The Crime of Christmas

Christmas is the Nativity of Consciousness. It is a time for us all, we who have lost touch with the tale, to rediscover the wondrous, the miraculous, the unspeakable; the wild, the odd, the strange; the impossible world of the child, the improbable faith of the believer.

The story of Christmas is the story of the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the unimaginable, and some would say unattainable. It is the impossible made possible - and of a momentary recognition and celebration of this amazing event by both the heavens and the earth. For just a moment the familiar miracle of a baby's birth becomes a radically life-altering experience for a nation, a people, a world, a cosmos.

But the simplicity of that first Christmas has become dangerously complicated by modern theology, cosmology, technology and economy. The problem goes beyond the over-bearing "commercialization of Christmas." Our inability to deal with Christmas simplicity reaches far beyond our pocketbooks, delving directly into the depths of our souls' fascination with the convoluted and complex.

Reaching back to try and recapture the simple, direct nature of that Bethlehem birth requires us to scrape off layers and layers of sedimented sentimentality built up between ourselves and the...