El

Cousin: “Christ the Redeemer? What’s he redeeming, coupons?”

Me, with probably the most disappointed facial expression I’ve ever given her: “Humanity”

Cousin: “Oh….”

"I hear there is a war on Christmas. In fact, I hear it every year, but I have yet to see armed men using Christmas trees for target practise in the park. Very disappointing to find nothing but families with children walking around enjoying the lights and ornaments and not a grenade to be seen. Perhaps there is a War on Christmas, as in there are wars going on, and they don't stop for Christmas Day. The war in Iraq, Darfur, Somalia... I could go on. And other wars, too. The eternal war between good and evil. The cold-shoulder war between left and right in this country. The wars in our own lives and hearts. The war against our addictions, our illnesses, our rivals, ourselves. It may come as a shock to you that I have a habit of antagonising those who are close to me...

"And once, a long time ago, I was in a cold war with someone I loved. This someone had the kindness to remind me of the Christmas Truce on 1914, when all through the trenches, peace broke out between the French, British, and German soldiers who just the day before had been shooting at each other. We see the photographs reprinted in newspapers - soldiers lighting each other's cigarettes, playing soccer, talking. The Christmas Truce also allowed each side to safely recover fallen comrades. The friend who reminded me of the 1914 truce said something that's always stayed with me. 'Too bad it isn't Christmas everyday. Then nobody would ever have to fight stupid wars.'

"The more I think about the Christmas Truce of 1914, the more baffled I am by it. How did it happen? I've counselled people who haven't seen close blood relatives in years because of a fight over politics or religion - a war merely of words - at some long-ago Thanksgiving dinner. But these men in the trenches had been killing each other - literally shooting at each other for months - when the truce broke out. How did it happen? Why? I may have a theory. Winter is cold, and nowhere is winter colder than a trench in Europe. The soldiers were as cold as they'd ever been and ever would be. But Christmas is warm. It's hot cider and candles and the Yule log burning and too many people packed into a church.

"The soldiers were blocks of ice by the time Christmas came around. And we know what happens when you drop ice into a hot drink? The ice cracks. This phenomenon is known as 'differential expansion.' The inner core of the ice cube stays cold and solid, but the outside of it that comes in contact with the heat, expands. And just like that, it cracks apart. Christmas came to those ice-cold soldiers, poured over them, and they cracked wide open. Maybe that's why Christmas hurts so many of us. We feel that fissure, that broken place where Christmas has cracked us apart. I think that's why at Christmas we feel so much of the cold, dark things inside us coming out - the anger at another year gone already, so much time wasted with so little to show for it, the loneliness of wanting to spend Christmas with some one who doesn't want to spend Christmas with you. Or worse, the feeling we've simply been forgotten.

"But... perhaps there's some good that comes out of that crack Christmas knocks in our hearts. It makes a place where the good things can slip inside, the bright, warm things. The candlelight. The music. Old friends dropping by unannounced. And more... love? Hope? Forgiveness? It makes sense that Christmas makes us want to forgive each other, if only for a day. For Christmas, you see, is ultimately an act of forgiveness. In the beginning, God gave us all a gift - the world. And the world was pristine and beautiful and pure, and we broke it five minutes after he gave it to us. We were children in a China shop, and we broke the world without realizing we were breaking ourselves along with it. And yet instead of striking us all off His Christmas shopping list for eternity - as I would have done - God gave us another gift. In fact, God gave us the most precious thing in the universe to Him - His newborn son. And that gift, the gift of His child, couldn't be broken. Although we tried, didn't we? We did try.

"However... there is good news. God gave us His son in an act of extravagant forgiveness. And we did try to break Him, and it looked like we had succeeded for a few days. Oh, but we didn't break Him. Because Jesus is love and love, real love, can be dropped and kicked and knocked around, whipped and beaten and nailed to a cross. And yet it lives. True love lives and it lives forever. So as I wish you all a merry Christmas, I also wish our Lord a happy birthday, for He is reborn every year in our hearts. And that is the meaning of Emmanuel - God is with us. Christmas is with us as is the forgiveness it carries in its open hands."

I wrote an 11,000 word Christmas story in four days, so please at lease pretend to read it.