A Simple Christmas Page 2

  The Christmas story we’re used to hearing is so clean and neat. We’ve grown up seeing the sanitized church version performed at annual pageants each December, in which choirs sing, children put on bathrobes and grab broom handles to be shepherds and wise men, and we see a beautiful production with stars in the sky, angels singing, and a quiet and clean little baby, who never even cries, resting peacefully in a box of hay. Judging from these nice little productions, one would think the Christmas story is a heart-warming, Oprah kind of tale, when the actual version probably resembled something closer to Jerry Springer!

  I’m not being disrespectful toward the birth of God’s son. In fact, as strange as it is, that’s the way the whole thing was planned. When God decided to show up in person, He did it in a way that totally defied conventional wisdom. After all, He was the “King,” and we are used to kings showing up wearing some fancy clothes and surrounded by an army, a band with lots of loud brass horns, and an enormous number of attendants to take care of everything from booking the hotels to tipping the baggage handlers to even tasting the food. But the scene of the original Christmas didn’t follow this script—not even close.

  The story starts with a fairly simple fourteen-year-old girl named Mary and a scraggly teenage boy named Joseph. Mary and Joseph led pretty quiet lives, and neither of them was all that big a deal in their little hometown of Nazareth, which itself was unimportant at that time.

  Joseph was Mary’s boyfriend. There was nothing unusual about a teenager having a boyfriend, but Mary also had a secret: She had a baby inside her, and she wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer. It wasn’t as common back then as it is now for a young, unwed girl to become a mother, but it wasn’t unheard of. But Mary also had another secret that was unheard of. She adamantly insisted she had never had sex with anyone, including Joseph. That was hard for her parents, or anyone else, for that matter, to believe. The only person who believed Mary when she said she and Joseph had never slept together was Joseph himself. But he was still having a very hard time accepting the idea that Mary really hadn’t been with anyone else. He wanted to believe she was telling the truth because he didn’t want to have to confront the pain of knowing that the girl he hoped to marry one day had been unfaithful to him even before they had exchanged their vows.

  Although there was speculation over who the father of Mary’s child was, there was no doubt that this young girl was pregnant. It was humiliating to her and to her family to have people talk behind their backs and gossip about who had gotten Mary pregnant.

  Mary and Joseph had discussed marriage, but now a baby would be involved from the beginning, and Joseph would have to accept that it wasn’t his. What’s worse, Mary not only was claiming that she hadn’t been with another man but was actually insistent that an angel had come to her from heaven and announced that she would be having God’s child. The young man demonstrated an amazing love for this girl, having to actually believe either that she was talking to angels and having God’s child or that she was a very mentally disturbed person, but because he loved her so much he was willing to accept her delusional tendencies.

  Several months into Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph was summoned to the town of Bethlehem, where he had been born, to register for a census that King Herod wanted done. It was clearly a typical government deal—making the entire population travel back to the city of their birth rather than just sending a few census takers to the communities to ask the questions. I would be more critical of such an absurd policy, but today, two thousand years later, the government still does things that are just as inexplicable, like having elderly women take off their shoes and get virtually strip-searched at an airport before getting on a plane to go see their grandkids.

  For Mary and Joseph, this meant a trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem; the two towns were about eighty miles apart, but the most popular route took a longer way bypassing Samaria, making it about a week’s journey. This sort of trip—twenty miles or more a day on a donkey or walking over rugged and rocky terrain—was very dangerous for a pregnant girl, especially when there were no hospitals on the way. I’m sure this didn’t help Joseph believe Mary’s story that she was having God’s child, because wouldn’t God want to do everything possible to make sure that the mother of His child was safe and that His child would be born in a nice, clean, stable place? Instead, it was as if everything that could go wrong did: Young girl gets pregnant, can’t really explain who the father is, and is forced to make a long journey with a teenage boy so he can carry out some idiotic government mandate. This was bad enough, but then, to add insult to injury, once the couple arrived at their destination, got counted by the government, and started to head back home, she went into labor.

