At Christmas we celebrate the incarnation: God becoming a human being in Jesus. It is a mystery too big for theology textbooks alone, which is why the best Christmas sermons so often reach for a story.
These four Christmas stories, retold in our own words, include a philosopher's parable, a children's nativity play that went off script, the real man behind Santa Claus and a goldfish who got his wish. Each ends with a takeaway for sermons, nativity services or family devotions.
Stories in this collection:
- The King Who Became a Peasant: Kierkegaard's Parable
- "You Can Have My Room": Wally and the Christmas Play
- The Real Saint Nicholas Behind Santa Claus
- Bogglehead the Goldfish: A Parable of the Incarnation
The King Who Became a Peasant: Kierkegaard's Parable
A parable inspired by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who told a version of it in his Philosophical Fragments.
Once upon a time there was a very rich king who was deeply unhappy. He lived all alone in an enormous, empty palace, and how he longed for a wife with whom he could share his life.
Then one day, as he rode through the streets, he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. When he made enquiries, he discovered that she was a peasant girl from a poor village. But the king's heart was captivated. Every day he made sure to ride past her house, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
But the king had a problem. How could he win her love? He could issue a royal decree commanding her to become his queen. But then he could never be sure that she loved him, because she would simply be obeying his command.
Perhaps he could visit her in all his royal splendour and sweep her off her feet with his wealth and power. But then he could never be sure whether she married him for love, or only for his riches and position.
At last he found the perfect plan. He would come to her as a peasant. It was the only way to truly win her love. So he left his palace, his riches and his comforts behind and put on the clothes of a peasant. He went to live among the poor villagers. He worked alongside them, shared their hardships, danced at their festivals and wept at their funerals, until at last he won the heart of the woman who had captured his.
So it is with God. In Jesus, God became one of us. He lived among us, worked with us, suffered with us and rejoiced with us, all in order to win our hearts.
Takeaway: This is the wonder of Christmas. God did not overwhelm us with power or compel us by decree. In Jesus he came as one of us, so that our love could be freely given (Philippians 2:5-8).
Source: Retold from a parable by Søren Kierkegaard.
"You Can Have My Room": Wally and the Christmas Play
This much-loved story first appeared as "Trouble at the Inn" by Dina Donohue in Guideposts magazine. We retell it in our own words.
What to do with Wally? He was a big, awkward and shy boy who belonged to the church children's club. Everyone was fond of him, but he was slower than the other children and nobody was quite sure what to do with him.
When it came time to hand out the roles for the Christmas play, his teacher thought carefully about which part to give him. In the end she made him the innkeeper. It was an important role, but it required him only to shake his head and say one line: Sorry, we have no room.
Wally grinned from ear to ear when he heard about his part, and he could hardly wait for the big night.
It came soon enough, and the play went according to plan. Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem and arrived at the door of the inn. Joseph knocked, and the door opened to reveal Wally. Please, sir, Joseph asked, do you have a room we could stay in? Wally shook his head and said his line: I'm sorry, we have no room.
Now, the boy playing Joseph was a particularly confident child. The script said that Mary and Joseph should turn away at this point, but Joseph decided to improvise. But sir, he said, my wife is about to have her baby, and we need somewhere to stay. Couldn't you find us a room?
Wally's face went pale. This was not in the script. He paused, then repeated his line: I'm sorry, we have no room.
But sir, Joseph went on, we've travelled such a long way, and we've got nowhere else to go, and my wife is very tired. Surely you can find us somewhere? Wally bowed his head, shook it sadly and said once more: I'm sorry, we have no room.
Slowly and sadly, Mary and Joseph began to walk away. Wally was now completely caught up in the story. He stood in the doorway watching them go, his face full of distress, a tear trickling down his cheek. Then suddenly his voice rang out across the hall: Wait! Please come back. You can have my room!
It was not in the script, and some people in the audience laughed while others wiped their eyes. But in that moment Wally gave perfect expression to the heart of the Christmas story.
Takeaway: Christmas asks every one of us the innkeeper's question. Will we make room for Jesus, and for the people he loves?
Source: Retold from Dina Donohue, "Trouble at the Inn", Guideposts (1966).
The Real Saint Nicholas Behind Santa Claus
The history of Saint Nicholas is mixed with legend. We tell the traditional stories here, and correct some popular details that are not historical.
Every year children around the world eagerly await the arrival of Santa Claus. But is he real? In a way, yes, he is. Behind the jolly figure in red stands a real person.
Saint Nicholas was a Christian bishop of Myra, a port city in what is now southern Turkey, in the fourth century. Very little is known for certain about his life, but many legends grew up around him.
One legend tells of a ship caught in a terrible storm off the coast. As the desperate crew threw cargo overboard to keep the ship afloat, someone remembered that a man of God was on board. They cried out for Nicholas, and he came out and prayed for God's mercy. The storm died down, and the ship limped safely into port. Another legend says that when Nicholas went into the church at Myra to give thanks, the church leaders were praying about who should become their new bishop, and they took his arrival as God's answer. Whatever the truth of such stories, Nicholas became known as a bishop of great faith, and he is remembered as the patron saint of sailors.
The most famous legend tells of his secret generosity. Nicholas learned that a poor man in the city had three daughters but could not afford dowries for them to marry. Without dowries, the girls faced a desperate future, and in some versions they were in danger of being sold into slavery. Nicholas came from a wealthy family, so one night he secretly threw a bag of gold through the family's window. He did the same for each daughter in turn. In some retellings, one bag of coins landed in a stocking that had been hung by the fire to dry, which is often said to be the origin of the Christmas stocking.
