It’s ten PM on Christmas Day Eve and quiet descends as families slowly begin to return to their pre-Christmas routine. The gifts are all unwrapped; the main meal eaten; the excitement abated. Maybe children will sleep through the night while their parents clean up and then collapse into bed themselves. This is the part where “All is calm . . . “ becomes appropriate.
December 25 celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, although the actual date of His birth is unknown. When things were organized, I don’t know how the beginning of winter was chosen as His birthday. But then it wasn’t ever blizzardy in Bethlehem regardless of the season. Rather, tropical was the weather of the day. So maybe those who chose the date didn’t think or know that much of today’s known world is cloaked in snow or ice in December.
Still . . . all is calm. Whether one celebrates Christmas with sun-drenched palm trees and fig leaves or snow covered evergreens and pine cones, this is the part where everyone is satisfied, even if they didn’t receive all they wanted from Santa. Their stomachs are full, their brains are on stimulus-overload, their energy is depleted. It’s a default way of sliding into “All is calm.”
Which makes me wonder: Was it Christmas Eve or Christmas Day Eve when Mary gave birth and the angels appeared to the shepherds. When they, in turn, visited the child in the manger. When the Maji came to honor Him too?
I don’t know. And most likely it doesn’t matter, since the birth date of December 25 was arbitrary in the first place. What I like to think, however, is that all the excitement, the pandemonium and the craziness we experience every year is a prelude to the calm that occurred when Jesus Christ was born.
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