The Unbreakable Christmas Treasure

When it comes to Christmas, I’m a true believer.

I believe in celebrating the arrival of Jesus, the Savior of the World, into the human experience. I love to share in December’s four weeks of Advent and remember the miraculous events that surrounded the birth of Christ. Beautiful strains of classical Christmas music stir my heart with their messages of hope and joy.

I also believe in celebrating love, faith and family through traditional Christmas activities that are ever-present during this season  – home decorating, gift-giving, Christmas parties, candy canes, and of course those comforting beverages that are warmed with just the right holiday spirits.

Despite my Christmas zeal, I sometimes regret that many of these activities interfere with my desire to draw closer to God during what should be a time of peace and spiritual reflection. The annual transformation of my home into a suburban Hallmark store is a perfect example. Fourteen storage bins of Christmas décor live in the attic over my garage. Just getting them into my living room requires a step ladder and a minimum of three people—one in the attic (preferably someone who is not afraid of spiders), one on the ladder, and one who shoulders the boxes into the house.

In the midst of this red-green-sparkly mess is one box that’s especially dear to me.

It’s labeled “FRAGILE” in bold, black marker, which means handling this box should matter to you, even if you don’t know its contents. What’s inside is an elaborate ceramic nativity scene and some other treasured Christmas novelties that always make me catch my breath then sigh with joy when I unwrap them from their well-worn tissue each year.

The ceramic nativity scene was a Christmas tradition for over twenty years. When my now-adult children were at home, I fervently attempted to draw them in to my annual deck-the-halls frenzy. One of my favorite memories was when I asked my ten-year-old son to assemble all the pieces of the nativity into the Biblical Christmas scene. Now my children were well-versed in an “oh come let us adore him” understanding of Jesus’ birth, but what I found when I followed up on his work was a motley crowd of Christmas characters encircling the bewildered baby Jesus in what appeared to be a football huddle.

“What’s this? The NFL?” I asked. Erik simply answered that I didn’t tell him how to arrange them, and his way made perfect sense.

Fast forward twelve years and you have Erik on the step ladder handing off boxes from me to his Dad. Maybe it was a long-buried resentment from my criticism of his efforts, a Ghost of Christmas Past, that caused that precious “FRAGILE” box to drop from the top of an eight-foot ladder onto the concrete floor. Maybe it was a divine hand of severe grace that toppled that box. We may never know. But when I unpacked it later that day, nearly every single tissue wrapped item jangled with the sound of broken glass as I lifted them from the box. A glorious angel with shattered wings, headless wise men, a shepherd with no feet holding a broken lamb—all in ceramic splinters.

But what caused me to choke with sobs were not the manger characters, but rather two little ceramic carolers from a long-ago childhood that were a legacy from my mother who passed away several years before. I loved those carolers. As a child they filled my little-girl hands as I lovingly traced their fur cloaks and flowing hair, wishing I could be a pretty caroler like them. As an adult, they were a memory of happier times when Christmas was magic and anything could happen if you believed in it hard enough.

Swabbing away tears, I continued to unpack the remains of the box which miraculously yielded an unscathed holy family including Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Even his ceramic manger made it.

As I cradled the manger in my hand, a powerful moment of insight gripped my thoughts.

While nearly everything else in the box was shattered beyond repair, the essential characters of the Great Story remained unharmed. Wasn’t this exactly as it should be? Isn’t this how it happened two millennia ago? A long and exhausting journey to a place far from home. An impoverished birth into an unwelcome setting. No human carolers were on hand to sing to him. Hunted by a blood-thirsty ruler, the holy family fled to Egypt to avoid the Slaughter of the Innocents.

God’s purposes remain, and no amount of human destruction can thwart his intention towards us. Against impossible odds, Jesus came to our world to live among us. To be our Savior. Emmanuel. God with us.

My vision of the picture perfect Christmas dimmed. What I had lost, what I still yearned for, the memories and desires symbolized by these shards of shattered glass, were not destroyed. If everything else were stripped away, I would still have Jesus. His indestructible presence in my heart wasn’t built  upon any of these fragile things, beautiful though they were. Jesus came into the world to reveal God’s eternal love for me, for all of us.

There was nothing I needed to prepare except the readiness of my heart to receive him there.