Who hasn’t watched Charlie Brown pluck a large Christmas ornament from Snoopy’s prize-winning doghouse and hang it at the top of the “lovable loser’s” spindly evergreen, only to watch the sapling— seemingly unable to hold the ornament’s weight— immediately droop to the ground. “Argh! I’ve killed it!”
The scene, taken from Charles Schulz’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas”—which made its debut on CBS on Dec. 9, 1965—is recognized as one of the most iconic moments in Schulz’s animated television special that has become a Christmas tradition for over half a century.
It is refreshing to note that more than 560 of Schulz’s nearly 17,800 Peanuts newspaper strips— read, at its peak, by 355 million in 21 languages across 75 countries—contain a religious, spiritual, or theological reference. This is no more evident than when security-blanket toting Linus, Charlie Brown’s best friend, and Lucy’s younger brother, recites the physician-evangelist Luke’s writings –the most literary of the New Testament writers, having contributed over a quarter of the text—in response to Charlie (picture his gaping mouth) vociferously asking if anybody knows what Christmas is all about?
Perhaps for the greater part of humanity, Christmas has no legitimate meaning at all. You may be among those who come to Christmas with the same posture as Charlie Brown’s diminutive Christmas tree…a bit overburdened by the weight of it all.
When I was about Charlie’s age, Christmas for me was enchanting. In large part because my parents were intentional in their focus. Christmas didn’t just turn the page on the annual calendar. Parents, along with grandparents and other extended family members, made it endearing. The sense of wonder was and continues to be unbounded when seen through a child’s eyes.
While I haven’t packed away the childhood remembrances, along with the old Christmas ornaments, as I have aged through the years, I have come to a deeper understanding and greater appreciation that Christmas celebrates the evidence that God came to find us.
The humble birth of Jesus Christ was never intended to conceal the reality that God was being born into this world.
As author Eugene H. Peterson paraphrases the Apostle John’s words, “God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”
“Put the world right again…” That’s a tall order, even for a divine Creator.
Accordingly, you might say the miracle of Christmas comes in moments; all sorts of moments. Moments of celebration with angelic chorus; moments of laughter with heartening sounds; moments of revelation; as well as moments of weeping …long, hard sobs that rack a person’s body and fogs their brain. Weeping for the loneliness of us; the passage of time and our fear and terror of it; weeping for our loss of innocence; weeping for our inability to believe.
On the other hand, when Christmas emerges as restoration, we weep tears that wash the guilt, the regret, the loss, the disquietude from our tired body, tears that dispel the pain.
When Christmas appears to retrieve what has been lost, it first embraces, identifies, and affirms. Knowing, as writer Margaret DeAngelis so beautifully depicts, “We don’t feel sad because somebody’s not here this Christmas, we feel sad because they once were. Even if we never actually saw them at Christmas, they were part of our lives, and now they’re not, or are part of it differently, and we can’t go back to that other time.”
Loss can be devastating. The Old Testament Prophet Isaiah assures us God’s Son is familiar with deep grief for He, himself, was a man of constant sorrow.
When Christmas descends to redeem, to make amends for our poor choices; choices that have laden our hearts with guilt and crushed our spirits under the weight of mental anguish; Christmases’ gift is mercy, unmerited favor bestowed on those who are broken in spirit; contrite in heart.
“Christmas…that magic blanket that wraps itself around us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance— a day in which we think of everything [and everyone] we have ever loved.”
~Augusta E. Rundel
“And that’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works.
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