  It’s not like there was a stretch of Marriotts along the freeway from Bethlehem to Nazareth. Of course, there were no freeways, either. Back then people would often rent out some space in their homes to be used as inns for travelers who needed a place to stay. But because of the census, there were more people traveling than usual, so all the extra rooms were filled. The couple was getting pretty desperate when a local resident, who felt sorry for these two young teenagers, offered to let them camp out in his barn for the night. The barn was nothing like the red wooden ones we see in the cornfields of Iowa today. In fact, it was actually a stone cave, since it was fairly typical in that day to use natural grottoes as shelters for animals.

  Throughout history, this “innkeeper,” as he has been described, has been vilified for “having no room in the inn” and forcing a frightened teenage mother to give birth to the son of God in such an uncomfortable, dirty place. But this is unfair to him. He couldn’t give what he didn’t have (a vacant room), but he gave what he did have and appears to have done so willingly and joyfully. We can’t blame him for the lack of space, but we can certainly credit him for trying to make the best of a bad situation. At least he gave what he had; many of us have far more than an animal shelter but don’t even offer that to God. We act with an air of indignation that we’d certainly make the comfort of Jesus a higher priority, but would we? Jesus has never expected us to give Him what we wished we had, but rather has always tested to see if we would simply give from what we did have.

  Have you ever said, “If I had a million dollars, I’d give God half ”? Get over it. God knows you don’t have a million dollars, and if he really wanted you to have it, he’d probably give it to you. But you do have something—probably more than you think—so use what you have.

  It’s not known whether the innkeeper at the Bethlehem “Barnyard Inn” provided any assistance to the young couple other than the space, but it seems evident that, no matter what he did, it still wasn’t the best of circumstances for a birth. Instead of a nice birthing room with soft music and sterile walls and floors, Joseph and Mary had a cave full of barnyard animals. Instead of nurses and doctors with pristine hospital gowns and masks, the most assistance the couple could’ve hoped to receive would’ve been from some local woman who might have overheard the screams of the scared teenage girl, and most likely the screams of her equally scared teenage boyfriend. Sheep, goats, and other livestock had probably been the only previous occupants of that little cave, and we can only imagine the odor and filth that likely greeted Jesus when He chose to arrive on earth as a human being for the first time. The anxiety of being away from her own mother and family would have been traumatic enough for Mary, but I can only imagine the sheer terror she felt as the intense pain of labor set in and she had no one nearby to offer Lamaze coaching, encouragement, or words of experience, much less a saddle block or an epidural.

  We always see the sanitized version of the birth of Jesus, a bloodless, somber, and somewhat silent affair, as depicted in the various church Christmas cantatas or typified by the classic hymn “Silent Night.” Silent night my foot! I’ll bet that Mary and Joseph were both screaming and the baby was crying and the animals were all wound up as well. It may have been an “immaculate conception,” but the notion that the birth
was immaculate is definitely a stretch. It was the same bloody, yucky mess that marks any birth, except at this one there were no clean towels, sterilized clips to cut the umbilical cord, or incubator to place the child in to keep him warm. In fact, one thing we do know was that upon his birth, Jesus was “wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.” How precious! Oh, really? Swaddling clothes are nothing more than rags that were tightly wrapped around a newborn to keep him warm, dry, and secure.

  The “manger” was nowhere near as romantic as it sounds. It was simply a rough wood water or feed trough for the animals. Not long before the son of God was placed in it, livestock had eaten grain out of it. God spent His first few moments as a human in a food dish.

  From our perspective this sounds like a plan gone bust. But it wasn’t a plan gone bust. It was the plan from the beginning. God had no intention of opening the sky and landing like a little Superman from a faraway planet. He didn’t plot an arrival that was all about huge ceremonies and fine linens, festive music, scrubby-clean surroundings, and the latest advancements in medical technology. From the beginning, God wanted to show up in the lowliest of conditions so that in the future, no one would assume that their own situation was simply too humble as to merit His attention. However low people might feel, God wanted to demonstrate that He’d “been there, done that.” His first bed was an animal’s food dish, His first outfit was some dirty old rags, and His first roommates were cows and sheep. Top that, whiners of the world!

