Well, if you haven’t heard this greeting yet, Merry Christmas! How many times have we heard or said that in the past two weeks? As I was thinking about that greeting and the Christmas Season in general, two questions came to mind, one that is often heard, and another one that is seldom considered. They almost sound like the same question, phrased differently, but they are very different questions. The first question, the question often heard is, “How was your Christmas?” You’ve probably heard that question from many friends wanting to know where you went, if the grandkids or other relatives visited, what you ate, or what special gifts you received this year. I know I’ve asked the question several times over the past few days, and people are always eager to share their holiday joys and memories. This is a festive season. It is a time for family, faith, renewal and remembrance.

The second question, the question seldom considered, is this: “How is your Christmas?” Did you catch the subtle difference? It’s not “How was your Christmas?”, but rather “How is your Christmas?”! The commercialization of Christmas is certainly not new. Every year the stores get their Christmas decorations out earlier, tempting us to buy that “just perfect” gift. And then, after the Christmas rush, they hurry to put those Christmas decorations away and start promoting the next event in the retail cycle, President’s Day or Valentine’s Day or whatever comes next. Asking, “How is your Christmas?” should make us ask a deeper question about ourselves and the Christmas season. Is today the day that we go home, take down the tree, and carefully return the lights and heirloom decorations to their boxes, and then do we put Christmas in storage for another year?

The problem with “seasons” is that they almost encourage us to celebrate events and then forget about them until the season rolls around again. The revelation of Jesus at Christmas, the incarnation of our God, is not something that we can “put away” for another year, something that we can put into storage. The birth of Christ is the most concrete example of God’s love for us. A revealing translation of the Gospel of John says, “And the Word became flesh and he pitched his tent among His people”. I love that translation. It tells us what God was up to in very earthy terms. He was not going to be a distant God, a God to be feared, a God hidden in some far-off place.  He was “pitching his tent among his people”, to live with them, to know them, to know their joys and their sorrows. He wanted to become one of us, and so it happened. But when this God of ours came to us, he arrived in a form that was unexpected and unfathomable without some divine help.

This doesn’t mean that God made himself hard to find. God revealed himself in the very places where the people lived and worked. One commentary pointed out how various groups in today’s gospel came to know Jesus by different means. To the shepherds, Jesus was revealed through a direct vision of angels. Their work kept them out of the temple, without purification, so the angels spoke directly to them. To the Magi, Jesus was revealed through the reading of the stars. It was their belief that the stars in some way signified or even mirrored earthly activity. Where else would they be looking for momentous events in their lives? To the Jewish scribes, the scriptures were the source of revelation. When they were asked where the child was to be born, they turned to the scriptures for the answer.  The message of the arrival of Jesus was announced in ways that the various observers could see, if they were willing to look. And that is one of the messages woven into today’s gospel: God will meet us wherever we are, but we have to be looking if we expect to see the signs that he uses to reveal himself to us.

Now if we are looking and we come to know God, the important issue is what we do with that knowledge. The shepherds went off to tell everyone of their visions of angels. I imagine that at times they were mocked and ridiculed, but they knew what they had seen. The scribes pointed the way, and Herod, fearing that he would be deposed as king, sent his soldiers to end to the life of anyone who might be his rival. But what happened to the magi? What happened to the wise men?

There is an interesting play on words in the scriptures that some writers have commented on. The magi were told in a dream to return to their country by a different way, and so they did just that. But was the “different way” a new route, or was it a change of heart? If any of us followed a star for 1,000 miles or more, and it had stopped over the house where the child Jesus lived, doesn’t it make sense that our outlook about everything would have changed? I think it does. I would suggest that the magi, if they were truly wise men, could not have returned to their old way of life. In fact, they were the first gentiles in the scriptures to acknowledge that Jesus was God. I think that they could not have contained their awe or excitement at seeing what they had seen. I envision the magi as the first missionaries, carrying the news about Jesus to their homeland. They left on their trip with one way of thinking, but they returned home with another mindset. When they encountered the Christ-child, they had an “Epiphany”.

One definition of an “Epiphany” is this: It is “a sudden, intuitive perception … into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple or commonplace experience.” Walking into a house where a child lived with his mother and father was a rather simple or commonplace experience. But the magi connected the dots, or perhaps you might say they “connected the stars”, and perceived the reality of what they saw. And they demonstrated their understanding by giving gifts befitting of a king.

And that brings me back to my second question: How is your Christmas? Or how is my Christmas? The message of Christmas, the message of the Epiphany, is this: While Christmas is celebrated as a Season, the real meaning of Christmas has to live in our hearts, 24/7/365. And when we embrace the message of the incarnation, that unlimited love that God has for us, we have to spread that good news, all year long, and wherever we happen to be. And if we ever doubt, even for a moment, that God is out there, we need only look into our everyday lives and we’ll find him: in the love of our families, in the kindnesses of strangers and even in the challenges of life. Once we are possessed by the real message of Christmas, we will follow the example of the magi and go into the New Year and the rest of our lives “by a different way”. And that will make the question “How is your Christmas?” relevant, regardless of the season.