Long before little Linus walked onstage with his blue blanket in 1965 to deliver a monologue from the Gospel of St. Luke, another television show answered that question burning in the hearts of men every winter, so succinctly phrased by Charlie Brown: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”
The grandeur and majesty of the Western world … rests upon the back of the infant Jesus.
“The maker of the stars under the stars and the Creator of the earth not having a place whereon to lay His head,” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen intoned on a Christmas season episode of his widely popular 1950s television program Life Is Worth Living. “And what does it mean, why did He come?” the cleric asked. With his usual dramatic but authentic flair, Sheen answered:
He did not come to make us ‘nice people.’ He came to make us new men, change our natures. That’s why the Son of God came to this earth, to make us other sons of God, to make us more than just human beings. It’s not easy, it’s very hard. You say, ‘Oh, but I’m a beast! I’m foul! I dare not be lifted up!’ Remember that He was laid in a manger — and his companions were beasts. That is our hope, our joy, our peace, our merry Christmas.
With St. Nicholas having been turned into a vintage Coca-Cola commercial and a dozen soulless Hollywood iterations, with God’s gift of His only begotten Son being commemorated by a month-long mad rush to find the best and most cutthroat deals on this new gadget or that new game, and with the culture wars raging against Christianity and the religion’s Namesake, it is easier every year to forget the meaning of Christmas.
Even for devout Christians, the true meaning of Christmas can become lost in the shuffle, whether that shuffle be wrapping presents and bundling the kids into the car to go to grandma’s or trying to meet fourth quarter quotas at work just to afford the holiday heating bill.
With the hustle and bustle now largely over and a new year on the horizon, it is worth reflecting on Sheen’s words. The very God who made the universe did not humble Himself and take upon Himself the fleshy form of his own mortal creations so that we might be, as Sheen said, “nice people.”
The grandeur and majesty of the Western world — from its wealth and depth of philosophy, law, and literature to its soaring and towering cathedrals and rich cultural heritage — rests upon the back of the infant Jesus. Christ came to earth that we ourselves might reach Heaven. His birth has taken even the lowliest, basest, and most downtrodden of souls and elevated us to the vaulted heights of eternity.
Christ told us that He came to earth and was born in a manger so that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). But He alone was born not to live but to die. He was laid in a wooden manger, covered in the blood of the womb, just as He would one day be hung upon a wooden cross, covered in the blood He offered as our ransom.
As a tiny infant, his innocent cries pierced the Bethlehem night, much as the mournful cries of His blessed mother would be heard in Jerusalem 33 years later. The Christ child was lovingly placed in His mother’s arms and wrapped in swaddling clothes, just as Christ would later be taken down from the cross and placed in His mother’s arms and wrapped in a burial shroud. He was born to die, so that we might live. The Son of God became one of us so that we might become sons of God. That’s the true meaning of Christmas, one which we should strive to keep alive in our hearts the whole year long.
READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy:
The Church Needs to Regress on the Death Penalty
The Democrat Party’s Noxious ‘God Problem’
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