Brief synopsis of the readings: Every year at Christmas we have a choice of readings: Vigil Mass, Mass during the Night, Mass at Dawm, and Mass during the Day. I always choose the readings from Mass during the Night, primarily because I find the Gospel (Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem) the most evocative and the most familiar. We begin in Isaiah where God proclaims that those who have walked in darkness have seen a great light. The people will rejoice because all that burdened them is gone. Additionally a child will be born who will be called “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.” Luke’s Gospel recounts how the pregnant Mary and Joseph needed to travel to Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus ordered “a census of the whole world” and everyone was required to return to their ancestral home. But Mary and Joseph could find no room in the inn and were directed to a barn; Mary delivered Jesus there and laid him in a feeding trough (manger). Nearby shepherds were visited by an angel who told them that the savior, the “Christ and Lord” had just been born.

I can’t imagine any Christian not recognizing today’s Gospel. This isn’t as well known but only two of the four Gospels even describe the birth of Jesus (Matthew and Luke). We’re probably more familiar with today’s account from Luke in part because it was described in the animated classic A Charlie Brown Christmas that premiered in 1965. While all the Peanuts characters seek the true meaning of Christmas, Linus steals the show by going walking on a stage and reading this Gospel passage. After he’s done he walks off stage and tells Charlie Brown: “That’s what Christmas is all about.”

Whenever I imagine that scene I’m struck by the ordinariness of the events. A pregnant couple, traveling for reasons not of their choosing, need a place for the night and have to settle on a barn. I wonder if, years later, people who recognized Jesus as the Messiah thought back to that scene. The innkeeper asking: “I wonder if that was the pregnant couple years ago who needed to use our barn because I was full.” Other travelers who remembered seeing the pregnant couple on the road to Bethlehem and recognized that the timing was correct. I think this points to the fact that we may pass dramatic events that we don’t fully recognize until years later.

The people who did recognize this event was clearly the shepherds. We’ll hear more about them soon but they made their way to see Jesus. And unlike the astrologers in Matthew they had no gifts to bring. Perhaps it was the simple ordinariness that caused them to be visited by the angel. We never hear from them again and can only imagine how this changed their lives. As we know, shepherds did not lead easy or respected lives; they cared for smelly animals constantly in need to shepherding to avoid being eaten by predators or stumbling into ditches. And yet these shepherds had a 30 year advantage in knowing that Christ the Lord was among them. I hope it gave them hope in the dark times.

Because if there is anything that unites people of all places and all times, it’s the fear that comes in the dark times. It’s easy to look back in history and discount the fear and despair of events from long ago but still fear current events. Hearkening back to A Charlie Brown Christmas there’s a point where Charlie Brown was chosen by Lucy to direct the Christmas play. On hearing this, Violet exclaimed: “Oh no! We’re doomed!” and Patty said: “This is going to be the worst Christmas play ever!” As we all know the Christmas play turned out fine and even if it didn’t, we were far from doomed. Even that TV show points this out: the ordinary, simple tree that started as a laughingstock becomes a tree that lights everything.

But it seems we are never far from the belief that doom is around the corner. I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years that “we are in the end times.” As a student of history I point to events in our history that looked dire. In the mid 1300s the bubonic plague (the Black Death) killed nearly half of Europe’s population. Two world wars in the 20th Century gave us weapons of death from poison gas to nuclear fission that, for the first time, appeared capable of destroying the entire world. In the last 45 years over 40,000,000 people have died of AIDS and we are still reeling from Covid that has already killed 7,000,000. Clearly we’ve never suffered from a lack of evidence of doom.

And yet…there’s this baby in Bethlehem. He not only promises that God will never leave us, but also that God loves us too much to view us from afar. God came to us in our form and promises us that no darkness will ever win. Our fear itself is doomed.

So let’s live like that. Let’s recognize that uncontrolled fear does not make us smarter, or wiser, and any popularity we gain is fleeting. Let us recognize that God has invested so much in us that he will never walk away and never leave us unprotected. And without disrespecting those who believe that some sort of “rapture” is just around the corner, we will keep on. To quote the writer William Faulkner in 1950: I believe that [we] will not merely endure: [we] will prevail.”

Finally let us not overthink the details. We don’t know why there, why them, or why then and God has never felt any need to explain things to us. Let us instead celebrate the gift that comes to us in all places, for all people, and for all time. Ultimately a gift freely offered is to be freely accepted. The Peanuts gang certainly did.

And so…Merry Christmas.