As a child, I was always happy that at our house around December 20, the nativity scene was taken out of the closet and displayed in a traditionally fixed place on the piano with the appropriate decoration around it. Especially the moment when there was a new nativity scene for which we had saved with the stamps of “Waeslandia” that we got every time we made purchases in the neighborhood store. There were no department stores yet, and toward the end of the year we received a colorful catalog in the mail that listed the items we could obtain with the points we had saved. It ranged from a pack of bath towels to a thermos bottle and, of course, an electric train set that would then arrive at its destination by St. Nicholas. But on the penultimate page at the top left, there was also a nativity scene, how sharp my memory of it is, and it shone so much more colorful than the manger we had and where the glue pot had already had to intervene several times. It did take a lot of points, but apparently, we had been good customers in our store during the past year and qualified for the nativity scene. The old one was placed in the trash, which of course we would not do today anymore with an antique family heirloom that it was.
All this must be 65 years ago, but the nativity scene still exists, and even the original packaging was carefully preserved. I found it at my mother’s estate when we emptied her room at the retirement home. How happy I was that I now get to continue the tradition and carefully place the small statues in the stall with as much joy and devotion as I did then around Christmas. And gently sing “Silent night, holy night…” to them.
That it’s Christmas, of course, we also see in our cities where lights flicker and the familiar melodies sound. In the Philippines, they started doing this as early as September. But even in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, it is no longer night at Christmas time and we even meet Santa Klaus and illuminated reindeer with which this man has apparently travelled from the far north to the heart of Africa. They must be warm here… But where has the nativity scene gone? It becomes a vain search for the reference to what is after all the essence of Christmas: the commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ, of God who became man in order to give a divine dimension to our human nature. Or as some Church Fathers boldly put it, “God became man so that man might become God.”
We can immediately ask ourselves what impact Christmas has on our relationship with Jesus, whether we really allow Him to be born in our hearts to dwell there and share in His love. Because what we celebrate as a distant memory should at the same time become a renewed reality each time where we really give space for the presence of Jesus in our lives, give space to really welcome Him into our lives and at the same time have the courage to listen to Him.
Because He has something to say to us about our lives, about the way we build our lives, about the way we live with others and also about the world in which we live and in which we have a responsibility.
Jesus brings us a message of love and is himself the unique reflection of God who is love. He reminds us that God created human beings out of love and that we are called to live in this love. Are we really making room for God’s love in our lives? Are we allowing God’s love into our lives so that we can radiate this love into our environment? No, this must not become or remain a theory, but this must be realized in our immediate environment, in the family or community in which we live: it is there that we must radiate this divine love. And this already begins in which we manage to wish each other a friendly good day in the early morning. It is these first moments of the day that will give colour to the rest of our day.
Jesus brings us a message of hope. At the beginning of the Holy Year which is precisely about this hope, we are called to become pilgrims of hope. Yes, constantly we face difficulties, face seemingly hopeless situations for which we search in vain for a way out. We are let down by fellow human beings, yes, even our closest friends can let us down. So, reasons enough to become hopeless and give up. But it is precisely in this darkness that Jesus sought to bring light with his coming. It is with a message that with God there are never totally hopeless situations. And these flames of hope sometimes come from very unexpected places. It is sometimes as if God sends us his angels to give us new hope. It is then people we have not met for a long time who suddenly send us a message and give us that warm feeling that we are not alone after all. We should not limit it to the so-called “Warmest Week” to be this flame of hope ourselves for someone who is really struggling. A simple gesture of compassion can really work wonders. Some can do this in a very spontaneous way, others have to put some effort into it. But we all have enough warmth to be able to share this with others.
True hope, of course, has to do with our faith that God will never abandon us. How many times did Jesus repeat that divine word, “Don’t be afraid, I am there.” To the extent that our faith in that loving God grows, our hope will also grow and strengthen, yes, beyond death. For if we truly believe that there is life after this life, not even death can take away our hope. Perhaps it is this that makes so many people today truly miss it and therefore so easily decide to then drop out of life when they can no longer see any perspective, so to speak, and begin to experience everything as hopeless.
In a time marked by war in so many places worldwide, Jesus also continues to bring us His message of peace. He is therefore rightly called the Prince of Peace. But at the same time, even the prophets before Him spoke that we ourselves must be agents of this peace, by forging our swords into ploughshares. My father was a blacksmith and I have seen many ploughshares pass through his hands, which he re-sharpened with powerful hammer blows, so that they could continue their work in the fields and prepare the ground on which lush fruit might one day grow and be harvested. Perhaps he did not think then what contribution he was giving to the fertility of the earth. But this is also the case with us: we too often do not realize how we promote peace at a distance or hinder this peace by our words, by our actions, by decisions we may or may not make. It really comes down to knowing how to forge the swords we sometimes wish to wield into ploughshares in time to participate in working for peace within us, peace around us and even for peace wider than we suspect.
Where has the nativity scene gone? Consciously giving a place to the nativity scene during this Christmas season also means that we do not want to shut Christ up in our private sphere, but to give and continue to give Him full space in the public sphere, in our social involvement. That we allow Him to guide our conscience in making decisions that have to do with human dignity, that have to do with the way we treat our environment in which we become more aware of the responsibility we have received as human beings to further build God’s creation according to His dream.
Let the lights flicker and the melodies resound, but let this Christmas also truly become a moment in which we may encounter the living Christ who came into the world to walk with us and give new direction to our lives. Because the Light has come into the world, why should we be afraid to let that Light shine on us? Love, hope, peace: that is what this Light wants to bring us and, at the same time, can give us the strength to become people of love, hope and peace ourselves.
May I wish to all of you a heartily and Merry Christmas!
