Christmas Letters

December 25, 2006

Christmas Eve
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman

Like most of you, our household has received a fair amount of Christmas mail. And tucked within many of the cards were the folded year-end reports concerning the lives of friends and their families spread far and wide. Perhaps you also write the generic Christmas letter. Melissa and I have refrained from doing this, although lately I’ve been re-considering.

My intentions are better than my actions when it comes to my taking a more personal approach with this. Time is the enemy, I say. But as you well know, we all end up spending our time pretty much the way we want, notwithstanding our protestations to the contrary.

Letter writing is disappearing from our culture. Technology and life-styles are the culprits, we say. For a brief moment a few years ago it seemed electronic cards might have a future, but they wound up with a very short half-life. More and more I’m discovering how precious even a short, hand-written note seems – it expresses something about intentionality, since it takes more effort than a few keystrokes clicked and sent into the electronic ether. I’m thinking this assessment could be a generational thing.

But I do wonder how much is lost by not having hard copy for much of our relational exchange these days. Imagine all the disembodied information bits floating around within the electronic ether that at one moment had a brief meaning, but were dispersed into a billion computer trashbins, leaving only residual patterns sparking in internet graveyards.

Letters have poignancy many years later. Poignancy and power. They tell a story that captures a time and place and personality and intention. Interesting to consider in our blackberry world of e-mail exchange where relational content actually resides. What and where is the evidence of the hard facts of the relationships we claim matter to us? How do we go about the business of telling and recording our stories? Especially about the things that matter most? Time will tell, I suppose.

In 1943 German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a letter to his parents at Christmastime. He wrote from prison having been sent there as a conspirator against the Nazi regime. A year and a half later, after passing through several prisons and concentration camps, he would be hanged for his active opposition against Hitler. Fortunately, many of his words have not been dispersed. To his mother and father he wrote,

“Of course you can’t help thinking of my being in prison over Christmas, and it is bound to throw a shadow over the few hours of happiness which still await you in these times. All I can do to help is to assure you that I know you will keep it in the same spirit as I do, for we are agreed on how Christmas ought to be kept. How could it be otherwise, when my attitude to Christmas is a heritage I owe to you? I need not tell you how much I long to be released and to see you all again. But for years you have given us such lovely Christmases, that our grateful memories are strong enough to cast their rays over a darker one. In times like these we learn as never before what it means to possess a past and a spiritual heritage untrammeled by the changes and chances of the present. A spiritual heritage reaching back for centuries is a wonderful support and comfort in face of all temporary stresses and strains. I believe that the man who is aware of such reserves of power need not be ashamed of the tender feelings evoked by the memory of a rich and noble past, for such feelings belong in my opinion to the better and nobler part of humankind….

“For the Christian, there is nothing peculiarly difficult about Christmas in a prison cell. I daresay it will have more meaning and will be observed with greater sincerity here in this prison than in places where all that survives of the feast is its name. That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness and guilt look very different to the eyes of God from what they do to man; that God should come down to the very place which men usually abhor; that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn – these are things which a prisoner can understand better than anyone else. For the prisoner the Christmas story is glad tidings in a very real sense. And that faith gives the prisoner a part in the communion of saints, a fellowship transcending the bound of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance.

“On Christmas Eve I shall be thinking of you all very much, and I want you to believe that I too shall have a few hours of real joy and that I am not allowing my troubles to get the better of me….

“It will certainly be a quiet Christmas for everybody, and the children will look back on it for long afterwards. But for the first time, perhaps, many will learn the true meaning of Christmas.”

Under a warm embrace there’s hard content in that letter, isn’t there? It’s richness lies within multiple layers of meaning. The meaning of family, the meaning of a life dedicated to the truth, the meaning of sacrifice and integrity, the meaning and power of tradition and faith. Even the meaning of Christmas Eve.

Interesting, isn’t it, that this night is in most ways no different than any other night? There’s nothing within the natural occurrence of things that makes it special. It does lie close to the longest night of the year, but that’s a human-arranged thing meant to tie our experiences of hope and renewal to the natural calendar. The meaning of this night has the freight of multiple generations telling their story to succeeding generations.

At a Christmas in the middle of the last century during a time of grave danger and human agony, the Bonhoeffer family reminded each other of what mattered most. Their sharing has been preserved for others to consider as well – like us, tonight, on another Christmas Eve in a different time and circumstance. And if, like Dietrich, we were to write letters home about the things that mattered most, what might we say?

That’s what I got to thinking about this week when I read another summation of the past year from a friend. He told of losing his wife in June past. He shared how well she had lived and how peacefully and courageously she had died. With a simple eloquence he recounted what a rich life they had shared, how blessed he was, how much he continued to cherish what was ahead of him, and how faith imbued his life with confidence and meaning. He spoke of children and grandchildren. He ended with the simple, “God bless you.” And for some reason – more so than on most other occasions – it felt like a holy blessing, like we were sharing what really mattered.

This letter was enclosed within a simple card with a manger scene. And as I thought about it, I recalled the words we just heard read: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

And I thought how it was that God had written us his Word of blessing on Christmas. And how that had become the occasion for us to wonder and marvel at the mystery of our lives and ponder the things that mattered most.

Under a warm embrace there was hard content in that Word we named Jesus Christ. Filled with grace and truth, he taught us what really mattered. God wrote us a letter, a Christmas letter, as it were.

And at the end of it, he said, “Bless you! Bless you! I love you! Bless you!”

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