After his death, Nicholas came to be honoured as a saint across much of the Christian world, and his feast day, 6 December, became a day for giving gifts in many countries. People imitated his kindness by giving presents, especially to children and the poor.
Over the following centuries the customs spread and changed. In parts of medieval Europe, nuns and other Christians began leaving gifts of food, fruit and nuts for poor families on the eve of Saint Nicholas's day. Different countries developed their own gift-bringers, some linked directly to Nicholas and others to older winter traditions. In England, a figure called Father Christmas, originally a symbol of festive cheer rather than a giver of presents, gradually merged with the Saint Nicholas tradition. In France the gift-bringer became Père Noël. Each version carried something of the same idea: at the darkest time of the year, generosity comes quietly to those who need it.
In the Netherlands he became known as Sinterklaas, and Dutch settlers carried the tradition to America. In 1809 the American writer Washington Irving included a pipe-smoking Saint Nicholas in his humorous history of New York. In 1823 the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", now usually credited to Clement Clarke Moore, described a jolly, plump figure who came down the chimney with a sack of toys, pulled by flying reindeer.
Later in the nineteenth century the cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa Claus for Harper's Weekly, helping to fix the image of a round, cheerful, white-bearded man. It is often said that Coca-Cola invented the red-suited Santa, but that is a myth: Santa had been shown in red before. What is true is that the company's famous advertisements from the 1930s, painted by Haddon Sundblom, made that image hugely popular.
So is Santa real? He was, in a way: a generous bishop who gave in secret to people in need, out of love for Christ. Every Christmas we do well to remember his story and imitate his generosity.
Takeaway: Behind the marketing is a generous Christian who gave in secret because he had first received the gift of Christ. That is a Santa story worth telling (Matthew 6:3-4).
Source: Traditional legends of Saint Nicholas; Austin Miles, "Santa's Surprising Origins", Crosswalk.com, 20 December 2001.
Bogglehead the Goldfish: A Parable of the Incarnation
A modern parable by the Australian pastor Scott Higgins.
Once upon a time there was a goldfish called Bogglehead. He got his name because he was one of those odd-looking goldfish with enormous eyes bulging out of the sides of his head.
Bogglehead belonged to a little girl who made his life miserable. Every day she would come into the room, put her hand into the fishbowl and swirl the water round and round, creating a whirlpool. She laughed as she watched Bogglehead tumbling helplessly in the current, while he ended up feeling sick and dizzy. At other times she would try to catch him in her hand and hold him up out of the water, watching him flip and gasp for breath, before dropping him back in at the last moment.
One day, during a rare moment of peace, Bogglehead noticed something gleaming among the stones at the bottom of his bowl. He swam down to investigate and, to his amazement, found a tiny brass lamp. He rubbed his nose against it, and out popped a fish genie. Greetings, master, said the genie. I am the genie of the lamp. I can grant you any wish you make.
As Bogglehead was wondering what to wish for, the little girl came into the room. Without thinking, he blurted out: I wish I could be that little girl for a day! And with a whoosh, the little girl became a goldfish, and Bogglehead became the little girl.
Aha! thought Bogglehead, as he towered over the fishbowl and saw the fear in the eyes of the girl who was now a goldfish. Now I can have my revenge! He put his hand into the bowl and began to churn the water into a whirlpool. The girl-turned-goldfish was flung around by the current, growing sick and dizzy.
But after a moment Bogglehead stopped, ashamed of himself. I'm sorry, he said. That's not fair. Instead he spent the day playing gently and thoughtfully with the little fish.
After twenty-four hours the spell ended. Bogglehead was a goldfish again, and the little girl was a little girl. But from that day on, everything was different. The little girl no longer tormented Bogglehead; she cared for him. And Bogglehead came to enjoy her visits and look forward to them.
Sometimes God can seem to us like the little girl looming over the bowl: distant, uncaring, with no idea what life is like for us. What would God know about being human, about our struggles and pain? The Christian story answers that God knows from experience. In Jesus, God became a human being. He knew hunger and tiredness, injustice and rejection, grief and pain. Ours is a God who has walked through life's difficulties and so can walk with us through ours.
The story also teaches us something about relationships. Often we see other people only from our own point of view: the person who hurt us, ignored us or let us down. But when we try to see the world through their eyes, our relationships can be transformed.
Bogglehead only changed his mind about the little girl when he saw the world through her eyes, and she only changed her mind about him when she lived for a day in his bowl. Christmas tells us that God did not wait for us to understand him. He came down into our world, into our bowl, so that we could know he understands us.
Takeaway: We sometimes imagine God as distant and unable to understand our struggles. Christmas says otherwise. In Jesus, God became one of us and knows from the inside what it is to be human (Hebrews 4:15).
Source: Scott Higgins.
Final thoughts
A king in peasant's clothes, a boy who gave up his room, a bishop who gave in secret and a goldfish who learned to see through someone else's eyes. Each story opens a window onto the same miracle: God with us.
For further reading, Sopranu offers a guide to the best Christian books of all time and reviews C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.
May these Christmas stories help you tell the old story in a fresh way this year.
More stories you may like:
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
Comments
Post a Comment