Despite the Scrooge’s among us who annually decry the commercialization, the crassness, the blatant sentimentality of much of the Christmas preparations. It's still a magical time of year, isn't it? The daily popping out of multicolored lights at doorways and windows, the wreaths and the tinsel. The magnificent window displays on Fifth Avenue, the music in the air, the reds and golds and greens. It all evokes a tone of excitement and anticipation. As if we were about to be visited by an emissary from another world, as if it were all appropriate for the coming of the child. Of course, like typical Americans, we overdo it. Much of the music is too loud and too incessant. We're saturated with the carols long before Christmas Eve ever arrives. Much of the decorations are too big, too brassy, too tawdry, too much. But the impulse to set a fairy tale stage for Christmas is right on.

So long as we know it's not a fairy tale. Or is it? The biblical narratives which tell of the first Christmas and what went before certainly sound like it. There's Elizabeth for example, and her husband, the priest, Zechariah an elderly couple, long since having despaired of ever having a child and an angel suddenly appearing to Zechariah announcing that he will have a son whose name shall be John. When Zechariah bowled over and incredulous asked a perfectly natural and innocent question, How shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife has advanced in years, he is struck down for even questioning the angel. And then there's Mary in the very next paragraph, a young girl engaged to Joseph who was a nobody, of course, like Mary. And the angel Gabriel no less appears to Mary to tell her not only she will have a son, but the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

So what should we make of these stories of the birth of Jesus, not only the angelic announcements to Elizabeth and Mary, but all the rest of the familiar narratives: the stable and manger, the angelic chorus singing for shepherds, the mysterious star in the night sky, and the Wiseman from the east. Truth, fiction, legend, fact. Fairy stories for children or for those of us who are older seeking the lost innocence of childhood perhaps.

There are two approaches to these birth stories which are self defeating. One is to look at them and treat them as unvarnished fact, for they quite obviously are poetry, the human mind soaring to express the wonder and mystery of God coming close to Earth and to life. They were not intended to be one dimensional descriptions of matter of fact events, which is what happens when we take them literally. One of the greatest tragedies in the history of the church came about as a result of some one dimensional minds, insisting on a literal acceptance of the virgin birth as the ultimate test of Christian orthodoxy. Ridiculous really, when two of the Gospels don't even bother to mention the birth or childhood of Jesus.

Matthew and Luke on the other hand, let their mind soar in their description of the birth. To hold too fast the miraculous shell of any of these events, is to miss the essential miracle. But equally self defeating is to treat the stories as no more than pretty and appealing stories, with no inherent relation to the mystery they're trying to express for this dispenses with the mystery. And the results are all around us in mid December. The commercialism, the sentimentality, the crudity, the crassness of much of the Christmas go around. There's a “it isn't really so, but wouldn't it be nice if it were” quality that leads directly to the commercialism and sentimental excesses of much of the Christmas celebrations. And yet, and yet, there is a true instinct here. The attempt to grasp at the impossible come true. When I was younger, I used to flail away at the commercialism and the sentimentality which surfaces at this time of the year. It doesn't bother me so much any longer. There's too much pain and suffering and injustice in the world to get too upset about these excesses. Because even in the excesses, there is a tragic groping for hope, in a dark and often hopeless world.

So let it be. The world never has understood the ways of God disclosed in Christ. And the churches often enough have misunderstood and distorted it too. Why should it be any different at Christmas? So let's get back to the stories and see if we can't recapture something of the wonder and the mystery expressed through these fantastic tales. Remember, for one thing, that they were written for believers by believers. They were not intended for the outside world. Like our own family, customs and traditions of Christmas, each family developing over the years its own Christmas traditions, which may seem lovely or odd to outsiders. They carry deep meanings for those on the inside of the family.

So with the nativity stories, although their origins are as impossible to discover as the sources of a negro spiritual, we do know that they arose after the resurrection. They're in the post resurrection community of Christian believers in the fantastic glow of Christ alive the Lord of all, they wondered about the beginnings of this life, this Jesus Christ as Lord of life and death, and all creation. So as they worship together in wonder, the traditions, the stories, the poetry were formed. Take these stories out of the worship of God and Christ risen from the dead, and they are almost ridiculous. In the realm of fairy stories for children, an unmatched fodder for commercial and sentimental excesses, but in the context of the faith of the community, they express the joy, the hope, the wonder, the mystery of God coming to earth as a child.

After all, how would you describe the indescribable? Except in story, miracle, vision, poetry. So today for us the believers or half believers, or the wish we could be believers, they serve to open us up to the dimensions of mystery and wonder that always accompany the presence of God among us. At every crucial point in the New Testament records, the writers are compelled to resort to poetry and fantastic imagery. At the baptism, mysterious voices from heaven. At the death, darkness covers the earth, and earthquake shakes the foundations. At the resurrection angels and unrecognized gardener, an empty tomb. At Pentecost, mysterious tongues as a fire and sound like a rushing wind. These fantastic images, attempting to communicate the presence of the Beyond in the middle of life, are literally out of this world because that's precisely what they believed was happening to them. Someone quite literally out of this world was discerned as present here in this world. And how else could they communicate that? Even at our ordinary human level, when we want to communicate the depths of our feelings about some reality that transcends our individual solitary lives, we grope for symbols, often poetic symbols to communicate it.

So we walk in with flowers on a wedding anniversary. Flowers that will fade in a day or so. But a diamond for an engagement, some foolish even extravagant gift for a birthday of someone we care for. And the expression always carries more weight than the thing itself. So with these birth stories, literally, they're a little short of the ridiculous. But as attempts to communicate the depths, the wonder, the mystery of God touching Earth uniquely in a moment of time. They are priceless. They open us up to dimensions of mystery and wonder in life: angels, miraculous pregnancies, a star in the sky, shepherds astounded at music from heaven and consider the kindness of it. We see God in the mystery of an incarnation, as if he were shielding our eyes from the brightness of his glory. We see God obliquely as it were out of the corner of our eyes, not being able to stand the direct naked sight of him.

And because of all this precisely because of all this we're tempted to sentimentalize the Christmas story, and over sentimentalize the celebration of Christmas this year as every year and the world into which God comes. So, lest we forget 10,000 people will be murdered by handguns again this year. For every teenage marriage, more than one in four will end in divorce, cancer and heart disease are still big killers matched only by slaughter on the highways, especially on the Christmas holiday weekends ahead. Prisons seeth, ghettos smoulder, slums stink, and B52’s continued to bestow carnage on Southeast Asia.

And this was the world changing the details a bit here and there, of Elizabeth and Mary to death and disease and hopeless old age, poverty and ruthless power, human life held cheap, the whole bit. And yet, they continue to live and to hope and above all, to be open to the beating of unseen wings. Elizabeth, hopelessly old, is given a child. Mary, hopelessly young and ordinary and unmarried, the expectant mother of a child to be called holy. Because they were open to the wonder in the mystery of God who can do marvelous things, even in a world like theirs, which is a world like ours. So here we are two weeks away from Christmas. And the excitement and anticipation grows for most of us. We want peace, God, how we want peace, and the reign of love, and God's coming in his power and in his love into the world. And so, despite all the excesses of the Christmas preparations and celebrations, too much music and too loud, decorations too garish and too tawdry. And yet, how else can we express the hopes and fears of all the years? Unless we hang out ridiculous little colored lights, light candles in the windows, put up holly and mistletoe, recreate the fantastic scenes of shepherds and a stable, hoping and believing even if only half believing that there is a beyond come to live with us, share our life and conquer its death. It's our response to the beating of unseen wings, too. How else?