Editorials
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
A fragile gift In the midst of a precarious peace, Christmas is upon us once again. At least for the moment, the world is dressed in gaudy colors, topped off with silver and gold tinsel and...
...At least for the moment, the world is dressed in gaudy colors, topped off with silver and gold tinsel and blinking lights...
...Even God, it seems, was born into a family...
...Household piety, instinct instructs, is the source of all virtue...
...If held too firmly or fought over thoughtlessly, they turn to dust in your hands...
...Left on the floor, they are soon smashed underfoot...
...Or so we devotedly hope...
...Every Christmas finds us waiting, as breathless as a child at the top of the stairs Christmas morning, for the world to be made over...
...This year, as every year, we celebrate what God has done while waiting anxiously to see if men and women will respond to that good...
...Just as in the act of protecting children we are made braver than we otherwise would be, so at Christmas, if we are lucky, we are made more generous than reason allows...
...The clinking of glasses and murmur of gossip come to us from distant rooms, and the balm of the pine tree fills the house...
...Not much appears to have changed since Herod's soldiers went out to slay the innocent...
...But when peace arrives, ordinary men and women know it for the miracle it is...
...In every commercial space, the crooning ghost of Bing Crosby, more haunting than the clanking chains of Jacob Marley, insinuates itself...
...We pray for that outcome at this time, hoping that when the opportunity for peace presents itself we will be as open to it as Mary was to the incredible words of the angel Gabriel...
...Wherever you look, it takes a world of care to halt carnage...
...This is not simply nostalgia...
...Invasion and pillage and the threat of a wider war in the Middle East darken these days...
...In more formal settings, platoons of carolers or the exalted strains of Handel and Bach can be heard...
...In the end peace comes as a gift...
...The Christmas story, with its paradoxes of divinity humbled, strength robed in swaddling clothes, and humanity exalted, turns our attention to the eternal and heroic in the most common domestic arrangements...
...It is hardly a secret that in indulging our children we indulge ourselves, or at least the memory of our younger, more guileless selves...
...That is as true now as it was the day God was born an ordinary baby among a persecuted people in an obscure land...
...Peace, peace, cried the prophet, but there is no peace...
...At home, we welcome those most persistent of strangers-relatives...
...Political theorists and politicians profess a thousand different strategies as they court it-and in truth peace is a task as well as a gift...
...On TV, the observance of It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street is piously enforced on a dozen channels...
...To paraphrase Chesterton, the Christmas drama reveals something at the back of our own heart that betrays us into good...
...And so it is...
...In this light, peace between nations seems as fragile as the delicate glass balls that give a Christmas tree its gossamer beauty...
...Contrary to popular complaint, then, Christmas is not really for children...
Vol. 117 • December 1990 • No. 22
