A Three-Inch Tall Jesus

When I was about twelve years old, the Sears, Roebuck store in Sweetwater, Texas, had a Christmas shopping display featuring a real-live Santa Claus who was just three inches tall.

He lived in a tiny, but attractive, house that sat on a table.  You could look in through the picture window and see the little man whom the store called Kute Kris Kringle.  He was sitting by the fireplace in his easy chair in his living room that was decorated for the holidays with packages under the tree.

At times, this Tom Thumb-sized Santa would get up and walk around the room.  He would look out and wave at those who watched him.

He had a tiny telephone on a table by his chair.  It was connected with a full-sized phone on the table where customers watched him.  If you wanted to talk with him, you could pick up the receiver and tell him what to bring you.

Parents would lead their kiddos to the display, point to the picture window, and get them to wave.  If the little folks were brave, they could pick up the phone and tell the Jolly Little Elf their hearts’ desires.

Because I had parted company with Old Saint Nick a few years earlier, I watched, trying to figure how Sears, Roebuck managed to set up the display and get the real-live man to look so small.

After a while, I noticed a walled-off section immediately behind Kris Kingle’s Little House on the Table.  So I figured the full-grown man was just on the other side of that wall on a movie set that looked like a living room.  My guess was that we were, in effect, looking through the “wrong end” of a telescope.

With the boldness of late preadolescence, I picked up the phone one day to talk to Santa.  That was OK with him .  .  .  the first time.  When I left the area and came back and called him several more times, the big man behind the three-inch illusion strongly suggested into his mouthpiece that I find something else to do.  Leave the phone line open for younger boys and girls.

As I think back to how the Sears people had managed to shrink Santa Claus to a manageable size, it occurs to me that we try to do the same thing with Jesus.  A three-inch tall Savior is much more convenient than the full-grown One who comes to life on the pages of the New Testament.

The Babe in Bethlehem with shepherds and angels and Three Kings make a beautiful scene on our Christmas cards.  The stable in the creche on a table top in the family room is a bit larger than the Sears house where Santa lived. But the Babe in the table-top manger may be just about three inches long.  There also are tree ornament versions of the manger scene, with the Holy Family, reduced to no more than three inches.  Then, when the season is over, we can pack them all up and get them out of our way without great inconvenience. 

There are other ways -- more serious ways -- of keeping Jesus small beyond confining Him to the creche at Christmas.

Some people shrink Jesus to a manageable size.  They may say, He was a great teacher, nothing more.  Or they deny His miracles. When it comes to the New Testament’s greatest miracle, the resurrection of Jesus, some say those original followers wanted so badly for Him to come back to them, they believed He actually was raised from the dead.  

But if the resurrection is a delusion, how do we explain the millions of people across the centuries whose lives have been transformed through faith in a fairy tale?  The course of Christianity history cannot be so handily dismissed.     

Some people say they “believe the Bible from cover to cover.” (And they say they believe the cover, too, because it says "Holy Bible"). But they whittle Jesus down to size in the way they carry out Christmas.  

       A friend sent me an animated Christmas greeting through the Internet.  It was an attractive, colorful production that lasted about two minutes.  It was filled with trees and wreathes and reindeer, including red-nosed Rudolph.  There were lights and snowmen and elves, and a fireplace and candles and decorated lamp posts and bells.  And, by the way, they did manage to slip in a few religious symbols: manger scenes and an angel or two and an open Bible.  But it was mainly Santa Claus, sometimes flying off with his team of reindeer, sometimes resting peacefully after his hard night’s work.

The Santa Claus side of Christmas has overshadowed Jesus, not only in that animated Christmas card, but in real life.  As an example, I read this story on the Internet.   It probably didn't happen, but it could have:

There was a church that always put on their sign out front, "Jesus is the reason for the season." One lady had to pass the sign every day on her way to and from work. It really upset her, so she wrote a letter to the preacher and told him she didn’t appreciate the sign. Her final words in the letter: “I don’t think the church should try to drag religion into every holiday.”

Well, for all this cutting Jesus down to size, in St. Paul’s version of the Christmas story in Philippians, we see how Jesus trimmed Himself down to size: 

.  .  .   though he was in the form of God, [He] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. 

       But then with the resurrection, the whittling ended, and Jesus was exalted to greater life :

        Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  

[Adapted from the story "The Three-Inch Tall Jesus" in my book, Once for a Shining Hour from amazon.com]