Christmas is pre-eminently a holy day for me. I hope this expression of my faith will not hurt or offend my friends of other faiths.

An excerpt from W. H. Auden’s Christmas oratorio, For the Time Being.

CHORUS OF ANGELS:

Unto you a Child,
A Son is given.
Praising, proclaiming
The ingression of Love,
Earth’s darkness invents
The blaze of Heaven,
And frigid silence
Meditates a song;
For great joy has filled
The narrow and the sad,
While the emphasis
Of the rough and big,
The abiding crag
And wandering wave,
Is on forgiveness:
Sing Glory to God
And good-will to men,
All, all, all of them.
Run to Bethlehem.

Now all things living,
Domestic or wild,
With whom you must share
Light, water, and air,
And suffer and shake
In physical need,
The sullen limpet,
The exuberant weed,
The mischievous cat,
And the timid bird,
Are glad for your sake
As the new-born Word
Declares that the old
Authoritarian
Constraint is replaced
By His Covenant,
And a city based
On love and consent
Suggested to men,
All, all, all of them.
Run to Bethlehem.

From the beginning, the message of Jesus was a reversal of the accepted order. The power and majesty of God was trapped in the absurd helplessness of an infant. The Word, made flesh, could only weep.

Now that Christianity is the dominant religion here, it’s easy to slip into arrogance and judgmentalism, to assume that might equals right and disdain the very people Jesus most loved: the weak, the poor, the lonely, the outcast. Let us not forget that Auden, who wrote these words of worship, was gay — he described his life-long partnership with Chester Kallman as the marriage he needed.

The teenager pregnant out of wedlock bore the Christ child.

God said: My Grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

Somehow, in this the darkest part of the year, hope is emerging from terror and need, and shame is transformed into glory.

Merry Christmas, dear friends.