Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home. – G.K. Chesterton
December 25 — Christmas Day! “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.” So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven’s blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much merriment and diversion, and the Boers profited by the cessation of the shell fire to shovel away at their trenches. In the evening there were Christmas dinners in our camp—roast beef, plum pudding, a quart of beer for everyone, and various smoking concerts afterwards. I cannot describe the enemy’s festivities. – Winston Churchill, “London to Ladysmith via Pretoria”, 1900
The voluntarist-nominalist movement of the fourteenth century has more to its credit than the fostering of scientific thought. It was the philosophical inspiration also for the Reformers. It gave them the tools to attack the Thomist epistemology which allowed that in principle (and in fairness to St. Thomas one should stress the phrase ‘in principle’), natural man might perceive natural values and natural meanings without the aid of revelation. To this the Reformers reacted with a powerful and authentically Christian stress on the decisiveness of revelation. But revelation for them was really a Christological matter: to question the need of revelation was to question the need of Christ. The meaning of the world, the ‘Logos’, came down at Christmas; the man without Christmas is a man without meaning. The bestowal of meaning is part of God’s saving work in history, for in nature man can discern no meaning. – Oliver O’Donovan, “The Natural Ethic”, in Essays in Evangelical Social Ethics, 1983
Charles Lamb, in one of his most delightful essays, sets high worth on the observance of All Fools’ Day, because says to a man: “You look wise. Pray correct that error!” Christmas brings the universal message to men: “You look important and great; pray correct that error.” It overturns the false standards that have blinded the vision and sets up again in their rightful magnitude those childlike qualities by which we enter the Kingdom. Christmas turns things inside out. Under the spell of the Christmas story the locked up treasures of kindliness and sympathy come from the inside of the heart, where they are often kept imprisoned, to the outside of actual expression in deed and word. . . It is the vision of the Christ-child which enables all men to get at the best treasures of their lives and offer them for use. – Halford Edward Luccock, “Everything Upside Down”, 1915