Richard Doster
Just after Halloween, a friend started grousing about the pre-Black Friday sales that were already being advertised and the lights that were being strung and the Christmas songs that were on the radio. How does that make sense: Thanksgiving was still a month away.
A few days later I stumbled across an old article that summed up some research from Time magazine. Journalists, hoping to report on which Christmas songs were most popular, had found that “religious songs” were more popular than “Santa songs.”
So, while the longer Christmas season is mostly about money, there might be an upside. For a full two months most everyone we know will hear the gospel, set to beautiful music, while immersed in a flurry of mass consumerism.
Imagine your brother searching for some toy his son just has to have. Checking the crowded shelves, he picks up on the words and music of “Silent Night.” In the din of all those shopping sounds, he hears that Jesus is the Son of God. He might make out the part that tells us Jesus “loves pure light,” and that with his birth comes “the dawn of redeeming grace.” He is Christ the Savior, and yet he’s born in a stable, celebrated by no one, other than a few farm animals.
A friend next door may be looking for a special gift that will make his wife happy, when he finds himself humming along to “Joy to the World.” The song calls for all creation to exult in God’s rule and restoration. The lyrics underscore Christ’s victory over mankind’s sin; they hail the coming of his kingdom forever, and so call on the fields, floods, rocks, hills, and plains to join mankind and, together, “repeat the sounding joy.” Receptive hearts, we sing, will “prepare him room,” certain that he rules, “with truth and grace.”
Strolling the aisles of yet another bustling store, “O Holy Night” startles us. “Long lay the earth in sin and error pining,” it gently says. And then Jesus appeared, and then — and only then — did “our souls feel their worth.” In any store, in any non-descript shopping center, the song stirs us with the truth that this just born baby restores our capacity for love and compassion. We respond, then, with humble worship: “Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices.” It is the “thrill of [this] hope” that enables a weary people to rejoice.
Waiting in a long checkout line, “What Child Is This?” prompts us to think about the magnitude and full meaning of Jesus’ birth. This baby, laying in his mother’s lap, is none other than “Christ the king.” Maybe we catch a few words of the second verse where the song looks to the day when this boy, the son of Mary — “pierced by nails and spear” — pays the debt for his followers’ sins. Thus, “The King of kings salvation brings,” inspiring “Loving hearts [to] enthrone Him.”
In the crush of this 54-day shopping extravaganza, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” offers rest for our souls. From beginning to end, the hymn expresses the deep longing for the coming of Christ — Emmanuelle, which means God with us. Seven times, through the song’s refrain, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel / shall come to you, O Israel” there’s the promise of redemption. It comes by means of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the incarnate Christ — who is, this
song informs us, “our Wisdom,” the “Lord of might,” the “rod of Jesse,” the “key of David,” “our Dayspring,” and the true “desire of nations.”
What must happen in a busy shopper’s heart when she comes across the words of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” What will she make of the fact that the good news is carried on the wind and reaches a lamb, who shares it with a shepherd boy, who somehow finds a way to tell it to a king? How might her senses come alive in response to the questions posed: Do you see the star? Do you hear the song? Do you know the baby who brings goodness and light? Christmas — the incarnation of Christ — brings life and new possibilities.
Think about Isaiah 55:10, where God declares, “My word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
Who knew he’d send it to Costco and Kohl’s — before Thanksgiving. And who’d have guessed that in a Christmas season that lasts too long for a lot of wrong reasons, there may be a right one, too.
Richard Doster lives in Fernandina Beach with his wife Sally. He’s the founding editor of byFaith, the magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America. You can reach him at doster.richard@gmail.com.