem to give more information about Jesus as “He who built the starry skies” or the tiny hands in the manger as the “hands that once sculpted the mountain ranges.”

Mark is widely regarded as the first Gospel because it is obvious that Matthew and Luke use Mark as their outline and then add material of their own. John is generally considered the latest of the four.  If we follow this timeframe, we can see a progression of assertions regarding the nature of Jesus and His relation to all humanity and to the Creator God:

Mark gives no birth details.  Rather, he plunges directly into the ministry of Jesus in 1:1, The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.   This is followed immediately with the introduction of John the Baptist and Jesus’s own baptism. The words in that opening sentence are exciting and provocative as they refer to Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.  To say Jesus is “Christ” is to say He is the long-hoped-for Messiah because “Christ” is simply the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew word “Messiah,” the promised deliverer.

Calling Jesus “the Son of God” is not identical with saying He is God.  But this term indicates Jesus is from God and that He stands in a special relationship with God as His Father.

Matthew, for several reasons, is generally regarded as written for a Jewish audience.  One example is the thirteen times this Gospel points to events in the birth, ministry, and death of Jesus as fulfillment of Hebrew Scripture. 

The first stanza of Caswall’s carol picks up on this as it points to Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy:  "See the tender Lamb appears, Promised from eternal years."

The prophecies Matthew uses include the virgin birth as fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. The traditional King James Version shows how Matthew uses this passage: Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, a name which means “God with us.”  Matthew cites this passage, stating in 1:22, All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

So Matthew wants his readers to see Jesus in a Jewish context.  To set that mood, the opening words of this Gospel link Jesus with King David and with Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith: The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (1:1). 

Luke makes a broader appeal.  This author is generally considered to have been a a non-Jew, a Gentile.  Like Matthew, Luke tells of the virgin-born Savior, in this case, announced by angels to the shepherds in the field. Luke also gives a genealogy in chapter 3, but he reverses Matthew’s chronological pattern, starting with Jesus and working back, all the way back to Adam.

John is almost universally acknowledged among scholars as the latest and is often referred to simply as “the Fourth Gospel.”  In this Fourth Gospel, the writer starts where Luke stops, namely with God the Creator and the beginning of all things:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made (1:1-2).

In verse 14. John clearly identifies this Word who was from the very beginning: 

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

So there is no question that John is describing one who is Very God of Very God come to earth as a human being.  That One is Jesus whom the earlier Gospels have portrayed both as Son of God in Mark and as the son of an earthly virgin mother in Matthew and Luke.

We recognize, then, that the lines from Edward Caswall’s song and Ken Gire’s prose spring full-grown from the first and third verses of John:

In verse 1 of John, the Eternal Word was in the beginning with God, and, indeed, the Word was 
God.  Then, verse 3 declares this Eternal Word (Jesus) to have been a partner in creating all things.  This, then is a biblical foundation for those Christmas lyrics: "Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies .  .  ."

A less well-known passage in Colossians 1:15-20 is even more elaborate in its assertion that Jesus is at one with God and that He was active in creating everything:

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;  for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities -- all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent.  For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell,  and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. 

That theme is restated later in Colossians 2:9-10:  For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fulness of life in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 

Despite these ringing affirmations from Christian Scripture, those who are inclined to walk more by sight rather than by faith find Jesus the Eternal Architect impossible to believe.  

Within contemporary biblical scholarship,  there is a branch of scholars who reject the miraculous element.  Passages emphasizing the virgin birth and Jesus as eternally pre-existent are rejected out of hand.  If biblical stories or sermons cannot be explained by modern reason, they are declared invalid.  

We need not relegate matters of faith to the junk pile.  Life is full of marvels which the human mind will never fully comprehend.

In “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” the recurring chorus greets the blessed day of His birth as the dawn of redemption:

Hail, thou ever-blessed morn!  Hail, redemption's happy dawn!
Sing through all Jerusalem, Christ is born in Bethlehem.

Skeptics cannot disprove what is said to have happened that night on Bethlehem’s hillside and in the manger near the inn.  Neither can the faithful prove these stories scientifically.  But the ear of faith can hear “Glory to God in the highest” echoing from the Judean hills, and the eye of faith can look with awe at the stable bed and declare

Lo, within a manger lies He who built the starry skies .  .  .

