Rediscovering Christmas

Surprising Insights into the Story You Thought You Knew

Greetings, friends. Today I'm pleased to share a special “bonus” post with you, 10 days before the Advent season begins on December 1. This is a guest entry from one of my favorite pastors and dear friends, Rev. AJ Sherrill, Lead Pastor at St. Peter’s Church in Charleston, SC.

Each year, I choose a new Advent resource for my own spiritual nourishment, and this season, I'll be reading AJ's Rediscovering Christmas. I highly recommend it for your own journey.

Enjoy this thoughtful and lovely excerpt from AJ’s work.

Guest Post by Rev. AJ Sherrill:

Have you ever heard of a tel? And, no, tel is not misspelled.  A tel is a hill of civilization that has been built upon repeatedly over a long period of time. Jerusalem is a tel. Much of the Holy Land is a tel. You’ve probably heard of the city Tel Aviv. Tel means “hill” and Aviv means “spring.” If you dig down through the layers of time, you will find cultures and civilizations buried like hidden treasure. My friend Libby likens a tel to children building with Legos. Imagine one child comes along and builds a foundation with them. Then another child later comes along and builds upon the first child’s efforts. Multiply that by ten other kids in succession thereafter. That’s what a tel is like. It’s a hill full of culture.

Would you believe that some tels in the Near East are more than twenty layers of civilization? That’s deep! All these layers make it challenging to know what’s underneath. What does this have to do with Christmas? Well, metaphorically speaking, Christmas is a tel. Over the centuries various cultures have taken the story and overlain their own traditions. Whereas this is often personal and beautiful, the original meaning can become obscured like the game of telephone—where we whisper a word to our neighbor and ask them to pass it on. This book is an attempt to “unearth” and explore the original meaning of Christmas. As you dig underneath the traditions built up along the way, new meaning can be discovered, and fresh faith kindled. Consider the tel of Christmas:

Sometimes meaning gets buried. Think about the layers of Christmas culture that can make it difficult to uncover the original story. The surface layers most evident in culture today is the one that elicits thoughts of Aunt Sally’s fruitcake, chasing bargains, and the consumerist myth of Santa Claus prompting children to believe the presents under the tree are the fruits of good behavior. Rediscovering Christmas: Surprising Insights into the Story You Thought You Knew is an invitation to dig beneath the layers of the Christmas tel. And when we do, we discover there is more meaning and mystery to the story than we ever imagined.

The story of Christmas centers around God with us. And this means that God always and forever refuses to be God without us. The story is true!

Christmas in One Word

Imagine you could only use one word to answer that question. What would you write? Maybe Jesus, or Immanuel. Or maybe for you Christmas is the season of joy or hope or gifts. Perhaps your life experience has led you to dread Christmas because of family drama, holiday stress, or endless fruitcake.

One would rightly suggest that Christmas has become about any of these words. But in recent years I’ve added a new word to my list, which I am happy to share with you in a moment.

But first, consider a (very) big number: 80,213,066.

Spelled out, that ’s eighty million, two hundred and thirteen thousand, and sixty-six. That ’s a lot. So, what does Christmas Day have to do with that number? Maybe it ’s the number of times you ’ve watched the film, A Christmas Story.

Or maybe it ’s the number of times you ’ve decided to not watch the film, A Christmas Story. Maybe it ’s the number of Christmas songs played on your local radio between Thanksgiving and New Year ’s.

This number—80,213,066—is the total amount of dollars that came through the movie theater box office on Christmas Day in 2017. Which, at first glance, isn ’t that interesting. But a more interesting question to consider is, Why would all that money spill into Hollywood on a religious holiday? It turns out there are good reasons why people like to watch movies on Christmas Day.

Deep within each of us is a longing to hear a good story. And in the season of Christmas, the Gospels tell the greatest story in the world. But because of overfamiliarity, triviality, and ignorance, we often leave the depths of the Nativity story unexplored, instead settling for cheesy Hallmark films, shallow Christmas services, and consumer spending to define for us the meaning of Christmas. Which leads us back to the opening question: What is Christmas about? Bread

Christmas, in one word, is about . . . bread.

First, consider the name Jesus. In John ’s Gospel, Jesus discloses his identity through seven “I AM” statements. One of the seven ways Jesus talks about himself is like bread. To his disciples, he says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). Those who feast on him will not go hungry.

Next, consider the town Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a compound word in Hebrew. Bethlehem = bet + lechem. Bet means house and lechem means bread. Bethlehem, therefore, means “house of bread.”Finally, consider the word manger. Mangers are not wooden beds filled with pillows in the form of hay. A manger in the time of Jesus was cut from stone and served as a trough to hold feed for animals. In the cold winter months, animals—and mangers—were sometimes placed within the front section of the home. Putting the puzzle pieces together, the New Testament is telling a story about the arrival of a man named Jesus (the bread of life), who was born in a town called Bethlehem (the house of bread), and immediately placed in a manger (feeding trough).

So:

The bread of life . . .

was born in the house of bread . . .

and placed in a feeding trough . . .

to satisfy the hunger of every human heart.

That is the meaning of Christmas. We must never settle for less. We don’t need new stories from Hollywood on Christmas Day. Instead, we must reclaim the ancient depth and wonder of the Jesus story. Christ, our Savior, is the bread of life. So, joining the chorus of our spiritual ancestors, “let us keep the feast!”

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(Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from Rediscovering Christmas: Surprising Insights Into the Story You Thought You Knew by AJ Sherrill. Copyright © 2024 by AJ Sherrill. Published by WaterBrook. All rights reserved.)

AJ Sherrill serves as the lead pastor at Saint Peter’s Church (an Anglican community near Charleston, SC). With a Doctorate in spiritual formation, he teaches courses on preaching and also the Enneagram at Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as workshops on spiritual formation and personality theory. He is the author of "Rediscovering Christmas: Surprising Insights into the Story You Thought You Knew.”  You can preview more of his work at AJSherrill.org.