Lights, decorations, shopping, partying, eating, drinking, gifts... This is how we celebrate. But the big question is: what are we celebrating? What is the big deal? No, it’s not about the flashy excitement or the frenetic shopping. It is all about a little child.
Let us keep Jesus out of it for the moment. Poor Jesus, we reduce him to just a plastic baby with a smile, lost among the crêpe-paper rocks in a dimly lit, presepju countryside. How about taking a closer look at the real baby, the real child in the context of our modern and real presepju, which is our so-called ‘culture’.
Since the first Christmas, both Herod and the Magi were asking: where is the child? Herod was seeking to kill him while the Magi were seeking to adore him. What is happening to the child in our times?
Let’s start with the birth rate in our country. In 1950 it was 30.771 births per 1,000 people. In 2023 it is 9.705 births per 1,000. As a country we no longer seem to want children. But we seem hell-bent on getting more and more things instead – apartment blocks, luxury cars, holiday trips, restaurants, leisure spots, spas and saunas, lavish parties and celebrations.
Could it be that a modern, more powerful and mighty Herod is absolutely terrified of the fragility, helplessness and innocence not just of Jesus but, even more, of the child within us?
Is ours becoming a nouveau riche society, sucking us into a tsunami of excitement, comfort and pleasure, making the child slowly disappear? When a child disappears, it’s a family that disappears. And when a family disappears, Christmas disappears. And when Christmas disappears, decorations and celebrations appear and become more lavish, flashy, noisy and impressive. It’s the best way to cover up the emptiness of the crib.
When the child stops being the life-giving centre of a family, it means the child within us so-called grown-ups also disappears.
The first Christmas story was overshadowed by the massacre of innocent children – a terrible paradigm of the tragic situation of a society where the child is considered a threat, a danger and an enemy to be ruthlessly eliminated in or out of the womb. When a baby, born or unborn, is seen as a problem, a burden or, worse, as an agressor, how can we ever hope that the child within us could survive the massacre that the broken adult we have become needs to resort to?
No wonder every Christmas our secular and materialistic culture ups the noise and flashiness of our shopping and partying.
Could it be that we are trying to drown out the annoying wailing of a weak and fragile baby asking only to be welcomed, treasured and embraced in pure simplicity?
Could it be that a modern, more powerful and mighty Herod is absolutely terrified of the fragility, helplessness and innocence not just of Jesus but, even more, of the child within us?
Like Herod, our pride and craving for dominance, power and self-sufficiency feels threatened by the weak, fragile, dependent, vulnerable and wailing little child within each one of us.
Christmas is the good tiding that love and only love transforms our smallness, fragility and weakness into our greatest assets. Love is won over by the fragile, the weak and the vulnerable.
That is why he who is the Lord of Lords, the Almighty among the mighty, has embraced our human poverty and smallness so that one day, some day, someone will understand what life is all about. We will discover the joy of knowing that the greatest among us is indeed the smallest, and that the strongest is the weakest.
This is the real gift in every child, regardless of age. This is only possible if we humbly and joyfully bow our heads only to love and never to power, only to give and never to grab.
Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to all people whose good welcomes and keeps alive the little child within them!
This is Christmas!