¹ All the lyrics quoted from Edward Caswall’s “See Amid the Winter’s Snow” are found at

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/s/e/seeamid.htm.

² Ken Gire, Intimate Moments with the Savior.Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1989, p. 5.

³ http://www.sabian.org/looking_glass5.php.

 my book, Once for a Shining Hour, available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.com.]

The little angel said, "Glory to God in the highest" more than once.

[This is adapted from a story in my book, Once for a Shining Hour, available in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.com.]

In a children’s Christmas program at church, Addie, a very active three and a half years old, was the youngest of the angels.  She had one line from Scripture:  “Glory to God in the highest.” So when her time came, she went to the microphone to have her say.  

The mic was a tad tall for a girl who was three and a half.  So she tugged at it in the effort to get it to her level.  After doing the best she could, Addie said, “Glory to God in the highest.”  That should have been the end of Addie’s solo performance, but she wasn’t satisfied with the way it had gone.  So she said, as before, “Glory to God in the highest.”  

That still didn’t come out to her satisfaction, so once again, she planned to say those words from the angels: “Glory to God in the highest.”  But by now, some of the other kids were getting tired of Addie’s hogging the microphone.  Finally, an older girl stepped over to try to get Addie away from the mic so the rest of the cast could have their turns.  After a bit of a tussle, this Littlest Angel was led away, and the show went on.

That little performance got widespread exposure.  I saw it on YouTube along with hundreds of other amused viewers.

Obviously, Addie didn’t understand the entire plan for Christmas program.  She knew her one part of the angel’s greeting.  Other parts went by, unnoticed. 

I tell you this story for two reasons:  For one thing, Addie is my granddaughter.

Also, the message from that Littlest Angel is the climax of the message from a sky full of angels  with the promise of joy for all people from Luke 2.  The larger passage is directed to shepherds who are keeping their vigil on a cold, dark night.  That message begins with reassurance and a promise:

Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people.
The men have good reason to be afraid because, Luke tells us, an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.

In the old faithful King James Bible, when the shepherds saw the angel, they were sore afraid.  The comedian Brother Dave Gardner from the 1960s said, if you’re “sore afraid,” that means you’re scared to death.  But with the shepherds, it’s probably more than that.  George Bliss suggests this is “the awe which smites the mind” when we are struck with a sense of the “nearness of God.”¹

But the angel tries to calm the shepherds, assuring them that he has come with a message they need to hear:   I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people.   So this is a message for everyone, not just for those smelly sheep herders working the night shift in the rough countryside on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

Our daughter-in-law,  Nurse Vicky,  Addie’s mother, works on the night shift,  more or less permanently at an obstetric hospital,  and seems to manage pretty well. But nighttime can be pretty scary if you’re out in the dark.  You’re looking and listening, half expecting something to happen or someone to come around to bother you.  

Sure ‘nuff, as these rugged men sit out there in the night, trying to outdo one another with their tall tales of spooks and apparitions, someone does come around to unsettle them.  And it’s not an ordinary someone.  It’s an angel of the Lord.  Luke says the glory of the Lord shone around them.

The angels’ appearance to the shepherds was in itself a fulfillment of the promise that this good news was to be for all people.

The promise that this good news is for all people means salvation is for the Down and Out and 
the Up and Out alike.   Whatever our financial or educational standing, we are all on level ground before God.  And that is part of the message of great joy to all people.

That great joy also extends to all races and national backgrounds, all colors, all languages, all religions and no religions, all political persuasions.  All of that is at the core of great joy for all people.  If language means anything, ALL people means ALL people. Not some people.  Not just folks we consider OUR kind of people, but ALL people, starting with those dirty shepherds who got the first word that a Savior is born in the little town of Bethlehem.  The Christmas story also includes those men of wealth who traveled a long distance, carrying gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  [G]ood news .  .  . to all the people.  .  .

For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 

The city of David is Bethlehem.

To say this baby is the Savior for all people means He will be the universal Deliverer from sin.

The word Christ is simply the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah. the Promised One, the Long-Hoped-For One.  

        Then, to call Jesus Lord is to declare Him to be at one with God.

So that is a threefold description of this Newborn Babe: Savior, Christ, and Lord.

That triple description may seem off-putting for these simple men of the land.  But when the angel tells the shepherds how they can track down and identify this Wonder Child, they can certainly identify with Him:

And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." 

