[Reposted]

CHRISTMAS, they say, is about the Incarnation of God — the mysterious, improbable and incomprehensible birth of God Himself as a human baby in a single moment of history.

But if you think about it for a minute or two, if you just think about it, you realize that if this is true then, well, Christmas must be about everything.

Christmas couldn’t just be about Christmas.

It couldn’t be just about a holiday with decorated trees and lights and carols and gifts. It couldn’t be just about Christmas prayers, as sublime and essential as they may be in their highest and most exalted manifestation, the ancient Christ Mass. It couldn’t possibly be just about these things.

No, Christmas must be, if it is what they say it is and if it was what they say it was, it must be about everything. Every single thing. Every single person. Every single moment. Every single place. Every single thought. Every single event.

Haven’t you sensed that already?

Haven’t you sensed on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day that something deeply personal was happening — something that was strangely and mysteriously about you? 

Well, even if you haven’t sensed that, it was. It had to be about you. And everyone who has ever lived.

It couldn’t just be this one divine Baby — it must be about every baby. It must be about people who have long since ceased to resemble the babies they once were.

It couldn’t just be about Bethlehem. It must be about San Francisco. It must be about Hong Kong and Moscow and — what’s that city in Saudi Arabia — Riyadh. It must be about Tulsa and Marseilles.

It couldn’t just be about the donkey Mary rode along those dirt roads. It must be about all donkeys and also all modes of transportation, including planes lifting off right this minute from teeming airports, freight trucks roaring down superhighways and baby strollers with their unpredictable passengers, adorable to be sure but not as holy as Jesus.

It couldn’t just be about the ox and the ass, mute and gentle by the sacred crib. It must be about the kitten asleep in the kitchen and the snake under a rock in the yard. It must be about the oblivious cow in a stall at a factory farm, on his way to the supermarket. It must be about the hawk circling overhead in the winter sky searching for his prey — or simply soaring.

It couldn’t just be about this stable building. It must be about skyscrapers, barns, cathedrals that are earthly palaces of God, windowless prisons and tract houses. It must be about the super-sized mall five minutes from my home.

It couldn’t just be about the desert wind that swept past the cave in Bethlehem. It must be about all wind, from the lightest breeze to the wrecking tornado. It must be about all weather. All rain and snow. All mist and fog. It must be about the seas and the mountains that receive those winds. It must be about “climate change.”

It must not just be about the stars that wondrous night, when the natural world registered no surprise. It must be about all stars, even the one star you saw through the haze as you were getting into your car. It must be about the sky itself.

It couldn’t just be about those simple and innocent shepherds. It must be about the mechanic who fixes your car, the manager at Walmart and the clerk who works the night shift at the Fairfield Inn. It must be about the criminal alone in his prison cell on Christmas Eve. It must be about people who have lost every shred of innocence and wouldn’t know an angel if they saw one.

It couldn’t just be about Christians. It must be about the followers of all creeds and all philosophies. It must be about existentialism, positivism, Marxism, liberalism, conservatism  — and every –ism ever invented and disputed.

It couldn’t just be about peace and love, it must be about war and hatred too.

It couldn’t just be about the oceans of awe, joy and gratitude — the inward splendors, all of them deeper than deep — experienced by Mary and Joseph in their lonely outpost. It must be about commonplace sorrows and joys felt by ordinary people who botch many things and sometimes can’t seem to get a single thing right. It must be about despair. It must be about fear. It must be about small and fleeting feelings. It is — it must be — about every single emotion that has ever occupied the human heart.

It couldn’t just be about those angels. It must be about all angels, all cherubim and seraphim, singing now and singing then. It must be their magnificent music. It must be the angels you may hear someday, their music too beautiful to bear in this world.

It must be not just that moment, but this moment and all moments. It must be the moment you were born and the moment you will take your last breath. It must be all or it must be nothing. He must be every king or no king at all.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what can I give Him: give my heart.

An elderly friend of my parents who is gone now kept a Christmas tree fully decorated in a spare bedroom all year long. She knew in her childlike way and with her childlike heart that Christmas doesn’t end.

Christmas — if it is what they say it is — is about everything.

Everything that ever was and ever will be. Forever and ever.

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