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In our art and music, we often make the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ out to be this idyllic event. We want to add this feeling of effortlessness, as if nothing could or did go wrong in the story. Jesus, in our minds, has to have the best birth possible, something befitting the Son of God. We want everything to be perfect for our Lord coming into this world.
That is a problem, especially in a year like this when we can’t make things “perfect”, or at least those things that we think are perfect. But there is good news for us. The truth is our Lord’s Birth was far from perfect. It was messy, difficult, and dangerous.
Before Jesus was even born, His life was under threat because His mother’s life was in danger. To be found with child in their day and age, and not by her espoused husband, could potentially have led to being stoned to death. The best hope would have been what Joseph plans to do in the Gospel according to Matthew, to divorce her quietly.
The great hope we have, and the world has, is that even with this danger, Mary says yes. She agrees to bear God into this world in human form.
Even then, Mary and Joseph have a hard, difficult journey ahead of them. They have to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Not a long journey in our day and age, but quite a far one on foot in not the best of terrain. It would have been particularly difficult for the poor, young, and pregnant Mary.
When they get into Bethlehem, there are no family members to stay with. There’s no inn with room for them. Instead there is the stable, or rather a cave. When travelers in the Holy Family’s day couldn’t find anywhere else, they would congregate in caves, likely with other people and likely with other animals. Mary probably gave birth with these animals around because it was the only place to find privacy. She would have laid Jesus in a manager, a feeding trough, because it was nearby and there was nowhere else.
This is a hard and messy way to come into this world when birth is already hard and messy to begin with. God came into the world through this mess. That’s how much He loves us.
But the story of Jesus’ Birth doesn’t end there. As we read in Matthew, Herod, the King at the time, whose palace Mary and Joseph would have passed by just outside Bethlehem, learns of the birth of the Messiah. Herod is jealous even of this small child, and seeks to destroy Him. The Holy Family flees for their lives as Herod puts to death all the children Jesus’ age in the town. We remember their lives on December 29 on the Day of Holy Innocents (transposed this year from its normal date on December 28).
This year has been a hard one, to say the least, and this Christmas will be far from perfect in the eyes of many. The good news is that Jesus’ Birth wasn’t either. That shows God’s love for us, that He would be willing to be born in a world with so much chaos, suffering, and pain just to be closer to us. God didn’t have to go through a very imperfect birth. He chose to.
In this very imperfect time in this extremely imperfect world, maybe it is time for us to let go of the need for perfection during the Christmas Holiday Season. Maybe our celebration needs to embrace the imperfection that was Jesus’ coming into this world. Maybe our celebration needs to be more about the love of the Christ Child and less about marking everything “perfect”, whatever that means.
Rather, Christmas shouldn’t be about tradition and getting everything “right”. This year has broken that perfect streak of tradition. This year has ended our run of perfection. This year reflects the reality of Jesus’ Birth in a way that comes hopefully only once a lifetime. But in moving forward, we can put aside the things of the past and forge a new way of celebrating Christmas, one that embraces the messiness of it all. We can finally have a Christmas that is actually a celebration of the Christ Child and not a pandering to the need of perfection by the world. We can be different and unique as Christians. We can finally be free.
The story of Christmas is about the imperfection of this world, and that God loves us anyways. My hope is that next year, when we are hopefully together once again, our celebration won’t be about tradition or being perfect. Instead, I hope Christmas can be about what it is supposed to be about: the perfect love of our Lord Jesus Christ through an imperfect birth in an imperfect world. If we can do that, we will be on the right track, and we will help lead others to know God as we know Him, through the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world.