There are many things I wonder about at this time of year. I wonder about silly things like what it would be like to go “a wassailing” or what the words of “Good King Wenceslas” really mean. And then I wonder about more serious things like what Mary’s family must have thought when she told them she was expecting a baby out of wedlock. Sometimes I wonder what Mary sang to baby Jesus as she rocked Him to sleep. While the Bible doesn’t specifically say she sang to Him, we do know she sang to give thanks to the Lord when He told her she would bear the Messiah, and we know that that’s just what mothers do–they rock their babies and sing to them. That’s real life.
I look at the nativity scene I have set up in my home right now, and I chuckle at how it is NOT a snapshot of real life. I can’t believe that the actual night of Christ’s birth looks anything like my beautifully crafted nativity set. In reality, that night would have been dirty, noisy, and stinky. Animals aren’t quiet and they don’t smell good–same for babies. And shepherds. And new mothers. Every December we set out a display of what the first Christmas looked like–a cleaned up, embellished, presentable display, because who’d want to set up the real version? Mary would look exhausted, her clothes would be wrinkled and dirty, the baby would be crying and…let’s be real…there would be blood and afterbirth and other bodily fluids (from the animals too) strewn about in the hay. I don’t mean to be crass or disrespectful. (If I’m honest, to talk in that way makes me feel like Alice in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever when she says, “I don’t think it’s very nice to say Mary was pregnant.” Great with child sounded better for Mary.) But seriously, isn’t that one of the main points of the Christmas story? The God of the Universe left His heavenly home to put on flesh and come live among us in our reality–a reality that itself is often crass, harsh, filthy, noisy, chaotic, and ugly.
Just as we set up a lovely yet false display of the first Christmas, we also present a lovely yet false version of our families each year when we take family photos and put them on our Christmas cards or post them on social media. There is no way that on any given day in your real life your family is dressed in matching, color coordinated outfits while smiling and looking so clean and happy. If your family is anything like mine, just before that photo was snapped your kids were complaining about having to get dressed up, they were fighting and pushing each other, and you were screaming your head off trying to get them to participate in capturing a beautiful family moment. But we don’t put those pictures on our Christmas cards, do we?
And then I wonder about that. Why do we cover up reality, dress it up and make it look clean and perfect? We all know it’s not like that. Unfortunately, that often results in discontent and frustration when we see the happy perfect pictures of other families. Even though we know that’s not what their every day looks like, we still feel jealous or like we don’t measure up.
In my opinion, having a beautiful nativity can lend itself to wrong thinking if we’re not careful Even though we intellectually know it wasn’t really a “silent night” where all was calm and bright, we idealize that first Christmas until it seems too holy, too perfect…almost magical with a shiny, movie-like quality where scenes have been edited and enhanced. Then it begins to be disconnected from history, from reality. We forget that these were real people, with real emotions, real failures, real experiences that in many ways are just like ours. When we do that, it makes it harder to identify with Christ–the God man who came into our world to experience life just like we do. We forget that He felt pain, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and sickness. He got dirty. He got tired. He got overwhelmed. And then we might even feel bad that we think about Him like that. But if we only think of Christ as the perfect, holy, almighty God, (which He is of course) it makes it nearly impossible to imagine that He could understand our messy lives. Hebrews 2 tells us that Jesus was “fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
And so….I go back to wondering what Mary sang to baby Jesus. I wonder about these things because I think it’s good to ponder them. When we engage with the details of scripture and ponder some of the unspoken details, it helps us remember the humanity of the people written within the pages. It helps us remember the humanity of our Savior. And that helps us to know that in our times of struggle, in our times of sin or temptation or despair, we can run to Jesus because He really does understand. We don’t have to wonder if He understands or if He loves us. He’s proven that He does.
For further reading about the humanity AND divinity of Jesus, read https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/jesus-is-fully-human.
