Embody Christmas

When Christmas returns, I feel drawn to its Earthy images: a child swaddled and cradled in a manger; a stable crafted of stout wood; the lowing of animals; warmth pushing back against the depth of winter. These are more than speculative historical details. They are symbols that affirm the realization of our highest hopes, here in the dust and breath and hunger of embodied life.

Doctrine and Covenants 93 illuminates these symbols. “The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy.” By this light, as we watch the sleeping child in the straw, we are invited to consent that God is not alien to nature, but thoroughly expressed therein. The Christmas story is most sublime in its pragmatism: matter as grace, and body as temple.

The star above Bethlehem is a natural light – a fiery convergence of elemental processes that ultimately form our own flesh. The shepherds’ labors, Mary’s exhaustion, and Joseph’s worry: in all these, we glimpse that “man was also in the beginning with God.” We too participate in the story of life, of heaven and Earth.

D&C 93 proceeds to tell us that Jesus “made flesh [his] tabernacle.” He “received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace.” And he “continued from grace to grace, until he received a fullness.” Unexceptional, this progression is familiar.

As Jesus progressed through embodied experience, so do we. Each small act of compassion given and received – a loaf of bread shared, a fire built against the cold, a child comforted, a neighbor welcomed – these are the graces by which we progress. Like Jesus, we receive grace for grace, and continue from grace to grace. And we do so not by escaping embodiment, but by embracing it more purposefully.

Christmas is not about any escapist or nihilistic transcendence, but rather about a transcendence of escapism and nihilism. It’s about strenuous engagement with tangible purpose. Birthing pains, newborn cries, swaddling clothes: these welcome the messy beauty of nature as the substance of sublime creation. And every caring gesture, every earnest collaboration, whether enabled by ancient tradition or emerging technology, extends grace toward that light and truth, that intelligence, which is the glory of God.

Honor with me, if you will, that which Christmas so beautifully presents and scripture so eloquently describes: spirit and element inseparably connected, embodied as individuals in community, progressing together from grace to grace toward a fulness of joy. Christmas is not an invitation to otherworldly heavens or incorporeal gods, but to the courage, compassion, and creation of Christ on Earth. This is our shared potential, symbolized by the baby in the manger. And this is true worship, emulation, which “receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.”

Merry Christmas! May your gifts, your embodied grace, progress now and always.