In the beginning was the Word… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:1, 14)
In Surprised By Joy, C. S. Lewis writes of his conversion to the Christian faith. He spent his youth haunted by “Joy,” an “enormous bliss” (to quote Milton), a bittersweet stab, “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction,” something that “makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.” He tasted it in memories, in Wagner, in vast landscapes and fairy tales and Norse mythology. He pursued it, sought to manufacture it, tried to capture it when he found it. But it was always just a fleeting taste that slipped away as soon as he noticed it.
He came to realize that the thrill, the Joy he pursued was not so much a thing in itself, as an effect of Something Else. “Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else—whether a distant mountain, or the past, or the gods of Asgard—does the ‘thrill’ arise. It is a by-product. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer.” (The Joy disappears the moment you turn from the “Something Else” in order to grasp at it.)
Ultimately Lewis discovered that he didn’t want Joy, per se, but that the Joy he thought he wanted was itself the desire for God. “It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer.” It took a paradigm shift, a change in perspective, finally to look away from the pointer toward that to which it pointed. And so Lewis found God. And he knew that, in fact, God was the One who had led him to this discovery.
We need the same paradigm shift when we consider Christmas. We want our feelings stirred. We want an almost magical sense of belonging, of warmth, sparkling delights, feasting, merriment, lights pushing against the darkness… of Home. Our longing is nostalgic, but often reflects more of our imagination than our experience or memory. It’s like a homesickness for a Home we’ve never been. We decorate and prepare and try to create an atmosphere where these feelings might come true. We would bottle it all if we could. But this longing is characterized by the deep sense that we don’t actually have what we’re trying to capture. We long for the Home we lack.
Here is the change in perspective: the real force of Christmas is that our longings no longer tell us what we lack; they tell us what we have in Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God, the Word who stands at the beginning and the end of all things, the Word who came to us. In him God speaks to us, and his message is peace, belonging, joy, Home. Our longings for these things are “a pointer to something other and outer,” and that Other, that Something Else, is Jesus Christ. And we have him, because of Christmas, because he came and gave himself to us. We have him. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
The Desire of Nations has already come. Because of the Incarnation of the Son of God, because of his initiative to invade this world and your life with his grace, when you consider Christmas you may consider all your deepest longings already met and guaranteed. When you decorate with lights, you can celebrate the Light of the World who already shines in the darkness. When you feast, you can be satisfied by the Bread of Life who already gave himself for your immortal soul. When you gather by the fire, you can rest and delight in knowing you have a true Home, eternal in the heavens, prepared by Christ, with God as your Father. These things are all true, whether or not you have an earthly home or an earthly family or an earthly feast this Christmas season. Christmas means, in spite of all things seemingly to the contrary, Home has come to you forever in the Person of Jesus Christ.
