Christmas Isn’t Safe, It’s Good

Advent is over soon, and we’ll dance into Christmas and enjoy the celebration! We will leave behind the minor key, shed lamenting purple and trade it in for white. Advent is the winter lent, a fast that warns of judgement and invites us to prepare for the feast of Christmas-where the minor keys are over and it’s time for major keys and major parties!

Well, kind of.  

Christmas Day is bright. Light the big white candle in the middle of the wreath, and go to church and sing for joy. White, bright, and happy. Joyously, the Christian Year lays out twelve days of this exuberant celebration. Twelve! Not one. You can relax a little, and extend the parties. You can engage kids each day with some new joy, and feast and share gifts across the days. (Though, I recommend avoiding giving a bunch birds, like in the song.) It’s grand. And they all lived happily ever after. 

Well, kind of. 

Because guess what the second day of Christmas is? It’s often called Boxing Day in countries that speak English, but that’s not on the Christian Calendar. It’s a mystery why that name came along, but many believe it had to do with well-off folks giving boxes to less well-off folks with charitable gifts inside. It’s definitely not about the sport, but boxing is less bloody than the day’s true meaning. The 26th is Saint Stephen’s Day. Oh, nice. What happened to him? Well, he was brutally murdered by stoning for bearing witness to Christ. He was a martyr, in will and deed. We have the first splatter of red on our holiday white. Things get a little more merry with the next day, Saint John’s Day. He was a martyr, church fathers said, not in deed, but in will. Wait, I thought the twelve days of Christmas were all happy feasts and fun, but we’ve been kind of bummed out so far. Surely the fourth day will be about little children and have deep meaning and goodness for us, right? 

Well, kind of. 

I must tell you that the fourth day of Christmas, December 28th, is Holy Innocents Day. It commemorates the brutal murder of the children around Bethlehem (Matt 2:16-18), as Herod seeks to kill the boy born to be king. These little ones are martyrs by deed and not will. They round out the “companions of Christ,” together with Saints Stephen and John. Very quickly, Christmas has grown serious. Deadly serious. Our festive white is more than splattered now. It is soaked in scarlet. 

“These then, whom Herod’s cruelty tore as sucklings from their mothers’ bosom, are justly hailed as ‘infant martyr flowers’; they were the Church’s first blossoms…”

St. Augustin of Hippo

If red and green are the traditional colors of Christmas, we see these small green shoots cut down, and their red blood spilled in a horrific slaughter. This is Childermas, and it brings a pall of disquiet into our revelry. The broader story is familiar, and fascinating. 

Joseph, son of Jacob, has a dream. He ends up going to Egypt. Jewish children are slaughtered, but he survives by divine superintendence. His son comes out of Egypt, crosses the sea (the Jordan in baptism), goes to the wilderness for 40 days (not 40 years), and delivers the law from a mountain. Sound familiar? Yes. Readers are meant to see the allusions all over. It’s poignant and poetic and simply the best story ever told. And it begins, in its thrilling central movement, in Bethlehem. In the end the central character ascends, not to the throne of Egypt, but to rule all nations as King of Kings. And this triumph begins at Christmas! The minor chords of Advent are gone, right? 

Well, kind of. 

The cross is coming for our young hero and, on days two and four of this festive season, Christmas is already bleeding. Our songs still reflect it. In the Coventry Carol, we have a traditional English song dating back to as early as the 15th century. The carol holds in it all the conflicting joys and griefs of the day. 

Herod the king, in his raging,
Chargèd he hath this day,
His men of might in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

Listen to it, and you will hear and feel darkness and heaviness. Not just in the words, but the music itself conveys its sharp sorrow. But in something called a Picardy third, the minor key song ends with a major. It’s a dash of hope amid the sorrow, a light in the lamentation.

Christmas, even bloody day four, is a study in contrasts. In other words, it’s real. It’s life. It’s where we live. 

We live in near-constant tension between sorrow and gladness, and have seasons (long and short) where one or the other seems to have disappeared. But the other pole always boomerangs back, sometimes in catastrophic ways. 

Christmas is so real. Far from a fantasy of make believe where we lie to our kids and ourselves about a spotless holiday of cheer, the real Christmas takes it all in, and all of us in, with its comprehensive experience. The real Christmas isn’t make believe, it makes believers. It’s entering a story that isn’t safe and clean. 

No, there is blood. 

In my calling as an author of books for children and families, I often chafe at the persistent demand among Christians for “safe and clean” books. I know what people usually mean by that. If you mean stories that aren’t profane, or grossly violent, or foul and perverse, then I am with you. But if you want an actually safe book, then you don’t want a true or good story. You don’t want anything like the Bible, or the actual Christmas story. Safe isn’t what our kids need in stories, not as they grow, and we must not lie to them. We need dangerous books for dangerous kids, kids who will face danger and darkness and—I am sorry to say it—death. 

Every child will face, probably sooner than later, terrible distress and difficulty. Some will face life-threatening illnesses, or tragedies. I feel a keen calling to serve these children, to arm and equip them for the fight they face ahead. I do not write profane or perverse or grossly violent scenes—they are tasteful and age-appropriate. But they are not safe. “Safe, who said anything about safe?” Of course Aslan isn’t safe and neither should our stories be. Mine aren’t. Because life isn’t. And Childermas shows us that Christmas isn’t either, not even for kids. 

Christmas, like Aslan, is good, not safe. 

You can celebrate, even with an inner ache. You can feast, even with a broken heart. You can mourn, even while singing a carol’s chorus. 

The best thing about the Christian Year is that it invites us to enter the story of Christ as his people. I encourage you to enter Advent, even clumsily, and Christmas, even with a broken heart. 

Even if you have sinned badly, or thought wrongly, or given in too quickly to despair, this is a story for you. May I tell you that, even if you carry the weight of being involved in the taking of an innocent life, you can find forgiveness in Jesus? It’s too true to not be good. You can, I believe, go into the kingdom ahead of older brothers like me.

The Good Spell (Gospel) is an enchantment we desperately need, one that breaks us away from being in thrall (enthralled) with the way of death. Jesus is the way, truth, and life. Immanuel leads us in the way of life, and when we walk with him, we are secure. We aren’t safe from danger, only secure in his love. No matter what. 

“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore;
but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
and no one shall make them afraid,
for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.” 

(Micah 4:3–4, ESV)

The true new world is coming. In it Christ will, as a wise man has said, make—not all new things—but all things new. Every man will sit under his (green) vine, and no one will make him afraid. And the little children will play in proximity to mankind’s oldest enemy, unafraid. 

“The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain;
for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.” 

Isaiah 11:8–9, ESV)

Christmas runs red with blood. Enter in, though it costs you your life. It cost that baby his, and by his blood we will live in peace forever.