The Christmas season has been co-opted by society to be the time when we are “laughing all the way” and have “Oh, what fun.” Of course the Christian roots of the season offer “tidings of comfort and joy” but always because of where the birth of Jesus inevitably leads — to our salvation, which is to say to the cross. The warning that Jesus extends — “So also will the Son of Man suffer at their hands” — is not a sour note in the Christmas bells but rather the portent of things to come. “Jesus is the reason for the season” goes a popular slogan. We should not imagine that in sentimental terms but as a reminder of the divine destiny of this “child born to us.”
