The Other Side Of Christmas

While it’s true that every cloud has a silver lining, it’s equally true that when you unwrap that silver lining there’s very often a cloud inside it.  Our sorrowful mysteries have their joyful side—it’s why we call that awful day on which our Lord was crucified “Good Friday”, signifying the day on which we were delivered from eternal death.  And likewise our joyful mysteries have their dark and unhappy side—witness the three days of dread and anguish as our blessed Lady and St. Joseph seek in vain for the Christ Child before they finally find him in the Temple.

As we approach with rejoicing that blessed day of Christmas, with its beautiful manger scene of Mary and Joseph kneeling beside the Christ Child in his manger, the shepherds watching their flocks by night and the herald angels singing their “Glory to God in the highest”, the little town of Bethlehem bathed in the light of a new star, shining even brighter from the Light of the World now dwelling there—as we welcome the Son of God incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, we should pause for a second or two and consider the other side of Christmas…

While this darker side of the feastday may fill us with trepidation, and while we shy away from such shadowy thoughts, especially on such a day of rejoicing, we are never very far away from another Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, that day of wrath on which Christ shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead.  Like it or not, this is part of the Christmas message, and no matter how hard we try, it creeps into our thoughts like the mythical Grinch to rob us of our tidings of comfort and joy.  However, such thoughts are, quite frankly, unnecessary.  While we make sure our children do their best to remain on Santa’s “nice list”, we’re not always so picky when it comes to our own behavior.  If only we could keep our own names in the Book of Life we wouldn’t have to worry about death and judgment.  Instead, we would actually look forward to these last things with as much anticipation and excitement as a little child going to sleep on Christmas Eve as visions of sugar plums dance in our heads.

This is the other message of Christmas, one to which we can apply the words of the herald angels just as surely as they sang them to the shepherds that first Christmas Eve.  “On earth peace to men of good will.”  If we are indeed of good will, we will find that Christmas peace, not just in the happy memories of long-ago Bethlehem, but in the joyful expectation of that eternal reward brought to us by our Saviour on that day, a reward that is the fruit of his birth—and let’s not forget, of his death!  “And then,” says St. Paul in today’s Epistle, “shall every man have praise of God.”