Santa, Wonder & the Birth of Jesus

William Blake, Illustration 1 to Milton’s “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”:
The Descent of Peace, 1814-1816., pen and watercolor.


We are blessed to have our grandchildren, five, three and one, with us this Christmas morning. Last year the then four-year-old woke up in our home and roared into the family room with great excitement. Then he was "over the moon" to discover the glass of milk empty, the cookie plate reduced to crumbs, and the carrot half-munched. Santa had come and gone, as promised!

This sense of wonder and excitement enchanted us, as it truly should, or what is grandparenting for? There was a thoughtful piece by Ed Simon in the New York Times yesterday called In Praise of Wonder with the heading beneath: Christmas is a reminder of the radical power of humility, amazement and embracing the Other. Simon admits that he is not conventionally Christian but appreciates the significance of the Nativity. Within the article he muses:

Christmas, according to the carol, is the “most wonderful time of the year.” Certainly it’s one of the most commercialized, where it’s hard to sense much of the sacred import between Black Friday and the perennial culture-war scuffles over the meaning of the season. How much better, then, to see the holiday through Blake’s eyes, where “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

One need not be a conventional Christian — I’m not — to see the significance of the nativity story. Because what the nativity story conveys is a narrative of wonder threaded through prosaic reality, where the birth of a child is an act of God’s self-creation, where a manger can be the site of the universe’s new genesis. Perhaps Blake’s seeing angels in trees and God in his kitchen is the true nature of things, and everyday appearances are the real delusions.

It is difficult to see those angels today. We live less in an “age of wonder” than we do in an age of anger, anxiety and fear; the age of the weaponized tweet and horrific push notification. I don’t believe that one can die from lack of wonder, but I’m certain that a deficit of it will ensure that one has never really lived.

 

I'm hoping that our grandkids will have room for the presence of God in Christ as part of their Christmas through the years. Santa is fun, but Jesus is life abundant.

 

And that's wonder-full. Fear not dear readers, and Merry Christmas.

Oh ya, why not read about beavers and St. Nick at my Groundling blog

https://groundlingearthyheavenly.blogspot.com/2018/12/father-christmas-beavers.html