Christmas is a big deal. In society, the stores have been dedicated toward it for months. Some radio stations play Christmas music 24/7. There have been a series of TV Christmas specials. The Church makes Christmas a big deal. There are three different masses possible on this day. There is a whole season of preparation before and a season of celebration afterwards. The presence of dozens of poinsettias all testify to its importance. The way the Bible tells the story of Christmas shows it to be a big deal. St. Luke situates the story during the time of Caesar Augustus, the greatest of the Roman emperors. The people involved in the story were of the “family of David,” the greatest of the Jewish kings. And to show just how big a deal Christmas was, an angel announced the birth of Jesus and an entire choir of angels, a multitude of the heavenly host, served as the welcoming committee. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.
And yet, Christmas is really about littleness according to Pope Francis. All of the peripheral events can obscure the fact that the birth of a child, and a poor child at that, is a commonplace, something that occurs 385,000 times every day around the world. This birth was no big deal, not much different from other births, no pomp and circumstance: a mother, a father, some shepherds as witnesses with animals present to help keep things warm. God is present not in the big deal but in the littleness. The world is turned upside down. The God of grandeur who commands those legions of angels comes into the world in littleness, in ordinariness, in the simplicity of human life. This little child weighing somewhere around seven pounds held the future of humanity in his tiny fist.
What a contrast to the way we ordinarily value things. For us, bigger is better – not just a big deal but a super sized even a mega event is where you focus your attention. I had the largest crowd ever at my inauguration. We filled up the entire stadium for the concert. She is the goat, the greatest of all time. Magazines track the richest people in the world. Even the Church is not immune to thinking that size matters. During renew my church we were told that you had to have a large congregation and significant income in order to be a viable parish. We tend to look for the more and more. At Bethlehem God takes the route of less and less, of littleness. Almost everyone missed it because instead of a mansion they only found a manger, instead of silks they only found swaddling clothes, instead of a castle they only found a cave. They overlooked the littleness and so missed the presence of God.
Perhaps this Christmas day is our invitation to the virtue of littleness. We should not be afraid to embrace our littleness as a gift. We experience ourselves as weak, frail, inadequate, perhaps even “messed up”. That can make us doubt our worth and value. We wonder if we are loveable. But since God has embraced littleness as the way to enter our world we should open ourselves to hear God say: “I love you just as you are. Your littleness does not frighten me, your failings do not trouble me. I became little for your sake. To be your God, I became little.” Since that is so we don’t get our sense of self from being puffed up by what others think of us, from what positions we hold, from what kind of car we drive or house we live in. Our little self is, in fact, exactly who God made us to be with no need to apologize.
The virtue of littleness we celebrate at Christmas implies that all of those seemingly little things that we do are, in fact, our way to God in the world. God desires to come into the little things of our life; he wants to be part of our daily lives, the things we do each day at home, in our families, at school and at work. Amid our ordinary, little experiences, he wants us to find the divine. The coming of Jesus as a little child asks us to rediscover and value the little things in life as doorways to heaven. Since God is present in the pots and pans, in the loads of laundry, in cleaning out the tub, and yes, in the pooh-pooh diapers, what else do we need? Let us stop pining for grandeur. Let us put aside our complaints and greed. Littleness and the amazement at that little child: this is the Christmas message.
Finally, the virtue of littleness this Christmas connects us with all the other little people in our lives and in the world. We can love the little child away in the manger in the least of our brothers and sisters. We can serve the Babe, the son of Mary in the poor, those most like Jesus who was born in poverty. In them he wants to be honored. As he told us in the parable of the sheep and the goats, whatsoever we do the least, that we do unto him. Jesus loves the little ones – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the immigrant, the imprisoned. In order not to lose sight of heaven let us care for Jesus now, caring for him in the little people, the needy, because in them he makes himself known. There is a popular song played endlessly on the radio this time of year: “I need a little Christmas, right this very minute” and that is truer than the song writer knew. We need a little Christmas because that is the only kind of Christmas that Jesus knew. A little Christmas is the only one filled with light, love and joy.