Not in the most comfortable room in the best inn Bethlehem can provide.  But around on the backside of nowhere, lying in a trough the animals feed from.  That’s the realm these shepherds are familiar with.

So the shepherds will rush off in a moment to look for this Savior who is Christ the Lord.  But not before we get back to Little Addie’s exclamation: Glory to God in the highest.  Addie’s words did not come from one lone three-and-a-half year old, or from one lone angel, for that matter:  

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!”

As we seek that joy which the angels proclaimed to those ancient shepherds -- joy that will be to all people -- we need to distinguish joy from happiness.  Julie Yarborough, a minister in New Jersey, drew a distinction between joy and happiness:

We’re happy when things go our way, but joy comes from knowing “the presence of God-with-us at all times.”  We can celebrate joy, “even in the midst of grief and sadness.”  She also said joy “can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, in an intensive care waiting room.” ²

United Methodist pastor Dean Snyder in the Georgetown section of our nation’s capital, continued the contrast between happiness and joy:

Joy is not something we can buy or sell or steal.  It’s not discounted at your favorite department store.  It can’t be downloaded or legislated or won in a lawsuit.  It can’t be earned or inherited or turned on with a remote control. ³  

Noted preacher and writer Frederick Buechner gives further contrast between joy and happiness:

Happiness comes from things we do, things we have: a satisfying job, a loving relationship, money, a vacation, or good health. But joy is unpredictable.  We can try to achieve happiness, but joy is something we can only receive. ³

We can contrast happiness and joy as we think further about the shepherds of Bethlehem.   These men are happy as they run to the manger.  Luke records that trip, beginning in verse 15:

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.  And when they saw it they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child; and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 

The shepherds realize something deep and significant is unfolding before them as they run into town.  No doubt, this makes them happy to be on the scene of something that defies explanation.

Then, after a while, when the excitement dies down and they are back in the routine of tending sheep, something of a deeper level of awareness sets in.  Then they begin to reflect on all they have heard from the angels and have seen for themselves with Mary and Joseph and the Holy Child.  At that point, I believe we can say the shepherds move from happiness to joy.

When they begin to realize the difference this will make in their lives, that’s when joy sets in.  The initial happiness will die out when the excitement cools down after that night with the angels and the Babe in the Manger.  But as they consider the difference this good news can make, their long nights on the hillside will have new significance.  

Luke’s last word about the shepherds in verse 20 gives us a clue to their new-found joy:

And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. 

The shepherds echo the words of the angels, and perhaps we can hear echoes of a three-and-a-half year old as she, too, glorifies God as best she knows how, with her “Glory to God in the highest!”

My little granddaughter didn’t see the larger picture.  If you had quizzed her about her speech, she likely would’ve had difficulty explaining why the angels were singing, “Glory to God in the highest!”  But she took the part and said her one line -- more than once -- at her own level of understanding.  And that’s what we all do: think on our own level about Jesus coming into the world.

SOURCES

¹ George R. Bliss, “Luke,” An American Commentary on the New Testament, Volume II.  Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1884, p. 46.

² Julie Yarborough, “True Joy,” December 13, 1998, Summit, New Jersey.  christchurchsummit.org

³ Dean Snyder, “Making Way for Joy,” Foundry United Methodist Church, Georgetown, Washington, D.C., December 8, 2002.  http://www.foundryumc.org/sermons/12 8 2002. pdf.

What is it about the song "White Christmas"?

[This is adapted from one of my stories in my book, Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy, available in paperback from Amazon.com.]

Occasionally, I've heard "White Christmas" sung in church.  When this happens, I'm startled: "Have they flipped?"

The more I think about it, the more inappropriate it sounds: "There’s no mention of God or of Jesus in the song. Why sing it in church? And why in South Carolina of all places? It snows so rarely, the song has little relevance for us, even apart from its lack of religious content.”

My thoughts go back to my childhood in West Texas during World War II. We had only occasional snow and ice. More often than in the South Carolina Upstate, but still only rarely. Still, after Bing Crosby recorded Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” in 1942, we school kids sang it as heartily as if we were accustomed to playing in snow drifts in Vermont. So the song became as much a part of my Christmas vocabulary as “Silent Night” before I was able to distinguish secular and sacred aspects of the season.

