Christmas is not for children?

The email from Sister Joan Chittister sat in my inbox for a few days:, unopened. “Christmas is not for children.” What? Of course it’s for the children. Have you seen the presents under the tree, the pony tethered in the back yard for the sweet Emma Belle Shade? (just kidding, Dan). Haven’t you heard the children singing ,“Away in a Manger,” or ten-year-old Gayla Peevey whining, “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas?” Christmas is all about the kids.

 

After all, the Christmas narrative as reported by Matthew and Luke is all about the baby – and even the babies who got caught up in Herod’s desperate act, “the slaughter of the innocents.” Wasn’t there a little drummer boy pounding away on his drum, the littlest angel singing heartily with the multitude of the heavenly hosts, and the two cherub angels keeping watch at the holy crib? 

 

As songwriter Alfred Burt so poignantly wrote, the child in the manger came to earth so that children could see themselves in the almighty God of the universe. 

The children in each different place
will see the baby Jesus’ face
like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
and filled with holy light.
O lay aside each earthly thing
and with thy heart as offering,
come worship now the infant King.
'Tis love that’s born tonight!

Even Victorian poet Christina Rossetti agreed about the little ones in her poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The tone of the poem didn’t begin on a promising note, as Rossetti painted a desolate picture: “frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” Yet her last stanza welcomes the voice of a child. 

 

What can I give him? Poor as I am. 

If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb, 

If I were a wise man, I would do my part, 

But, what can I give him? Give him my heart.”

 

Surely, Sister Joan, you didn’t mean what you wrote. You caught my attention, but there’s got to be more, right? Not being willing to settle for the troubling headline, I finally read the entire piece. Here’s her concluding paragraph:

 

There is a child in each of us waiting to be born again. It is to those looking for life that the figure of the Christ, a child, beckons. Christmas is not for children. It is for those who refuse to give up and grow old, for those to whom life comes newly and with purpose each and every day, for those who can let yesterday go so that life can be full of new possibility always, for those who are agitated with newness whatever their age. Life is for the living, for those in whom Christmas is a feast without finish, a celebration of the constancy of change, a call to begin once more the journey of human joy and holy meaning.”

 

More than thirty years ago, Karrie Chen, a college student from Hong Kong, sang Burt’s words in the hush of a candlelit chapel in Philadelphia. It was the children who came to see Jesus that night, “bronzed and brown,” “lily white,” “almond-eyed” – and “ah!, they love him too.” As the little ones came to the cradle of the Son of God with their offering, we too bowed our knees. 

 

Yes, Christmas is for the children, yet it beckons each one of us, weary, wandering and wondering. We wait, as a weary world, for “a thrill of hope,” “the journey of human joy and holy meaning.” O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.