Maybe the reason I like the movie so much is that it turns on its head my traditional understanding of how Christmas is supposed to be; it takes that Hallmark card version of the Christmas holiday, the one we all hope for, where all is calm and all is bright, and gives it a big kick right in the rear end. And not only that, in doing so I think it comes closer to the truth of what Christmas is really all about.
The movie I am talking about dates from 1983, and has since becomes something of a Christmas season classic, right up there with “Miracle on 34th Street”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and the like. Its name is “A Christmas Story.” For those who have not seen it, a quick summary: Set in a small town in the late 1940s, it is almost Christmas, and little Ralphie Parker, a 6th grader at best, has his heart set on a Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle. When he tells his mom of this Christmas wish, with a gasp of horror she dismisses the idea, saying "You'll shoot your eye out" -- which is the same response every adult has to subsequent requests, including the Santa at the mall. While the main plot revolves around Ralphie’s hope of getting the air rifle, what makes the film really interesting is the way everything in the Parker family falls apart as they try to get ready for Christmas. Ralphie’s father wins an award, which turns out to be a gaudy table lamp in the form of a woman’s shapely leg, which Ralphie’s mother abhors and “accidently” breaks; the furnace keeps breaking down; the car gets a flat on the way to buy the Christmas tree; Ralphie says the “f-word” in front of his father with predictable consequences; the neighbor’s dogs rampage through the kitchen and eat the Christmas turkey; and the movie ends with the family celebrating Christmas at the only place open in town, a Chinese restaurant.
Many of the Christmas cards we get each year proclaim “Peace”, which is fitting since we know Jesus as the Prince of Peace, but in “A Christmas Story”, Christmas comes in with anything but peace – instead, Christmas comes in with chaos and disruption, and the family’s settled, everyday life is turned upside down. Looking back on that time, the narrator, now an adult, says, “Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”
But isn’t that the real story of the first Christmas?
Look at Joseph. Life was going quite smoothly, thank you very much. A young man making his way in the world, so much so that he was in position to get married and move out of the family house. A favorable match is made with an attractive local girl, and they are engaged to be married. He likely has found a house, made plans to make some improvements, is looking forward to the wedding night. And then his fiancée tells Joseph that she is carrying a child, a child that cannot be and is not his. He is, of course, devastated, but figures that he can salvage his situation by quietly breaking off the engagement and getting on with his life. But then God breaks in, a heavenly messenger comes to Joseph in a dream, telling him that the child was of the Holy Spirit, and that he ought not be afraid to take Mary as his wife.
When Christmas comes to Joseph, it does not bring a sweetened, easier life – it brings disruption, it brings change, it turns his world upside down.
When Christmas came to Mary, it does not make life easier, it makes it more complicated, more difficult, more challenging, it turns her world upside down.
No wonder their reaction, when each are told by an angel of the impending birth, is one of fear.
Six months later Jesus is born, not at a local hospital, not at their home, not at the parents’ home – but in far off Bethlehem
In the Incarnation, in God becoming one of us, in taking on our human flesh and our common lot, God began to set things right with us, to fix what we so badly messed up and were unable to fix on our own. But it seems that could not be done in a business-as-usual, all-is-calm-all-is-bright fashion – it took some serious disruption, some serious chaos, some serious I’m-going-to-turn-your-world-upside-down stuff. The gifts of God which we celebrate on the Sundays of Advent – hope, peace, joy, and love – they come through God’s disrupting intrusion.
I sometimes wonder if we have Christmas all wrong. At Christmas, we seem to want to go back, back to the good old days, back to the days of Currier and Ives prints of sleighs jingling their way through a quiet snowfall, back to remembered cozy times around the fireplace, back to the happiness of children attacking a pile of presents jumbled under a gaily decorated Christmas tree, back to an imagined healthy, happy, peaceful nuclear family sharing a feast together.
And yet the original Christmas story at heart wants to break us of this addiction of imagining that safety and salvation lie in going back to some sort of mythic haven, in pretending that everything is really all calm and bright. The original Christmas story tells us that God’s salvation for us comes to disrupt our world and to call us to get up off our duffs and take our part in God’s sweeping, world-changing purposes. The original Christmas story tells us to not be afraid to say yes to God, to take on what the world might consider to be too risky, to stand up for someone in need, to bear love into the world.
What would it mean if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down?
What would it mean if it turned on its head our understanding of Christmas as a time to give in to the consumer culture which tells us to spend ourselves into debt for months so that we can buy others lots and lots of gifts, while at the same time we live in a culture awash in more stuff than we know what to do with?
At a time when much of the world suffers from lack of safe water and malnutrition, from diseases such as cholera and typhoid and typhus and intestinal parasites, while we on the other hand suffer from diseases of affluence like obesity and lung cancer and alcoholism and drug addiction, what would it mean if we let Christmas turn our world upside down?
Could we imagine saying to our loved ones, “This Christmas, one of my gifts to you is a contribution to the Heifer Project, so a family in Central America might have a flock of geese, or impoverished farmers in Arkansas
Could you imagine, amidst all the giving that you will do, adding one more, a gift to your local church, to support its ministries in a time when we have a severe budget shortfall?
Can you imagine saying to your family, “Please honor me this year by giving a gift to charity in my name”?
What would it mean if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down, but not only in how we think about gift giving, but also in how we think about the ways in which God might be working in our lives?
What would it mean if, when disaster strikes, when we lose a spouse or an unforeseen illness strikes or that pink notice lands in your in-box at work or you have up and move from your single-family home to a retirement community or an assisted living facility, you could imagine that this disruption was not the end of the world, but the beginning of God’s new start in your life? How often it is that, when our ordinary routine is upset, when our settled expectations of how life should be are upended, that our reaction is to say, “God, where are you?!” What we mean is, “God, why have you abandoned me?” Maybe we have the right question, but the wrong assumption behind it, that God’s desire for our lives is that same as ours! But what if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down, and could imagine that this disruption, this time of chaos, might be the birth pangs of something unexpected and wonderful?
This is Ralphie’s wisdom from “A Christmas Story”: “Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”
Friends, I believe the challenge for us is to imagine the Christmas story, the gospel Christmas story, as our story, and to imagine responding to it, in all its awesome and even fearful potential, in trust, as did Joseph, and in faith, as did Mary. Our challenge is to look at that disruption square in the face, and then say, as did Mary, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”
Long ago, Christmas turned their world upside down. My prayer for you is that this year, you will let Christmas turn your world upside down as well.
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