“He comes as a helpless child. He is born in the cold night, poor among the poor. In need of everything, he knocks at the door of our heart to find warmth and shelter.”
– Pope Francis
I distinctly remember my dad counting down his years to child-rearing freedom by how many school Christmas pageants he had left to attend. As a child, I never understood his aversion to 90-minutes of what my 11-year-old brain believed to be pure production gold. Three decades later, with four children, fifteen years of pageants and easily a decade more to go, I’m a little more sympathetic to dear old dad, especially as I learned that this year, two of our children’s schools had pageants on the same night. My bah-humbug self started to leak publicly as I nonchalantly polled a bunch of parents at a basketball practice about whether or not anyone actually enjoyed any of the various Christmas festivities that dominated the final week of the school year. One parent sheepishly admitted that, in fact, she did, and then I really felt like Scrooge.
To accommodate the logistics and balance the parental love, I agreed to go to second grader Norah’s class party and caroling tour around town. Before I even arrived in the classroom, I was checking my watch to see when it would be over. Before we set out to carol, Norah’s teacher asked the boys and girls to line up so they could share with the parents the story of Christmas. As the children went one-by-one reciting their line or two from the Nativity, I watched as each parent tuned in with their fullest attention and biggest smile to hear their child proclaim a part of the story of salvation. When the story reached Norah, her big smile and incredible poise made her dad’s “small heart grow three sizes that day” (to quote a less important holiday tale).
As we moved the kids around town, stopping so they could sing Silent Night in a hair salon and Joy to the World in a restaurant, I watched as other adults focused on the young voices sharing the Good News. Making our way back to school, I couldn’t help but think about the paradox of our Savior coming as an infant. The first step in conquering our hearts is to soften them. Nothing opens a heart quite like a baby and no story is more attentively heard than one proclaimed earnestly by a child trying to make her dad proud. Therein lies the infinite genius of our God (and yes, Pops, even the value of a parish school Christmas pageant).
So whether your niece, son, cousin, or grandchild be Mary, Joseph, a donkey, or simply standing next to you singing O Come All Ye Faithful at Mass, let’s tune in to the story they are sharing and come to this feast with hearts that match the dependency, innocence, and earnestness that God desires and with which He chose to enter into this world from the beginning.
Merry Christmas!
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