Christmas or Easter?

***

I often consider the question in my mind of which holiday I regard as the most important, Christmas or Easter.

I’m inclined, on the whole, toward Easter, because it commemorates two of the most fundamentally important events in both the divine plan and human history: the Atonement of Jesus Christ and his Resurrection.  If those two events had not occurred, Christmas would be of no real significance.

On the other hand, of course, if Christmas had not happened — if the divine Son had not entered into our world and taken our flesh upon him — neither the Atonement nor the Resurrection would have occurred.  So, probably, it’s pretty well pointless to wonder whether to value Easter over Christmas or Christmas over Easter.  They are, as it were, a package deal.

***

I call your attention here to the first verses of the gospel of John, which I think should be taken as something of a hristmas story, along with Matthew 1-2 and Luke 2.  I’m using the English Standard Version, simply for the sake of (slight) freshness:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷ He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. ⁸ He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

⁹ The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. ¹² But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵ (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶ For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. ¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

***

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful Christmas Day.  I’m told that, in my adopted home state of Utah where I now live, there is or soon will be snow.  Here in the Richmond, Virginia, area, we’re having what seems a sunny day from early autumn.  But that makes no difference.  Christmas isn’t really about winter scenes from Currier and Ives.  It’s about the advent and incarnation of the redeeming Son of God.  What better news can there be, what better reason for celebration, than that?

Posted from Richmond, Virginia