Mother was a devout Christian, but while I was growing up, I heard little at home about “the reason for the season.” As Mother and Daddy saw their sons and daughters grow up and fly away from the family nest, I often heard Mother give her definition of a good Christmas: It was “good” if we had “pretty weather” and all her children were home. So, even in her formula, there was no room
for a White Christmas, apart from Ole Bing’s crooning.

As a soloist crooned his own version of the song Bing made an American standard, I thought of other places where I had spent the holidays and how a White Christmas was or was not part of the scene:

We lived three years in New York’s Hudson River Valley where Berlin and Crosby’s dream often comes true. The song was a natural there. Our first December in Newburgh – a few miles above West Point – was a scene from a Christmas card. 

At the other extreme, we celebrated the holidays in sunny, snowless Central Florida. At that remove from New England, Berlin’s brainwashing was also successful: Most young people in our church had 
never seen a White Christmas except on television. But when a TV weatherman reported a snow storm in Middle Georgia, two car loads from our church headed north on I-75 in hopes of having a bona fide White Christmas.

Berlin’s tribute to winter blazed a snowy trail for other seasonal favorites: “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow.” These are akin to “White Christmas” in that they say nothing about the Christian Christmas story. But they are even further removed: they are simply songs about snowy weather with no mention of Christmas at all.

Literary analysts often point to “subtexts” in poems, novels or plays – ideas or themes which are not explicitly developed in the piece but which seem to be implied by the author. As I continue to reflect on singing “White Christmas” in church, I believe the song has developed a subtext, or has been assigned a subtext by the American public.

My feeling is buttressed by a writer telling of visiting a church and being surprised to hear “White Christmas” played during a time of meditation. The writer may have felt as I did when I first heard it in church.  But, as the song was played, one man in the usually reserved congregation began to sing the familiar words. After a moment, he was not alone.  Others joined in. The pianist finished the piece and then started over again. By the time she ended playing, the entire church was singing Berlin’s song. 

The writer concluded: “It was very magical; very spontaneous. In many ways ‘White Christmas’ has become a hymn.”

So, there is your subtext. Though there is no God, no Jesus, no shepherds or wise men in the song, there is a warmth many people associate with the season. And it probably has nothing directly to do with frozen particles of moisture. 

Down deep, though we may hate the idea of a literal snowfall at the time for family gatherings and Christmas Eve Communion, we love the warm memories of earlier days when the family gathered and things were “merry and bright” for a few days, or even just a few hours. 

We respond emotionally to Berlin’s song, as a kind of “secular hymn,” because it invokes the hope for restoration of celebrations “just like the ones I used to know.”

Regardless of how much we are able to focus our thoughts and activities on Christmas as the coming of Christ into the world, we are also influenced by and caught up in the secular aspects of giving and receiving. As we reflect on Christmases past, our religious impulses inevitably intertwine with family get-togethers, gift-giving, and other aspects which have no specific Christian underpinnings.

In the Plymouth Colony, Christmas celebration was severely limited. The governor called the men out to work as usual on December 25. When some asserted it was against their conscience to work on Christmas Day, the governor excused them. He took those who were willing, and they spent the morning at chores necessary for the common good. When the workers returned to the settlement to eat at noon, those who had begged off work were in the streets, engaged in various sporting activities. 

The governor went to these merry makers and took away their sports implements. He informed them it was against his conscience for them to play while others worked. If Christmas was to be a day of religious devotion, the worshipers should keep such religious activities inside their houses.

This incident reported in the diary of a Pilgrim reminds me that the religious and recreational aspects of Christmas have often clashed but probably have always blurred in the thinking of most of us.

So, while I still would not recommend “White Christmas” to be sung or played in a religious setting, I should not sit in judgment on those who think the song appropriate in a religious context. Though the text is all together secular, the subtext may evoke the season’s spiritual intent. 

A Kidnapping at Christmas

[This is another of my stories  that first appeared in my book, Christmas Memories from Seven to Seventy, available in paperback from Amazon.com.]

Are they making a movie here in the airport?” Pansy asked. I looked around the Love Field terminal for cameras or banks of lights. When I saw none, I said, “I don’t guess. Why?”

“All those men with cowboy hats and boots,” she said. “They look like they’re in costume for a movie.”

“That’s probably just the way those fellows dress,” I said. “Lots of Texans wear hats and boots all the time.”

“Are they rodeo riders, then?”

