Christmas sentimentality is all around us, with "Peace on Earth" and "Joy to the World" ringing in the rafters, often met with warm acknowledgement, blithe indifference, or to those who have little cause to rejoice, with disdain or even active animosity.
Hardly surprising when the basis of the cries of peace and joy are not understood.
We Christians did something sneaky. We took a solstice season that many cultures used to rejoice in the victory of light over darkness and the beginning of the lengthening of daylight in the year and we moved a commemoration on top of it for something more profound, but still spoke to the hopes many humanity expressed with the turning of the year.
Of the royal line of David among the people of the tribe of Judah and the nation of Israel a child was miraculously conceived and born. Taking humanity from a young virgin who was both humble and righteous, yet miraculously so, a new humanity arose, and was united to the being and nature of God in the person of the Word, who we know on earth as Jesus of Nazareth.
This new nature did not participate in the inherited corruption endemic to human nature to that point. Hosted deep within Mary, this new Human was created by the power of the Holy Spirit using the old pre-corruption template still living within her DNA to accomplish one goal, the eventual destruction of the hold of Death and Corruption on human nature by creating a new nature for us that Death and Corruption learned at the Passion and Resurrection of this same Jesus they could not hold onto as they had before. This new nature is also freely offered to us all, to replace our tired old nature once we have run our course. Peace with God. Joy with life in Him. Rest from the struggle against the degeneration not just of our bodies but the same degeneration it visits on our spirits. Breaking the cycle of birth, struggle, decay, and death with a hope beyond, where the meaninglessness of existing and struggling suddenly has meaning. That God has not abandoned us, but that God actually is with us, and proved it by becoming one of us.
Thanks be to God.