Recorded
Version Assembling a Merry Christmas

David Orendorff · Romans 13:11-14 · December 2^nd, 2007

Mental health folks tell us that their busiest season is around Christmas. Our expectations of our families and ourselves are high and often unattainable. I think we sometimes try way to hard to make Christmas merry. Robert Fulghum in one of my favorite stories talks about how one year he tried his best to make Christmas merry for himself and his wife, and how, in spite of himself, he succeeded. He writes:

Always wanted a cuckoo clock.  A big baroque German job with all kinds of carved foobaz and a little bird that leaps out once an hour and hollers an existential comment about life.  So I got one.  For my best friend, who also happens to be my wife and lives in the same house with me.  See, the way this deal works is that she usually doesn't really like what I give her for Christmas, anyway, and I usually end up with it in the end, so I figured I might as well start out by giving her something I want in the first place, so when I get it back I can be truly grateful.  She gets the thought; I get the gift.  I know it's wicked, but it's realistic and practical. (And don't get high-minded about this, as if you would never think of doing such a thing.  The (heck) you say.  I've been around.  I know what I know.)

Anyway, I wanted an authentic antique cuckoo clock.  But they cost a bundle.  And this store had new ones - overstocked - a special cheap price - hot deal.  So I bought one.  There were two messages written in small print on the carton, which I missed reading.  “Made in South Korea“ was one.  And “Some Assembly Is Required“ was the other.

The carton produced five plastic bags of miscellaneous parts.  And an ersatz Bavarian alpine goatherd hut marked “genuine simulated wood.“  And to top it off, a plastic deer head that looked like Bambi's mother.  I put it all together with no parts left over, thank you, and hung it on the wall.  Pulled down the weights, pushed the pendulum, and stepped back.  It ticked and tocked in a comforting kind of way.  Never before had such an enterprise gone quite so well for me.  The (darned) thing actually worked!

The hour struck.  The little door opened.  The little bird did not come out.  But from deep in its little hole came a raspy, muffled, “cukaa, cukaa, cukaa.“  Three “cuckaas“?  That's it?  That's all?  But the hands of the clock said noon.

I peered deep into the innards of the Bavarian alpine goatherd hut of simulated wood.  There was the bird.  Using an ice pick and a chopstick, I tried to pry the creature forth.  It seemed loose.  I reset the clock to three.  The clock ticked and tocked then clanged.  The door was flung open.  No bird.  Out of the darkness at the back of the hut came “cuck“ but no “oo“ - not even “aa.“

Applying the principle of “if it won't move, force it,“ I resorted to a rubber mallet and a coat hanger, followed by a vigorous shaking.  Reset the clock.  Hour struck.  Door opened. Silence.

Close inspection revealed a small corpse with a spring around its neck, lying on its side.  Not many people have murdered a cuckoo-clock bird, but I had done it.  I could see Christmas morning: “Here, dear, a cuckoo clock for you.  The bird is dead.“

And I did.  I gave her the clock.  And I told her the story.  And she laughed.  She kept the clock, too dead bird and all, for a while.

The clock and its bird are long gone from our house now.  And Christmas has come and gone many times as well.  But the story gets told every year when we gather with friends in December.  They laugh.  And my wife looks at me and grins her grin and I grin back.  She reminds me that the real cuckoo bird in the deal was not the critter inside the clock.  I remember.

And me?  Well, I still don't have a cuckoo clock of my own.  But I have kept something.  It is the memory of the Christmas message written on the packing carton.  It said, “Some Assembly Is Required.“  To assemble the best that is within you and give it away. And to assemble with those you love to rekindle joy.  Cuckoo to you, old bird, and Merry Christmas, wherever you are.1 Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, (Villard Books, New York, 1989) 99-101

Try as hard as he might, Christmas did not come because Fulghum made it come.  Christmas came because of the love already present.  Christmas came in the story of a foolish lover who with his cuckoo made laughter, made joy, and made love.  And each year Christmas comes again as the cuckoo and his clock are remembered.

I wonder if the problem is that we think “we have to make Christmas,“ that somehow we have to assemble joy.  I wonder if the Christmas Blues are a consequence of our belief that if we don't decorate, get all the cards out, buy all the gifts, have a party, sing in the cantata, love everybody, Christmas won't be Christmas, and we will have failed.

I have a thought.  What if, just try this on, what if God assembles Christmas and we only have to open the gift and let it be in our lives?  I know the cynics will scoff, but what if God is the one who offers an already assembled Christmas?

What if God makes Mary pregnant by the Spirit of love?  What if God, by that same Spirit, makes the baby full of love and grace; a baby not of kingly a family but of an unwed mother and her laboring husband; a baby not of power as the world can see but helpless and small in a manger full of filthy straw; a baby who in unlikely beginnings transforms the world with a few words, acts of compassion and a dying that gives life?  What if this baby comes not because of the well assembled parents or family but because God decides the world needs such a one as this, needs love like this one gives?

What if (I don't want to cause any distress here - I am just asking the question) there is no great duty for baking, wrapping, singing, visiting, writing?  What if our only Christmas duty is to watch for the birth of love in our lives and open the door at its coming?  What if, ready or not, Christmas comes to us, fills our ears with the sweet tunes of peace, fills our eyes with the joy of play and warms our hearts with new and old love?  What if God decides, not we, that there will be Christmas for every precious child, for every animal, and for all the cosmos?

What Paul says in his letter to the Romans may just be true, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first trusted God; the night is far gone and the day is near.“  Perhaps we can trust Jesus when he says, “The reign of God is at hand“ and we can open the door to love before the cards are written, the gifts bought, or the pie baked.  What if Christmas doesn’t depend our assembling it?

I suggest that for the next four weeks, through this season of Advent, we resist the belief that we have to assemble Christmas and that we let God assemble Christmas in us.  If we are led to write Christmas cards, so be it.  If not, then perhaps God might move us to write Valentine cards, or maybe Easter cards.  And maybe in God's making of Christmas there are gifts to be bought, but maybe not.  Or maybe the gifts go in the names of the ones we love to Country Doc, Habitat for Humanity, Matthew House or one of the other alternative giving projects of our mission committee.  Maybe love doesn't come this year in a new Microwave, but is some deeper gift of the soul.  And maybe Christmas doesn't come this year in a hurried schedule to get it all in.  Perhaps God has in mind for us a gentler calendar marked with mystery and surprise.

I know that I speak against all that is sacred with these suggestions.  I know that the advertisers and the voices of Christmas past will plague all who try to let God make Christmas.  I know that when the door is opened to love, unwanted spirits come to haunt the room.  But maybe, just maybe, if a few of us are able to stay awake for the birth of love, then we can proclaim with the shepherds and the angels “Look, Emmanuel has been born among us,“ and the deep joy of Christmas will be born among us.

Shalom and Amen.