When my wife went to Russia to teach English (before we were married), one of the things she noticed and has remarked on several times, is the birthday tradition the Russians have. When it’s your birthday, you host a party and give gifts to all your friends and family who come; you don’t expect to get any gifts on your birthday. I thought of this when I reflected that on Christmas, as we celebrate Christ’s birthday, it is we that accept the gifts of his love and sacrifice, if we will recieve them.

The matter of our giving gifts and Christmas seems to me a strange affair. We justify the buying and giving of gifts to one another under the remembrance of the gifts of the wise men to the Child Jesus. We may even speak of Christ as the “first gift of Christmas,” the gift of the Father to a world in dire need. I sometimes wonder what God thinks of all the buying and selling and giving of gifts to our friends and family. Was the gift of God given to friends and family only? No. In the words of one of my favorite hymns, “Tho craven friends betray thee, They feel thy love’s embrace; The very foes who slay thee Have access to thy grace.”

I love these lines of Robert Southwell, made famous by the setting of Benjamin Britten (in Ceremony of Carols):

This little Babe so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan’s fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak, unarmed wise,
The gates of hell he will surprise.

With tears he fights and wins the field,
His naked breast stands for a shield;
His battering shot are babish cries,
His arrows made of weeping eyes,
His martial ensigns cold and need,
And feeble flesh his warrior’s steed.

His camp is pitched in a stall,
His bulwark but a broken wall;
The crib his trench, hay stalks his stakes,
Of shepherds he his muster makes;
And thus as sure his foe to wound,
The Angels’ trumps alarum sound.

My soul with Christ join thou in fight,
Stick to the tents that he hath dight;
Within his crib is surest ward,
This little Babe will be thy guard;
If thou wilt foil thy foes with joy,
Then flit not from the heavenly boy.

We get all the war imagery throughout the poem, but in the end, what is the weapon the boy carries? Joy. The last two lines make me choke with tears every time I sing them. What better way to “foil thy foes” than by bringing them joy. That is, to me, what Christmas is truly about.

It is nice to give gifts to those we love, but I wonder if God would be more pleased if we gave our gifts to those who we have the least inclination to give them to. I wonder if he would be more pleased if I were to bless those that curse me. Would Christmas then be Christmas in deed? I think so . . . and I think I still have something to work on.

Merry Christmas!