Following the Facebook recommendation of a friend in Connecticut, Beth and I were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves enjoying a new Netflix film, A Boy Called Christmas. Part of our pleasure was probably the simple fact that, despite being a little too intense and sad at points for small children, it was free of profanity. More to the point, it was a good story which, despite being complete fantasy, approached death, suffering and even human evil in a realistic and serious way. And it ended on a hopeful note of belief in the worth of human generosity and kindness as ways to deal with the sorrows of life.
Now, if all that sounds to you as if the film were in no specific way Christian in its approach to Christmas, you would be right. The movie (and the book from which it derives) purports to tell a totally secular origin story for “Father Christmas,” beginning as a boy named, appropriately, Nikolas. The word “Christmas” appears as a sui generis, unexplained term for a joyous celebration involving the giving of gifts. There is no mention or even allusion to the story of Jesus.
Yet the connection of gift giving and generosity to a holiday whose name contains the title Christ, who is our Savior, is still quite correct. The actual St. Nicholas (though the “actual” person is surrounded in a great deal of legend) is connected to Christmas by his habit of secret gift-giving, most famously bags of gold dropped through the windows of homes of poor girls so that they might have dowries and be married instead of being sold into prostitution. The general Christian understanding is that gift-giving is appropriate at Christmas because the day celebrates God’s gift to us of Jesus.
So the epistle lesson for this Sunday, Hebrews 10:5-10, speaks about “offerings” and specifically about “the offering of the body of Jesus Christ” (verse 10). The text repeats a passage from Psalm 40:6-8, which begins with the understanding that God did not desire “[s]acrifices and offerings.” This is a frequent theme in the prophets and recognizes that the Jewish sacrificial system, which God Himself commanded, was not based on God’s need for offerings given to Him.
What the epistle reading turns on is the fact, aided by the Septuagint’s translation of “but a body you have prepared for me,” that giving begins with and remains centered in God’s own generosity. In verses 8 and 9, the passage sees Jesus as the one does away with the animal sacrifices and burnt offering, but instead does the will of God by presenting His own Body as an offering to God. And in verse 10 it is that Body of Christ which sanctifies us.
To put it briefly, the passage teaches that God both prepares and offers to Himself the offering He desires. The Incarnation is in sight here, because God takes on a human body and life in order to offer that same life and body back to God. It is God who gives God the gift (of human faithfulness and love) which God desires.
So, while it is absolutely good and beautiful to associate gift-giving with the Christmas holiday, we should keep in focus the truth that the source of that giving begins in and ends in God. If human beings have some innate disposition to generosity and giving, it is rooted always in God’s own nature and being. And that giving nature of God is what Christmas is meant to celebrate.