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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us December 24, 2005 Scott Dalgarno What do we really want for Christmas? Christianity is totally unique among the world’s religions because the entrance to it has such a very small door. Those of you who have enjoyed “The Lord of the Rings” movies, think of the tall wizard, Gandalf, coming to visit his Hobbit friend Bilbo Baggins at Bag-end. The little circle of a door, nestled in the hillside. He had to crouch way down, just like God, who first crouched down in the manger, so we could all know that we could do it too. That’s important because as we get older our eyes become less elastic, the colors not as vivid; our sense of wonder loses its edge, and we don’t even notice. And Christmas comes along and tries very hard to jump start our senses. Our sense of wonder. The wonderland of lights that fills this town, the music of the season, the stories, are all meant to do just that. All this in the face of a world that says that the only way to get smart, and become wise is to grow up, become big, throw your weight around, be self-sufficient, detached, objective ... old. But at the heart of the Christian faith is the story that the only way to become wise is to shrink down, be small, return to a state of vulnerability, embrace dependency. The baby in the stable, in fact, reminds us that we are, none of us, as big and smart and self-sufficient and liberated as we like to think we are. That baby grew up and told those who would be his disciples, “If you want to be with me, you have to turn and become like a little child again.” Child-likeness: the acid-test for Christianity. Maybe life as we live it is all backward. Look at it this way: Life is tough, it takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get at the end of it? A watch, a pat on the back from the boss. I think that the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get that unpleasantness out of the way. Then you live twenty years in a retirement home. When you get so young that you start taking the stairs again, and skip one or two of them going up, they kick you out. Then you get your gold watch; you need it now because it’s time to go to work. You work 40 years until you are young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college because, with a whole life of experience behind you, you’re ready to really learn something important, and you have as much to offer as you will take away. Then you go to high school when you are really ready for it. They are not going to do a number on you this time. Then you go to grade school and every day is full of fun; you have no responsibilities. You sleep longer every day. You become a baby and you wind up as a gleam in somebody’s eye. In the first church I pastored someone objected to the fact that I offered Communion to little children. “Don’t you think they ought to wait until they are older and understand it better?” I was asked. I explained it as deferentially as I could but what I was thinking was this: the feast of Jesus should only be served to young children — because you can never be too small to know what it really means. What is it we want for Christmas? I mean, what is it we really want for Christmas? Chia pets, the latest George Forman appliance, an X-Box? What is it we really, really, want? Robert Fulghum put his finger on it years ago and no one has improved on it: We want to be five years old again for an hour. We want to laugh a lot, and cry a lot. We want to be picked up and rocked to sleep in someone’s arms. And we want to be carried up to bed just one more time. Christmas, at it’s best, is all about reclaiming that in some wonderfully temporary way. It’s all about a child of long ago and far away. And it’s about the child of now, who is still waiting behind the door of our hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy. Merry Christmas, everybody. Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland’s First Presbyterian Church. 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