The Ignatian Educator reminds us that the reality of the first Christmas was scary and confusing at the same time it was a joyful event. The first Christmas:
…rattles a marriage. It exiles a family. It endangers lives. And it provokes a madman to murder. The brisk descriptions in the New Testament fail to capture what must have been, for Mary and Joseph and many others, a bewildering, terrifying ordeal.
I don’t recall these scenes so we can relive them. I don’t recall them to make Christmas feel like Good Friday. Our vocation is not to those trials. But the exile, the massacre, the uncertainty, they remind us that what we mark so gleefully and easily, what we express in lounging, food and song, had the effect of an earthquake in the lives of real people. The Light came, but not without a fight. The Light won, but not without cost.
Read the full article as we celebrate the twelve days of Christmas.