When the sun shines high, Christmas lights are unneeded.

In the darkness of winter, Christmas lights and Christmas joy are bright and loud and beautiful, and needed.

It has always been this way.

As easy as it may be to imagine the first Christmas through a sparkly and sentimental lens,

with some Unitarian

minstress plinking trite melodies on the piano's most annoying keys to imagine a

beloved young bride holding a fat-cheeked son as her gentle husband gazes on

in adoration the truth is nothing like a tidy staple set in a northern European

snow globe it is nothing like any nat staple set in a northern European snow globe. It is nothing like any

nativity scene ever sold. The truth involves more struggle, more darkness, more oppression,

more grief. The truth is a scandalous young woman sweating and groaning and straining

while her older angel-scolded husband plays clumsy midwife with hard calloused

unclean and splintered hands. The truth is a cave stable smelling of afterbirth and blood and

manure. The truth is an exhausted virgin mother surviving her ordeal only to have her crude sanctuary

invaded by coarse men from the fields come to rouse her.

Strangers smelling of sheep barging into her makeshift birthing room on the invitation of

angels to gape at her blood, the gore of her battle, her baby.

The truth is genocide, the slaughter of innocence, Egyptian exile, wandering wizards,

and somehow against all odds, joy, the joy that would change everything. As you hang your

lights in these dark days, as you decorate your tree and wrap undeserved gifts for those you love,

remember that what you do is rebellion.

Rebellion against the darkness,

...