“No. Just Texans.”

“But I’ve never seen you dress like that. You don’t have boots or a ten-gallon hat,” she teased. “Unless you’ve kept them hidden from me. Maybe you think they wouldn’t go over too well in South
Carolina.”

I shrugged my shoulders, then pointed. “There goes another guy in what you call his costume, but he doesn’t look much like John Wayne.”

It was Christmas 1965. Pansy and I had been married just a few months. This was her first trip to my native Texas. We were wandering casually through the Dallas airport. My younger brother Leonard and his wife Judy were both working. Judy was to meet us when she got off work and take us to their house in Arlington, between Dallas and Fort Worth. We planned to ride with them some two hundred miles to the west the next day to Sweetwater to join other members of the Webb clan at the apartment where Mother and Daddy were living.

Pansy glanced at her watch and said, “Our bags have probably come off the plane by now. Shouldn’t we pick them up?”

“It’ll be an hour or so before Judy can get here after work,” I said. “We’d have to keep them with us or find a locker if we get them now.”

Pansy agreed. After we window-shopped a while, we ate a quick lunch. During lunch, the piped-in music was a mixture of cowboy and Christmas. In between “Jingle Bells” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” they slipped in the Sons of the Pioneers singing “Drifting Along with the Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

After we ate, we met Judy and strolled to baggage claim.

Soon after we married, Pansy had picked out an attractive set of luggage: snow-white, which would be easy to spot on an airport luggage rack. A large bag for me, a smaller bag for her and a smaller
piece for her cosmetics. In the short time we had been married, I had already learned that her love for beauty and symmetry was balanced with a sense of the practical.

When we packed before leaving for the trip, I had suggested that we put some of both our clothes in both bags, “just in case something might happen to one of them.”

I guess that was too much togetherness for Pansy. She thought we each should pack our own. So that’s what we did.

When we got to the baggage area, most of the pieces from our flight had been picked up. The rest were set to one side off the carousel.

“There they are!” we both exclaimed. Our white luggage truly stood out. Both pieces. One bag and one cosmetics case.

“But where is yours?” Pansy asked.

“Yeah. Where is mine?” I echoed, thinking back to my suggestion the night before about distributing our stuff equally between the two bags in case of a problem.

After frantically looking around to see whether we had overlooked the hard-to-miss missing piece – which contained all the clothes and toiletries I had planned to use on this trip – I said, “Where’s the lost luggage office?”

The claim office was close by, so I took out our stubs and stepped over to an airline employee who had overheard our conversation.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“I hope so!” I said. “One of our bags isn’t here!”

The man took the three claim stubs and methodically matched two of them with our two pieces which were there. He glanced around and asked – all too casually to suit me – “You had another bag, then?”

I wanted to say, “Of course. Why else would I be offering you three stubs?” Instead, I just said, “Yes. All white. Just like these. Only bigger. A three-piece set.”

“Everything’s off that Atlanta flight,” he said. “Just yours and a few others haven’t been picked up.”

My elation at bringing my wife to Texas to meet her new family had withered. “What can you do to find my suitcase?”

Pulling a form out from under the counter, the agent said, “If you’ll fill this out – ”

“We’re just in the Dallas area overnight,” I said, desperation rising.

“Sir, if you’ll only – ”

I didn’t want Pansy to see her new husband experience complete meltdown his first day back on his native soil. So I tried to collect myself. Swallowing hard, I said, “You were saying?”

“Sir, there is a place at the top of the form for you to list a local phone where we can reach you.”

“How long will it take to trace the bag?”

“Sir, we will carefully follow our prescribed procedure to determine whether they put your bag on the plane with you out of Atlanta. If they didn’t, we will get it on our next flight.”

“Because we’re leaving tomorrow to go ’way on out to West Texas.”

“Sir, we will trace every possibility.”

Judy reminded me of their phone number, and I completed the form. 

When we left Love Field, Judy said, “Since Leonard won’t be off work for a while, would you like to see some of the Christmas decorations in the department stores downtown?”

My mind was still with my snow-white suitcase, but Pansy was agreeable, so I tried to be too.

In one store, a tall, barrel-chested blind man rode the escalators, singing carols at the top of his voice. Judy said, “He does that every year, going from store to store spreading Christmas cheer.” But I was none too cheerful as I pondered the fate of my suitcase. I thought, “At least, his songs are more appropriate to the season than ‘Tumbling Tumbleweeds.’”

