In a way, it's a little ironic since it was the Puritans/Pilgrims (and Indians) who gave us Thanksgiving, but they also banned Christmas. It took a while for it to really make a comeback, connecting medieval times to Victorian. Anyway, as always, the formatting is hard to figure out, or even to make it a separate file to link to, so despite it's length, I think I'll just post both versions in full. English version first...
Can you feel it? The hush of freshly fallen snow; families snuggling around the fireplace with hot cocoa; the ringing of bells and twinkling of lights under the winter sky; colorful shoppers humming to themselves down the supermarket aisles. The holiday spirit seems to blanket the whole season.
Between reenactments of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, lusty Old World songs like “Good King Wenceslas”, and the reeling Merry Old England atmosphere of the Renaissance Festival, I almost feel like I was a Victorian gentleman or medieval wassailer. Remember, I’m American; unlike the Chinese with their 4,000 years of culturally homogenous civilization, I have, at best, some 200 years of history to my hodgepodge national identity. Shallow roots, to say the least. However, our earliest Christmas carols go back to the fourth century. When God found me and changed my heart, I became part of that age-old tradition and indeed found my roots as a child of Abraham (Galatians 3:7; Romans 9:6-8).
If you’d like to gather around this fireside with me, I’ll gladly tell of the significance of the Christmas story through the customs of carols, gift-giving, and the “original” Christmas tree.
The Joy of Caroling
What’s your favorite Christmas song? And don’t say “Jingle Bells”!
I must say I have several favorites, such as “O come, O come, Emmanuel”, “O Holy Night”, “What Child is This?”, Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desire”, and many more expressing in an exquisitely older style of English the story of God’s coming near to earth. As followers of Jesus, our risen Savior and dearest friend, we love to sing out our joy and gratitude in praises to Him – and in overflow to go door-to-door around our neighborhood.
In the words of one well-known carol:
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;[…]
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Risen with healing in his wings,
Light and life to all he brings,
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Or from “O come, O come, Emmanuel”:
O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
You might be asking who is Emmanuel, and why is this King of Peace coming to Israel? The prophet Isaiah, writing nearly seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, was inspired by God with such wondrous glimpses into the future about the coming Savior: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call Him Emmanuel [meaning ‘God with us’]” (Isaiah 7:14).
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| Isaiah writing his prophecies |
He made everything in the universe. “In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind […] He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (See John 1:1-18).
The Old Testament is full of many detailed prophecies about the coming of the Savior. He is called the Savior because he will save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Explaining to His somewhat confused followers, Jesus revealed how everything written about Him by the prophets in the past was fulfilled by his suffering, dying, and resurrection from the grave, and that from now on “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations” (Luke 24:44-47). “About Him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name” (Acts 10:43).
Surely that is something worth singing and shouting for joy!
God: The Great Gift-Giver
Meaningful seasons can touch the melancholy in all of us, and, to tell the truth, there are times when I don’t feel like singing. Christmas can also be a very lonely time.
When I was living in Japan, I was struck with homesickness in the first few months. My new country was, shall we say, uninviting. Without friends or family or the ability to communicate in Japanese, Thanksgiving was a hollow affair. By Christmas time, my heart was aching so badly I was downright depressed. Oddly, one of the things I missed having was eggnog, which isn’t available there.
Then, something wonderful happened. An American missionary I had met who used to work at my school invited me to a Christmas party at her house. She had five or six Japanese Christian friends over as well who, of course, became instant family to me, and – get this – there in the kitchen she was mixing ingredients for homemade eggnog!
How kind of God to show His comfort in such little things. It was during that season that I believe He showed me something of the ‘parting sorrow’ that He experienced in sending His Son down to earth. I imagine Jesus too feeling homesick for heaven. In the depth of my loneliness, He reached out to me yet again and lifted my head, giving me renewed hope and trust in Him while bringing me into community with others. It reminds me that indeed every good gift is from my Father in Heaven (James 1:17).
Gift-giving is an important part of Japanese culture. They can be simple or elaborate, and there are all sorts of customs to keep in mind for various holiday occasions. I gave and received tons of gifts, ranging from the forgettable to the truly awesome – the best being the gift of friendship. We say in English, “it’s not the price but the thought that counts.”
One of my favorite stories, which we sing in the Christmas carol “We Three Kings”, is of the mysterious Wise Men from the East who journeyed far with costly gifts to find and worship the long-awaited King of Heaven who had come into the world. If we think about it, there is no suitable gift that we could give to God, or indeed that He would need from us (Acts 17:25). Consider how the High King of Heaven is worthy of all of our praise, honor, and love; but instead, we have been ignorant of His gifts of life and love to us, and selfishly disobedient to Him in our pride. This makes us unclean inside. We have earned shame for ourselves and punishment from our Maker.
