All over the world this week children will don costumes to act out the Christmas story. Tea towels will be tied around heads to make a six year old look like a shepherd. Bath robes will be worn to create what looks like the magi. Little girls will wrap their heads in blue fabric and put on their best face to appear like Mother Mary. A boy will look a little sullen standing by her side to represent Joseph. Ears and tails and pajama-like suited children will portray sheep and cows lowing. And anxious parents and pageant directors will hand long poles to the tea-toweled shepherds and pray that said pole remains a staff and not a light saber. Multiple photos will be taken by grandparents and parents as the story of the first Christmas comes to life starring their offspring. It is a sweet and poignant tableau, one that only the Grinchiest among could not be charmed by. At the church I attend this happened last Sunday and each of us left the service feeling lighter, more hope-filled and dowsed a bit by the Spirit of Christmas.

The idea that this happens every year never ceases to amaze me. We do not do it with any other of the stories from scripture. Yet, each year, it happens and we look forward to its happening. I have thought about this phenomenon over the many years I have either directed or watched the story come to life. And over time I have come to believe that the act of creating this pageant and telling this story once again allows each of us to enter the story in a new way, from where life has taken us this particular year. The year I had a new born at Christmas I identified with Mary at the miracle I held in my arms and I truly ‘pondered all these things in my heart.’ I imagine the parents who are trying to shepherd a wayward child wishing that the work was as simple as ‘watching over the flock by night.’ And the angels…oh, the angels…hovering near singing over the new life, the worried parents, the humble beginnings of such a family. I have a sense that our hospitals are filled with just such beings whose wings are not quite visible but being such a presence.

This year the characters that most fit my own story are the wandering Wise Ones. In the journey we have all been on over the last months and now years, we have indeed been traveling a road that was unfamiliar, treacherous, and toward some future we cannot yet see completely. The twists and turns cause us to stop and take stock of what is guiding us, where it is safe to go and where it isn’t. And many times we have found ourselves needing to ‘go home by a different road.’ A few years ago I wrote this poem I called Night Seekers:

What must it have been like?
No maps, no highway.
Only the twinkling of stars
and the deep, velvet blue of sky
to guide their way.

What courage –
to step out in their search
following the brightest star,
propelled by a deep knowing
that they were, indeed,
on the right path.

Their visions in the night
fueled their longing,
to see, to know, to behold,
a world transformed,
led them further and further
until there was no turning back.

Gaze turned heavenward,
they traveled on.
Stars illuminating the sky,
they traveled on.
Until…there
right before their eyes.
Everything was forever changed.

May this Christmas find us reflecting on the transformation the last months have brought us and finding the courage to embrace the very best of it. May our eyes scan the nighttime sky looking for the Star that will guide our way and lead us toward a peace we have yet to realize for the infants, parents, shepherds, angels and wise ones among us. Blessed Christmas to all.