Leonard is my younger brother, but he’s several inches taller than me. He’s also the family clown. After supper, he disappeared into their bedroom, returning in a moment with a colorful paper.

With a flourish, he presented it to his new sister: “Pansy, this is an official certificate making you an honorary Texan. If anybody stops you to investigate you, just show him this.”

Turning to me, Leonard said, “You're more than welcome use my electric razor and aftershave in the morning, Lawrence. But I’m afraid my pajamas would be ‘way too long for you.”

“That’s okay, Leonard,” I said. “Maybe the airline – ”

Even as I spoke, the phone rang. Judy answered. “Yes, he’s here. Just a moment.” She smiled as she handed the phone to me, and we all heaved a sigh of relief.

That sigh was premature.

“Mr. Webb, we have determined the location of your bag,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Did it get on a later plane out of Atlanta?” I asked.

“Actually, it came in to Love Field when you did,” the woman said.

“So we can pick it up tomorrow?”

“We certainly hope so,” she said. “But we do not have it in our possession at the moment.”

“But you just said it came in when we did.”

“That is correct. It arrived when you did,” the agent said. “But we do not have it in our possession at the present moment.”

“I don’t understand – ” I began.

“Mr. Webb, a highly unusual situation has developed, but we have turned the matter over to the FBI.”

“The FBI!” I yelled into the phone. Turning to my startled family, I said, “They said the FBI is trying to find my bag!”

Almost in chorus, Pansy, Judy, and Leonard echoed, “The FBI!”

Back into the phone, I asked, “How in the world did the FBI get mixed up with my bag?”

“Mr. Webb, we regret to report that another passenger was disgruntled because his luggage had not arrived, so he deliberately took another bag – yours – and is, in effect, holding it hostage until we return his bag to him.”

“But how – ”

“The other party called and told us what he was doing,” the agent said. “We tried to reason with him, but he was adamant. At that point, we turned the matter over to the FBI.”

“But – ”

“Mr. Webb, we will keep you apprised of any new development. Good night.” I heard a click, then the dial tone. The airline rep had hung up.

I went to bed wearing the underwear I had put on that morning back in South Carolina. As I tossed and tumbled, a picture formed in my mind: J. Edgar Hoover at a luggage carousel, peering through
a large detective-style magnifying glass, searching through an assortment of bags, finally coming up with my snow-white suitcase, triumphantly holding it up with both hands, and extending it to me.

Next morning, I put on the same clothes I had worn the day before, and I used Leonard’s shaver. He had to work that day, but we were to head for Sweetwater as soon as he got off that night.

Before long, the phone rang. Judy answered. “Yes, he’s here. Just a moment.” She smiled a faint smile as she handed the phone to me, and we all heaved a sigh, short of relief. We didn’t know
what the message would be.

“Mr. Webb, where would you like us to deliver your luggage?”

“Does that mean you found it?”

“Yes, Mr. Webb. We have the luggage in the possession of the airline. Where would you like us to deliver your luggage?”

“What about the FBI? What about the other guy?”

“We are not at liberty to disclose that information, Mr. Webb. Where would you like us to deliver your luggage?”

“What choices do I have?”

She named a hotel in downtown Fort Worth.

I covered the phone and told Judy the hotel where they could drop off the bag.

“We can go there,” she said. “A lot easier than going back to Love Field.”

Later, as we drove westward on a windy, wintry night, Pansy called attention to something the rest of us hardly noticed. Ball-like weeds, larger than basketballs, were blowing across the flat stretches of four-lane highway. Dozens of them. Hundreds is more like it.

“What are those things?” she asked.

“Remember the song by the Sons of the Pioneers?” I asked. “Those are the famous Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

Leonard started singing, and I joined in: “See them tumbling down, pledging their love to the ground, lonely but free I’ll be found, drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.”

Judy poked Leonard in the ribs and asked, “Were your folks pioneers?

“I don’t reckin,” he said.

“Well, then maybe you ought to leave the singing to Bob Nolan and the real Sons of the Pioneers.”

We rode in silence for the next several miles, Leonard and Judy chauffeuring us to the next day’s Christmas reunion. In the back seat, I sat with one arm around my wife and the other hand on my snow-white bag, lest someone else should decide to hold it for ransom.