Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Crossing the Threshold of Christmas


Christmas is about to come down the chimney. With time on my hands lately, I’ve been thinking about it. About the improbability of it, among other things.

Christmas is really not something you think too much about. It’s a time of action, of shopping, of parties, of joy to the world, more shopping, family visitations, giving and getting, cooking and eating, especially chocolate, and a lot of Bing Crosby’s Silent Night. Things like that make up Christmas. And if you think too much about it, you would cancel pretty much all of it!

One of my favorite authors, Harry Crews, RIP, once wrote: “Knowing, like thinking accomplishes nothing. Thinking always leaves you precisely where you were. You couldn’t think your way out of a gas chamber or across barbed wire. The act is the thing.” Christmas is like that…it’s just not logical. The finite mind grapples with it. It must simply be accepted and acted upon with stone-blind faith. Maybe not knowing is the better choice.

So I decide to get back to the Christian’s concept, or faith, if you will, of the origins of Christmas. You can read it for yourself in Matthew, chapters 1 and 2. It’s a real stretch to believe in virginal conception. But that’s the threshold we have to cross to get to the rest. Without that, it all breaks down in the spray of a super nova, falling out of a black, impenetrable sky.

Go sit beside your fire, ponder the possibilities of an immaculate conception, the incredulity of it all, and see where it takes you. Around in circles, that’s where. Yet, without it, Christmas is not born. So, it has to be acted on as being a fact, as strange as it may seem. That’s faith, always has been, always will be…a notional hypothesis, a profundity, improbable, un-provable and above all incredible.

Of course, a virgin birth is just one set of steps in crossing the threshold of Christmas. There are the appearances of angels in dreams, encouraging this, warning that. And strangely, we’re asked to believe their advice…talk about blind faith. Today we are offered so many competing ‘celebrity stars’ to follow that we are confused. I’m pretty sure following any of these stars will end in a black hole.

Then there’s the journey of the wise men. Read it. They traveled through the deserts, following a star to locate a baby that had been prophesied for centuries as the redeeming King of the Jews. Celestial navigation has been around for centuries, but this is the only instance of it leading to a baby in a manger. Think about it, night after cold night, in a desert, following a star to who-knows-where. What did they have that we don’t? They weren’t thinking…they were acting. They had faith. Quite a threshold to cross, huh?

Now, my wife never much subscribed to the notion of ‘wise men.’ Every Christmas she manifests this belief in an embroidered hand towel placed in the guest restroom. It reads: “Three Wise Women would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts, and there really would be Peace on Earth.” I leave this to you to contemplate while sipping on your eggnog.

Add to all this the political intrigue of King Herod, a brutal, stalking arch-enemy of all that might threaten to usurp his kingdom. Viola, you have a story so full of improbabilities even the new Sherlock Holmes couldn’t untangle this Gordian knot.

As children, we debated endlessly the reality, and improbability, of a jolly, fat man in a red suit who mushed reindeer and descended chimneys, delivering gifts to all good little boys and girls. Always we heard, “They receive who believe.” We didn’t get it, didn’t question it, but only believed. We were never disappointed…until we figured it all out. Ah, the immense wonder of children!

These are some steps leading to the threshold of Christmas. Every year we have opportunity to ascend them, and cross again into that heavenly mansion of mystery, where miracles never cease. But we get there, not by thinking, but by faith.

This year we will have another opportunity to cross the Christmas threshold. I hope you will join me in the child-like wonder of it all…they receive who believe.

Then shall our voices ring together with the Heavenly Chorus, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the Newborn King!”

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Bud Hearn
December 20, 2012


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