  I once heard a Christmas sermon by a minister who seemed to get the real picture. The sermon was called “Making Love on a Dirty Street.” Sure grabs your attention, huh? The title might be a bit risqué for some tastes, but it pretty well makes it clear that the greatest act of God’s love happened in the least likely of places, and it reminds us that if God can show up for his own arrival on earth in a place like that, then He can show up wherever we are, no matter how dirty, dangerous, or humble it may be.

  It’s an expression not of humility but of arrogance to say, “God wouldn’t understand how low I feel or how horrible my situation is.” If anything, most of us can’t ever imagine just how low and horrible His situation started out to be. Next time you start to think you have it really bad, take some comfort in knowing that God understands exactly how you feel.

  That’s the real Christmas story. It wasn’t pretty and pristine but dark and dirty. It was a humiliating experience for the young lady who had to become a woman the night she gave birth to God’s own son. She probably wondered why the Creator of the universe didn’t provide a better staging area for his arrival, but the nice stages, melodious music, and fancy costumes would have to wait a few centuries until churches came along and added them to the picture. But who can blame the church for coming up with an inaccurate version of the story? The real version seemed so unlikely and so hard to explain and defend that it’s easier to tell the modern version. Oh, sure, some shepherds eventually showed up, but wouldn’t you think that the birth of the son of God would warrant a visit from the mayor or at least a letter from the chamber of commerce? Instead, Jesus was welcomed into the world by some young boys herding sheep in the middle of the night who dropped by the cave full of cows to say, “Hey, God, glad you came.”

  We’re used to Christmas being a time of comfort, celebration, and good times. We exchange gifts with our friends and family, dine on a feast in a nice, warm home, and maybe relax by a warm fire as we sip hot cocoa. We dress up in nice clothes and go to church to light candles, sing pretty songs, and bow our heads in reverence to the birth of God’s son. We fuss for weeks in advance to make sure everything is just right—the gifts are perfect, the decorations are hung, and the Christmas ham is juicy and delicious. If something doesn’t go according to our plan, we think Christmas will be ruined, but we forget the real story of that first Christmas. It’s hard to think that the Nativity could have been so dirty and dangerous when we’re sitting in a quiet church or nestled in warm sweaters by the Christmas tree, but if we take time to think about the first Christmas the way it really was, we might better appreciate all the things God has blessed us with a bit more.

  This book is a collection of Christmas stories from my past that have taught me valuable lessons about what Christmas is really all about. Many of them are funny. Some of them are sad. I hope you enjoy reading them, but I also hope that you take some time to reflect on the first Christmas and that you remember how simple that first Christmas really was.

  1.

  Patience

  “You’ll just have to wait until Christmas!”

  I heard that a lot during my childhood and never liked it. Even though we spend weeks preparing for Christmas, all of the anticipation and excitement is focused on December 25. Until then, we are required to stare longingly at all of the nicely wrapped boxes with our names on them sitting under the tree and wonder what fantastic gift is waiting for us—so close yet so far. I’ve never understood the point in waiting until a particular day to get a perfectly good gift that has, obviously, already been purchased and is intended specifically for you. Why not just let the person get as much enjoyment out of it as possible and give it to them right away?

  In most areas of my life, I have matured and seasoned with age, but I have never outgrown my impatience, and I still don’t understand this idea of “waiting until Christmas.” Anything as wonderful as Christmas surely ought to be celebrated and observed as soon as possible, right?

  I’ve never been a patient man. I’ve asked God to grant me patience, but my prayer usually goes something like, “Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now!” I’ve never understood why I should have to wait to get something tomorrow if it’s possible to get it today. I love jet aircraft, microwave ovens, shopping online twenty-four hours a day, and overnight shipping. If Fred Smith hadn’t beaten me to it, I’m pretty sure I would have invented Federal Express just so I could get my stuff quicker.

