Christmas Lights

In Richmond, we’re very into our tacky Christmas lights. We work for hours, stringing colorful bulbs in elaborate displays, both inside our homes and out, and then we drive around gawking at the work of our neighbors.

            In the annual battle I fight to overcome my resistance to the runaway commercialization of Christmas, I used to be very anti-tacky lights. They were gaudy, unnecessary and represented everything wrong about the way we celebrate the birth of Jesus. 

            But God, with his typically quirky sense of humor, has done something he seems to make a habit of doing. He’s taken something I didn’t like one bit and used it to pretty radically change my thinking. Today, I am very pro-tacky lights, and could probably even be talked into taking one of those limo or bus tours.

            The change in attitude began when the close relationship between light and the one whose birth we’re celebrating dawned on me. Light and Jesus are inextricably linked, and always have been. Writing of the events of Christmas years before the first one happened, the Biblical prophet Isaiah said, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

            Christmas is, indeed, the coming of the Light.

            Light is intertwined in the accounts of Jesus’ birth. When the angels appeared to the shepherds tending their flocks in the fields that night, “the glory of the Lord shone around them.” When Joseph and Mary took their eight-day-old son to the temple, they were greeted by Simeon, a wise, respected and elderly man, who declared the infant “a light to reveal God to the nations.”

            Not long after, the Three Magi followed the light of “his star in the east” to find their way to Jesus.

            For the rest of his time on this planet, Jesus shares and spreads light. Perhaps his closest disciple, John, wrote of Jesus, “His life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it.” 

            Later, John added, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

            Jesus spoke of himself as “the light of the world,” and explained, “I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark.”

            The light that shone from that manger in Bethlehem some two thousand years ago continues to illuminate our path today, and will someday banish all that is dark, forever. As singer/songwriter Michael Card wrote, “Celebrate the child who is the light! Now the darkness is over.”

            So, let there be light! Even the tacky ones.

Tom Allen