The Heavy Lid of Christmas

A truth we can not edit,
A Child we can't abort,
A song, a sight, an angel,
An incredible report.
Ages never made it brittle,
Love never made it weak,
We never did it justice
By the gifts we thought to seek.
And those who would undo it
Know not to just undo:
To rip to shreds an old thing,
Knit it into something new.
We bear the old things lightly
The new things bear us down,
The holiday’s a heavy lid,
The holy day, a crown.

For thousands of years the simple truth at the heart of this season has been a comfort to the oppressed and a haunting threat to the oppressor. People light candles and go to worship because a king greater than any other king has come into the world. King Jesus and the people who follow him know a secret about the world and what this world is coming to that and that secret makes them jolly. It gives them power, consolation, and even mirth. 
The powers of darkness that were put on notice by Jesus' arrival have always resisted the celebration of it. And make no mistake: if those powers could prevent us celebrating, they would. But what they can not prevent they are pleased to corrupt.
They subvert and corrupt the season by making it about commercial things and demanding expectations, until the very celebration of the Great Liberator becomes another shackle for the chaining up of the harried masses. We reject it.
Jesus came to make us free and in perfect freedom we will worship him and take joy, fierce joy, in the day of his incarnation.

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