  I don’t stand in line for anything that isn’t absolutely necessary—even at the airport. I was one of the early sign-ups to pay extra for a “Fly CLEAR” card, which allowed me, for an annual fee, to get a background check, fingerprints and an iris scan, and a biometric ID. I still had to go through security, mind you (the whole thing with shoes off, junk out of pockets, laptop in the plastic washtub, etc.), but the CLEAR card saved me time, and that was helpful on the days when I was really pushing it to catch my plane on time (especially since I’m sure as heck not important enough for an airline to hold a plane for me). Sure it’s extra money, and some people might think it’s unnecessary, but to me, it’s worth every penny. Sadly, CLEAR abruptly went out of business in the summer of 2009. I guess not many people were as impatient as me.

  I hate lines so much that I’ve missed eating at great restaurants, going to a lot of movies and concerts, and meeting famous and important people because it involved standing in line. Take my word for it, if you see me standing in a long line, it’s either because there’s something I have to do, there’s something I want to do very intensely (not likely), or (more likely) my wife is with me and she thinks it’s worth the wait.

  My impatience is the stuff of legend with my kids. They love regaling their friends with stories of my obsession with not wasting time in a line or waiting for a “special day” like Father’s Day or my birthday to get something I want. They dread buying me Christmas presents because they know that if I tell them I want something, I’m likely to just buy it for myself before they can get it, wrap it, and put it under the tree.

  When my kids were little, my wife, Janet, and I saved money for two years for a trip to Disney World. I had heard Disney sometimes has long lines at peak season, so I did my usual thorough research. I bought both the official and unofficial guidebooks to the parks, and I actually found out which month and which days of that month had the lowest number of visitors and planned our trip during those days. I plotted our every move—what time to enter the park, which entrance to go through, and which rides wo
uld be most efficient to ride and in what order. I was as much a drill sergeant during this trip as I was a dad, but by gosh, we stayed on schedule!

  The whole time, my kids rolled their eyes and made fun of me, but we never waited in line longer than a minute or two, and we rode every ride and saw every attraction in the Magic Kingdom, MGM, and Epcot. My kids’ friends told stories of how when they went to Disney, they only got to ride some of the amusements because they stood in line so long and missed things they wanted to do. My kids might have laughed at their obsessed father and his printed schedule, but they didn’t miss a thing! In fact, they even got to ride some of the really cool rides several times.

  On another occasion, when I took them to Israel, they called it the Today I Ran Where Jesus Walked Tour in recognition of the brisk pace at which we sprinted around the majestic land of the Bible. I do think that if Moses had had me along for the journey to the Promised Land, we could have shaved off a few of those forty years wandering around in the desert.

  Most kids get excited around Christmastime, especially in the run-up to opening presents, but I was especially eager (and, admittedly, still am). I know that patience is supposed to be a virtue and all that, but I never could see anything all that virtuous about knowing darn well what I wanted and having to be tortured by the fact that even though it had already been purchased, wrapped, and placed under the tree, I had to wait until December 25 to actually get to use it. Made no sense to me. So I decided to beat the system.

  My parents both worked, and my sister, Pat, and I used to stay with my grandparents, who lived across the street, during the day until either our mom or our dad got home. As we got a bit older, we started staying at our house by ourselves. In those days, it was pretty safe for parents to leave their kids at home alone, since there wasn’t much crime and no one even bothered to lock their doors. There was no Internet, so our parents didn’t have to worry that we were browsing pornography sites, and since our only TV was a black-and-white Philco that took several minutes to warm up and only received three channels originating from Shreveport, Louisiana, there was no danger of us watching any inappropriate television. Other than Popeye cartoons and The Three Stooges, there wasn’t much that interested us on TV anyway, and it was easier and more fun to just join all the other neighborhood kids for pretty much unrestricted romping through the neighborhood until it got too dark or we got too hungry to stay outside.