This is the time of year when, increasingly, people seem to have one of two choices in Christmas music: you can walk through the stores and restaurants enduring 87 versions of “Last Christmas” ...
... or you can sit in church or listen to Christian radio listening to 87 versions of “Mary, Did You Know?”
Remember when Christmas time was a melodious cornucopia of every kind of music? We played it classical, we played it jazzy, we played it country, rock, holly-jolly and holy, holy. We rested merry gentlemen, we played our drums for Him, we sang of Santa going and coming, we saw moms kissing Kringles, we heard night winds talk to little lambs. We wanted hippopotamuses, for heaven’s sake.
No more. The entirety of Christmas music seems reduced to a teenager’s bitter Yuletide betrayal and the nagging question of Mary’s prophetic abilities. If Manhattan Steamroller would record a single featuring those two songs on its “a” and “b” sides, sales could pay off the national debt in a week.
Personally, I pine for the Tik-Tok set to grow up and get over it, and my curiosity has long since been satisfied that Mary knew some things, wondered about others, and was often as oblivious as the rest of us who love Jesus but tend to underestimate Him.
My Christmas inquisitions cover broader ground.
I do wonder how it was for Mary, living in a too-small town where everyone surely took it for granted that her out-of-wedlock pregnancy happened in the usual way. Did the neighbors look on Joseph with pity, or contempt? Did Mary go with him to Bethlehem to be with him when the baby came – or to get away from the brutal, endless gossip?
What did she and Joseph feel for each other? What did they talk about, lying in their blankets, gazing up through sleepy eyes at that odd, bright star shining down on the winding road to Bethlehem?
I wonder if the innkeeper was really a callous villain, banishing them to the barn or the cave and the cold night air. Or was he just an overworked businessman, doing what little he could for two more hard-pressed souls blocked at his crowded doorway?
I wonder – did the angels speak, shout, or sing? What does a sky teeming with them look like? Did the sheep notice? Who opted to stay with them, in the dazed silence that followed that one-of-a-kind performance? Was it his choice – or did he draw the short straw?
I wonder about the shepherds who made it to the manger, then ran home in the wee hours, telling everyone the wonders of angels and the newborn in the hay trough. Did their newfound faith sustain them, when the soldiers came, later, looking for that baby? Did the wonder they carried, remembering that holy night, survive the execution of their children in His place?
I wonder if Joseph dreamed – for the rest of his life – as richly as he did in those days of hard choices and high adventure? I wonder what he and Mary saw that long night, looking over the manger into each other’s eyes.
I wonder how many magi really made it to see the Child, and how long that great star shimmered in the sky. I wonder who translated for the Persian princes as they shared their epic saga with the curious Hebrew couple?
I wonder if Anna and Simeon knew each other. And what might their conversation have been like – both understanding to the marrow of their ancient bones something of God that only a handful of others could fathom … much less believe?
I wonder if Joseph and Mary had time to learn the Egyptian language, and how a few years in that foreign culture affected how they raised their son. Did He remember anything of those days, in years to come?
I wonder what it’s like to know that all the forces and resources of a powerful king are focused on finding and destroying you, and your beloved, and your child. How did it feel, making do in a faraway land, among strangers … waiting, waiting for a sovereign to die?
What was it like to come home again, after so many years? So much time lost, away from family and friends. How long did it take for the gossip to start up again? And how did the growing Boy process the taunts and slurs he heard about his mom and dad?
It’s such a pretty little story. But like every story, from every account of any actual happening, it involves a thousand unknowns … as lived out, perceived, remembered, decided, in the blindness of the moment, by nameless people on the blunt, hard, receiving end of history.
From George Bailey’s great tirade:
“Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about … they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so.”
My Father didn’t think so, either, looking down on the rabble who would raise His Son, and the rabble who would brush up against Him, in those hallowed, harrowing moments of the starlit new Beginning.
What tender graces did He reserve for them … those remarkable, ordinary souls?
What did they know?
I wonder.
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