Even though the television was only in black and white, the advertised attaché case was the only Christmas gift that I wanted that year. I already suspected that my parents were not going to let me enter the seminary after eighth grade, and my fallback occupation was to be a secret agent.
According to the commercial, inside the black plastic attaché was a compass, secret code booklet, a special periscope that could peer around corners, a gun that fired white plastic bullets out a small hole in the briefcase and two large missiles.
I did get the spy case for Christmas, and I was overjoyed. My sisters, meanwhile, got a large plastic tea set and new dolls. They proceeded to have a big tea party for all their dolls and even their stuffed animals.
Case in hand and a spring-loaded missile on the outside of the case, I peered through the periscope around the corner and down the hallway where an open bedroom door revealed the tea party.
I pressed the red button on the side of the case and the missile launched and hit the teapot filled with water. It shattered and covered my sisters with fake tea. The missile ricocheted off the destroyed teapot and punctured the window shade, dangling with damning evidence.
My sisters screamed with such terror that I think the neighbors went into their basements believing it was a civil defense air-raid siren. My parents went into authoritative action. My case was confiscated, never to be seen again. I was banished to the attic and as I climbed the wooden stairs, my mother hollered, “I hope you’re happy! You ruined Christmas!”
Ruined Christmas? You can’t. Oh, I may have ruined the holiday, but it is impossible to ruin Christmas. The greater the tragedy the more Christmas has its deeper meaning. The darker the Advent, the brighter the Christmas. We do the holidays. God does Christmas for those who know they need it.
For those of us who love this time of the year with all the dazzling light displays, festive music and fine feasts of seasonal sweets, we can miss what God is doing anew when transfixed by what we have done. For those who find the holidays difficult and seek out in decorated malls some semblance of the joy of the season, look no further amid the merriment of mere mortals. For all of us, it is a time to go to Mass or spend time in an adoration chapel. Or find another quiet place inside or outside to read the Scriptures, pray the rosary or pray our familiar prayers. Whatever opens our hearts and minds to the will of God so that we let Christmas come to us. When God does Christmas, we receive what we least expect and what we most need.
God did not become human in Jesus Christ to make life perfect. Sin, sickness, suffering and death know not our seasons nor care if they bring the woes of darkness on our artificially lighted ho-ho-ho parade. Jesus did not even take away his own suffering and death. Rather, in the mystery of the Incarnation is the way, the truth and the life through all the darkness of a mortally-flawed world.
The gift of light. The gift of hope. The gift of love. With faith renewed by grace and enkindled by the Holy Spirit, we know a true peace that nothing else in the world can give or ruin. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we bring the light of Christ to those we accompany through the darkness or through the very shadows of death.
Christmas is the birth of Easter, and Pentecost is the birth of the Church. Through the Scriptures, the sacraments and a parish community of the faithful, we receive all the gifts we need to live a joy-filled life in every season.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who lived in a land of gloom, a light has shone” (Is 9:1).