Whereas men might give material gifts to impress others, or to meet social obligations, or to incur a debt so they might receive a better gift back, God is different. He gives because it is His nature to give. He loves, not because men are so lovely or lovable – far from it.
In the past, the Jewish people were instructed by God to construct a tent of meeting with a sort of portable shrine (with various artifacts inside). At this place, after ritual purification, they could offer worship and sacrifice according the acceptable proper way that God laid out. Later, He had them build a more permanent temple. The Israelite priests also blessed the people while waving a branch. A thick and very tall curtain or veil in these structures separated the inner sanctuary or holy place where once a year on the national Day of Atonement the high priest could enter and God would come down – until His promised Savior would come.
The same portable shrines and temple demarcations are found in Shinto with the mikoshi and split bamboo curtain separating the inner sanctuary or honden, where the spirit’s material object or shintai resides. This area can only be entered on the day of national purification Oharai, when the sins of the nation are symbolically placed on a piece of wood. The priests also bless the people, though these days they use a paper wand or harainusa instead of a sakaki plant. Occasionally, after a kind of purification by water or misogi at a waterfall, the adherents partake in a ceremonial drink or naorai with the deity – in some ways reminiscent of baptism and the Lord’s Supper). In reality, the true sacrifice that God provided for us was not a piece of wood, but was nailed to the wood: Jesus (John 1:29).
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| Luminarie in Kobe |
Pastor and author Arimasa Kubo relates one example: at one of the oldest shrines in Japan, Suwa-Taisha in Nagano prefecture, there is a festival called Ontohsai or to the Misakuchi-god. This shrine has no honden because the mountain itself is considered to be a closer connection to Moriya no kami, or loosely translated, the deity of Mount Moriya, and the sacred tree or shinboku (more on that later). Every year on April 15th, a boy was tied to a wooden pillar (oniye-bashira) and a Shinto priest approached, knife in hand. But suddenly a messenger arrived and the boy was released, with deer then offered instead as animal sacrifices. Though the festival continues today, the parts about tying up the boy and sacrificing live deer were discontinued at the beginning of the Meiji era (A.D. 1868).
This is the outline of the original story found in the Bible in Genesis 22, where God tests Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his own son Isaac on Mount Moriah. It is possible that Misakuchi could refer to Isaac by name – or Isaku. The story of Isaac was meant to point thousands of years into the future to the death of Jesus on a wooden cross. As Wikipedia sagely explains: “Because over the years the shintai is wrapped in more and more layers of precious cloth and stored in more and more boxes without being ever inspected, its exact identity may end up being forgotten.” – isn’t this Christmas the perfect time to unwrap and come to discovery the gift of God?
Do you remember the curtain of split bamboo? When Jesus came to live among us as a go-between (1 Timothy 2:15) and give up His life on the cross to bring reconciliation between man and God, the Bible says, “It was about noon and there was darkness over the whole land until three o’clock, while the sun’s light failed. And behold, at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs broke open” (Matthew 27:51-52, Luke 23:45-46). Being torn or split from top to bottom indicates that Jesus had actually broken the barrier that separated man from God. In Jesus, God lowered “the threshold” that was too high for us.
No wonder the Bible talks about the coming of His Son as an unspeakable gift to us (2 Corinthians 9:15; see Romans 5:15-17)! “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Again, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5:11). Does God offer to share His life with us because we deserve it? On the contrary, it is only due to His great love and kindness toward us that we receive His mercy and grace (see Titus 3:4-7). This great love was shown on the cross where Jesus took on our sin and paid the debt we owed. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).
♪ O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree! ♫
Let’s consider the picture of our family tree with Adam as our first ancestor. In the Garden of Eden, he turned his back on Heaven’s King and so became impure, corrupt, separated. As the root, so the tree. When an infection begins to rot the roots of any tree, the rest of it carries the same infection and sickness and death is certain. That’s the predicament we all find ourselves in, estranged from God.
The Bible tells us that we can be grafted like tamagushi branches into the Tree of God’s Family (Romans 11:17-18). Jesus is like the true, enduring evergreen tree or masakaki (真榊) – He warns that apart from relationship with Him we can have no life, but if we are joined to Him then His life will flow through us (John 15:4-5).
He also proclaims, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12, see Acts 26:18 and Colossians 1:12-14).Oh, may you make Him your Savior too this day! Our response is urgent lest we miss His gracious gift of forgiveness. Bow your knee to your Maker, submit your life to His Kingship, and He will freely pardon you from your selfish and petty way of living and cleanse you from your old live of self-centered attitude, bitter resentment, and all other filthiness. When we enshrine Jesus as Lord in our heart, He takes it upon Himself to change our lives from the inside out. He accepts us as His own and promises that He will never abandon us but will be with us always (Matthew 28:20).
Indeed, as the angel proclaimed to Mary, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people!” (Luke 2:10).
Grace and Peace & Merry Christmas,
Sunrise Houston Japanese Network
www.sunrisehouston.blogspot.com
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