Christmas is Born with Love

"Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, love divine
Love was born at Christmas
Star and angels gave the sign".  Christina Rossetti, 1885

At Christmas there is an explosion of brotherly love.  At Christmas people are more kindhearted and generous.  At Christmas people are more understanding and forgiving.  During Christmas we reach out to perfect strangers to care for them and to help them. Does this phenomenon say something about Christmas or something about us?

The most love I have felt in my life happened at five different occasions, only one of them at Christmas.  Well one of them was a Christmas service, but it was in June.

1.In October of 1976 my bride said to me "For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health." I had heard those vows repeated a multitude of times. But I had never heard them repeated to my face. It was difficult for me to continue.

2.In June of 1982 I fulfilled a lifetime ambition of attending Church Music Week at the Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly, Black Mountain, North Carolina. The week's itinerary included a service on Thursday evening called "Incarnation."  Although I was a big fan of John Purifoy who was to lead the service,  I  assumed the service was to sell Christmas cantatas and was very skeptical about the whole thing. I was very wrong. I left that service a changed man. For the first time in my life I felt that I understood the meaning of Incarnation--the Word made flesh. The music of John Purifoy and the service touched me in ways that I had never been touched before. It was June. But it was Christmas.

3.In July of 1981 my son was born.  When the nurse handed him to me,  I held him and then lowered him into a warm bath.  When he looked up at me and blinked his eyes I could hardly contain the love I felt for him. That afternoon when I left the hospital I called everybody I could think of "I have a son!!!"

4.In November of 1991 I got hit by a car as a pedestrian.  Although it was a very close call, I was relatively unhurt. Two nights later I was having trouble sleeping so I went downstairs and laid on the couch,  To relax I put on some Christmas music, a CD of the Choir and Orchestra of Clare College Cambridge, England conducted by John Rutter. When the music cycled to Quelle est cette odeur agreable? (Whence is that goodly fragrance flowing?) something happened. It is the nature of mystical experiences that there are no words to describe the experience.  Was it an "out of the body experience"? Was it a "near-death experience"?  The experience was so immediate and so powerful that I got up and set the CD to loop that particular song.  This "other-worldly" experience then continued for several hours. The love I felt from my visitations was not of this world. Or was it? My transcendental state ended with the morning light.

5. In February 2008 my granddaughter was born. That way I felt when my son was born? Multiply it exponentially! Is a human being capable of more love than that for a grandchild? My chest was much too small to contain my affection. It still is.

What do all of these experiences have in common?  They all are a birth. A birth of a new marriage. The birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. The birth of my son. The birth of a life snatched from death. And the birth of my granddaughter. But is that it?  I don't think so.  The thing all of these things have in common is that they all happened to me.  I'm the one who experienced those things, who felt those things.  Those feelings were in me. They always were.

Those feelings are still in me.  Just like that service at Ridgecrest, I don't have to wait for December 25th to experience the love of Christmas.  I don't have to wait for someone to be born or a near-death experience for my heart to melt with love.  All those things I feel and do at Christmas, I  can do them anytime.  And if and when I  do, I  feel the same way I feel at Christmas.  Is it "Love was born at Christmas" or Christmas is born with love?

The entire time I've been writing this I looped Quelle est cette odeur agreable?   As incredible an experience as it was in 1991, I was not trying to achieve an out of the body experience. I am very content to remain in this body.  Those feelings were never out of the body; they were completely within my body. But I did want to be reminded of how fragile my life is, of how marvelous relationships are and just how beautiful Christmas music can be.  I wanted to remember those births and how I felt during each one of them. I wanted to remember that the love that was born on those days can be born again and again.. And if that happens, Christmas can be born on any day.