POETS AND DREAMERS often refer to an age of innocence that we have lost. Christmas celebrates innocence in its most perfect sense. The word is most commonly used as a synonym for naivety, or as a way of describing exoneration in the criminal courts.
In fact we spend so much time deluding each other and litigating against each other that there is no time to consider luxuries such as innocence. The story of a child born 2,000 years ago rekindles that idea for those exhausted idealists who still dare to hope in human nature, love and salvation.
The simple story of a child born in poverty and love is the story of every child that has ever come into the world. The only treasure that a new-born needs is the love of a mother and father. The designer booties and silver spoons that have replaced the gold, frankincense and myrrh of yore are of little value or concern to the infant. The child only asks to be held, sheltered, nursed and fed by its parents – it was from their love that the child was born, under their guidance the child will learn to love and eventually pass on a loving tradition to the children that will later be born of their love.
That’s the ideal, but reality can often fall short of expectations. The world can be a cruel place and all too often we are reminded that life is tough. People cheat and undermine each other. Dreadful sins and abominations rise and leave a trail of destruction behind them. Far too often our newspapers and televisions blare out the tragedy of human living and many an Old Testament prophet would have had a field day in our time. But the problem of the prophet was always that he (or she) regularly called everybody back to some imagined Golden Age that never was. The only Golden Age that has ever existed is the Age of Innocence and that is now!
The story of the child in the manger is a reminder that in every age we are all born innocent. The image of the child in the manger is found in the birth of every child on this earth. The message of the child in the manger is that peace awaits the one who strives to keep that innocence.
His short life of joys, sorrows and glories can still rally millions of hearts to the cause of goodness. It is a hard and radical call at times. There are some people we believe cannot change; that they have ventured so far from first innocence that a return is impossible.
The sad but fascinating story of Adam and Eve and the first fall is gently answered for the first time in Christ’s birth. It is true that human sinfulness has grown since we first discovered knowledge. The human answer has always been to rally us back to a time when institutions worked, people lived in safety and everything was rosy in the garden. Little Bethlehem calls us beyond that mob.
Quietly she affirms that every single one of us, believers or unbelievers alike, began life in an echo to love and a sharing in innocence. When her child learns to speak he will speak a lot about mercy. He will not call us to recreate the past. He will ask us to seek his innocence in the eyes of an enemy. At the moment that Divinity takes
human nature, human nature takes Divinity. That sharing, which Christians celebrate at Christmas, is a sharing in a perfection that we call innocence and nobody is precluded from its dignity. That’s the reason to put the adjective Happy before the word Christmas – Happy Christmas!