The Fragility of Christmas

The verbal ornaments of Christmas are words like hope, peace, joy, and love – nice ideas to sing in carols, but are they really practical? Do these words put food on the table or keep the house warm? Can they prevent gun violence or solve international diplomatic crises? I’m reminded of the Will Ferrell movie Elf where Buddy’s dad Walter, a bigwig at children’s book publisher, is told “we're gonna post a minus eight for this quarter!” His boss tells him “We're gonna ship a new book the first quarter. I'm gonna be back in town on the 24th.” Walter tells him that the 24^th is Christmas Eve is the 24^th, but his boss isn’t fazed. The world must march on, Christmas Eve or not. Maybe the fuzzy feelings of Christmas are too fragile for the real world.

But draw your attention to the example of the Chickadee. In her book All Creation Waits, Gayle Boss tells a story of a different wild animal for each day of Advent – and day 4 is the chickadee. She writes, “Half-an-ounce of feather, flesh, and hollow bone, a chickadee in your palm would feel like the weight of two nickels…it loses heat quickly. So the little bird must eat continually during winter’s short daylight hours to stoke its metabolic fires for the long night to come.” The chickadee survives by using its tiny brain to map out a wide territory of seed storage locations, using them all throughout the winter to survive. Its survival depends on the answer to the question “Will the seed map be gone before the ice and snow?”

These tiny birds survive in large numbers every winter despite odds stacked against them. Winter after winter threatens each two-nickel bundle of feathers, but the wind and cold cannot defeat them. And maybe if they can survive, year after year, then perhaps hope, peace, joy, and love might also survive. Maybe these fragile Christmas concepts stand a chance in the maelstrom of our daily living.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows

Matthew 10:29-31.