Christmas All Year Round

What was the most important day in human history? I think it is safe to say that there are three candidates: Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. But, the latter two could never happen without the first. By any measure, the Incarnation is an extraordinary event. As Augustine says:

That infirmity might be made strong, strength has been made weak. Let us, therefore, admire the more His human birth instead of looking down upon it; and let us in his presence try to realize the abasement that He in all His majesty accepted for our sakes. And then let us be kindled with love, that we may come to His eternity.

Or, if you like your description in a poetic vein, here is Milton:

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
      And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heav’n’s high council-table,
      To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
      He laid aside, and here with us to be,
            Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
            And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

But, of course, there are also the more well-known songs, like:

Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the new-born king
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic host proclaim
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the new-born king”

The Incarnation has generated a wealth of fascinating and exciting and deep-moving expressions. This prompted Leland Ryken to put together a book for you to enjoy: Journey to Bethlehem: A Treasury of Classic Christmas Devotionals. All of the above passages are in this book

You will be forgiven for thinking he edited this book so that you would have something to read in December. Ryken doesn’t mind you reading it then (of course), but “I hope that the readers of this anthology will reread it many times and do so year-round.”

As Ryken explains in a strikingly sharp tone at the outset of the Editor’s Introduction:

This book is an anthology of classic Christmas devotionals. As I did the research for this book, it quickly became obvious that the Christian world needs an alternative to the lightweight Christmas books that flood the market. The classic texts that I’ve brought together in this volume have stood the test of time and for discernible reasons.

Now far be it from me to disparage all those lightweight Christmas books; I have a soft spot for the sappy reminders of the most important day in the history of the world. But, Ryken is correct that there is a virtue in the weightier reflections as well, that if your entire consumption of Christmas ephemera is the cheesy and garish trappings of the Season, then you really should also spend a bit of time with Athanasius and Calvin and Charles Wesley and T.S. Eliot.

That being said, the book has an odd structure. There are 30 selections, divided into three sections: Songs, Prose, and Poems. Billed as a “Treasury of Classic Christmas Devotionals,” there are indeed 30 classic bits. But, following each song, poem, or excerpt from a prose work, Ryken provides a discussion of the passage, which is longer than the excerpt being discussed. As a result, if you pick up the book to read the classics, you get a whole lot of Ryken tossed in.

The book thus succeeds or not depending on how much you like the Ryken commentary. That’s a mixed bag, and I think deliberately so. Ryken has pitched his commentary for a very wide audience, so I cannot imagine a reader who will find it all equally interesting. If you are not familiar at all with Athanasius or find reading Milton to be rough going, Ryken has commentary for you. If you are familiar with such things, much of the commentary will seem obvious, but then Ryken suddenly tosses in an interesting observation, and you are glad you read it.

The observation that surprised me the most:

There is no scarcity of Christmas poems, nor anthologies of them. But there is a scarcity of Christmas poems of sufficient quality and depth to make a significant impact on us. The majority of Christmas poems belong to the “bits and pieces” variety—brief and fleeting observations about a tiny aspect of the nativity or incarnation. The need for the entries in this anthology to yield a five-hundred-word analysis served as a sieve in which the inferior candidates fell through and the really good Christmas poems—the classic ones—remained.

Surely, I thought, Ryken is wrong about this. Obviously, there is a wealth of great poetry about Christmas. Then…I had a hard time thinking of a wealth of examples by poets who aren’t in this volume. There is lots of great Christmas poetry set to music; but poems which you read and don’t sing? Eliot, Milton, Donne, Chesterton, Rossetti are obvious. Then add in Ben Jonson, Richard Wilbur (in a wonderful poem I had never seen before), Edward Markham, and the rather prolific Anonymous. (The Magnificat is the 10th poem in the book, but honestly that feels like cheating. The rest of Luke and Matthew don’t get an entry in the prose section.) So, Dear Reader, can you think of another great Christmas poem? In casting about, I’ve discovered less than a dozen other authors which could be easily added to this list; I am genuinely surprised that it is so few.

The important lesson from this book: you don’t think about Christmas often enough. None of us do. If Ryken is right, and I think he is, spending more time thinking about Christmas will bring us great joy. It is, after all, an event that can cause one to burst out in song, “Joy to the World! The Lord is come!”

Related Posts:
Leeman, David & Barbara Hosanna in Excelsis “Here We Come A-caroling”
Moore, Linda McCullough An Episode of Grace “Episodes of Grace”

[The Mandatory Note: And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Washington that all the world should declare when a publisher sends a reviewer a book to be reviewed, the reviewer is obligated to note that fact. And so this reviewer is adding this Note to fulfill Said Obligation.]