The emotional explosion into song experienced by Mary, Zachariah, the Angels, and Simeon is a difficult thing for our modern minds to comprehend. We don’t do it personally because we watch it too much in the movies and on Television. We have so many stories in our culture. We have a multitude of images dancing in our heads (not just sugar plums) that our histories and lives are confused at times. We can’t focus! We have learned how not to be too personally invested in the explosions of emotions we see in the media. We can enjoy, vicariously, the experiences on the big screens, but we don’t personally comprehend the emotions being expressed. We like to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers burst out in song and dance. We like to see John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John do it. We like to see the Fiddler on the Roof do it. (Teyve passed away recently). We like Gene Kelly swinging from the light post! But it’s taboo for us to do that in normal life.

If you were a Jew in the days of Jesus’ birth, on the other hand, you would not be so handicapped. The whole litany of stories would all have their source in the Bible. The Old Testament was Television, movies, music, and the works for every person in that culture.  But more importantly, they would see themselves as significant players in the ongoing story of life. The record of man’s fall in the garden would be the continued lot of each person. The stories of Father Abraham, the man of faith, and his culture and lineage would be the very source of their identity. They would all know the details of the man called Moses and the deliverance from Egypt. They would have understood their current predicament as a result of the sinfulness of their first ancestor as well as the failure of all those who had come before them. The pains and harshness of life in a world in which they were dominated and controlled by foreign powers would rule and pervade every personal life. You see, the people of God were not viewers of a drama. They saw themselves as part of it. They were not spectators. They were participants. Thus, the joys and sorrows of real life were their lot. They did not live vicariously through the adventures of others; they lived in the here and now in the flow of life and were intricately connected to it all. It’s only when we understand this truth that we, too, are not just observers but participants that we’ll ever know what it’s like to burst out in song like these four did.

You and I are the ancestors of Adam and Eve. The fall of man is our fall! We have been sent out from the intimate place of fellowship with God (The Garden of Eden), and we are vagabonds and wayfarers in a world that’s run and directed and ruled by a foreign force. We are in the lineage of the failure of man! The entire history of God’s dealing with man is the history of God’s dealing with us. But through it all, there has remained one great promise: The “seed of the woman” would crush the head of the enemy and deliver us all from the predicament of alienation from God and this life lived out in the valley of the shadow of death. The arrival of the Saviour of the world is what Christmas is all about! He has come to redeem us from the situation that is ours, not some character in a book or figure on a screen. It’s for you! It’s for me! Be a player, not a spectator! As I look forward to 2024, I want to be a player!

Don McLean wrote a song back in 1972 (I think) entitled “American Pie.” There are numerous theories about McLean’s intended meaning, but most seem to agree it’s his lament over the lack of “danceable” music in the 1970’s. The death of Richie Valens, the Big Bopper, and, more importantly, Buddy Holly was the single most significant tragedy in the direction, or lack of, in modern music. McLean seems to be arguing that when Holly died, the future of music died with him. It was a death that brought devastating, culture-changing consequences. But what really happened, in my opinion, was that in the decade of the 60’s, a cultural revolution brought about by rebellion, drugs, and sexual promiscuity destroyed the harmony of the American Family. A more significant kind of death took place with much greater consequences in our culture, and it’s been occurring all around us for over 50 years. The sad part is that it doesn’t even arrest our attention anymore.

According to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead (The Divorce Culture [New York: Vintage, 1998]), “For most of the nation’s history, divorce was a rare occurrence and an insignificant feature of family and social relationships.” Divorce did not become commonplace until after 1960, according to Whitehead.  She says that divorce “doubled in roughly a decade and continued its upward climb until the early 1980s, when it stabilized at the highest level among advanced Western societies. As a consequence of this sharp and sustained rise,” says Whitehead, “divorce moved from the margins to the mainstream of American life in the space of three decades.” The consequent divorce culture means death for the American family.  Our last fifty years define “The Day the Music Died.”

Sociologist and historian Carle Zimmerman, in his 1947 book Family and Civilization, recorded his keen observations as he compared the disintegration of various cultures with the parallel decline of family life in those cultures. Eight specific patterns of domestic behavior typified the downward spiral of each culture Zimmerman studied: “Marriage loses its sacredness; … is frequently broken by divorce; the traditional meaning of the marriage ceremony is lost; feminist movements abound; there is increased public disrespect for parents and authority in general; an acceleration of juvenile delinquency, promiscuity and rebellion occur; there is refusal of people with traditional marriages to accept family responsibilities; a growing desire for, and acceptance of, adultery is evident; there is increasing interest in, and spread of, sexual perversions and sex-related crimes.” God is really good at breathing new life into dead entities. Let’s pray that he will do that with the American Family – one family at a time. Maybe as the body of Christ in the world today, we, the church, can speak to the Family with the authority of Christ and shout, “Lazarus, come forth!”