It’s hard to let go of Christmas, isn’t it? As I go around our community, I have noticed that there are still many Christmas decorations not taken down. I think I even sense some of the special spirit that is Christmas lingering around the edges of our lives.

It’s understandable. The impulse at Christmas is always to look back, to go back to some time in the past, to another Christmas, to an imagined ideal time when the world was smaller, and Christmas was the way we think it should be. Many of us long for a Norman Rockwell kind of world, the warm and loving close-knit family that existed sometime after the Second World War. Why some of us in this unusually cold year even long for an Irving Berlin Christmas with enough snow to make it a “White Christmas!" Some of us may even be nostalgic enough to want to go back even further, to a Currier and Ives Christmas. That’s my favorite image: a snow-covered New England countryside with a sleigh drawn by horses transporting the family “over the river and through the woods” to a large white house aglow with the warmth of human love. Perhaps, others think of a Charles Dickens’ Christmas with carolers in high silk hats, mufflers, and scarves six feet long and Tiny Tim asking God to bless us every one. Still others among us with family roots in the Old Country think of Christmas customs from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Holland where so many of our familiar customs originated. Think of all that “kuchen!” No wonder we don’t want to let go of Christmas! It seems to us the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most safe and secure time of the year.

Hold that last thought in mind and remember how Marcello speaks of Christmas in the opening scene of Hamlet:

“Some say, that ever ‘gainst that season comes

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long:

And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;

The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.”

To a great extent, the scripture stories of the first Christmas create that sense of safety and security as well. But the wonderful thing about the Bible is that while it contains real sentiment, it is never sentimental. Even as the manger scene is being introduced, it is with the words, “In the days of Herod the King. . .” For those who have any historical sensitivity, that is an ominous sentence.

There are several Herods who appear in the New Testament. This one is called Herod the Great, not by the quality of his life, or the judgment of history, but by his courtiers who were well-advised that they should call him that. Herod had a huge ego and a short temper. He was a puppet king. A kind of Quisling ruler serving at the grace and favor of Rome. He didn’t like to be reminded of that, but it was true. He had sold out to the Roman Empire and he ruled now through the good graces of Caesar Augustus. It was a tidy arrangement. Herod would collect taxes for Caesar and Caesar would provide the troops for Herod which he loved to use liberally and brutally.

Israel was an occupied country and Herod was a puppet king. To make matters worse, he was not even Jewish. He was an Idumean whose family had been converted to Judaism a hundred years or so before. But even if he were partly Jewish, the people would still have hated him, because he was the incarnation of all that was evil in their sight. And he lived up to his image.

He had come to power at the age of twenty-five by murdering his rivals, the Hasmonean political party. And then he bribed Mark Anthony to gain favor with Caesar Augustus. He kept his part of the bargain by pursuing the Jewish freedom fighters, those guerillas who were trying to throw the Romans out of their own country. He pursued them to caves in Galilee, smoked them out, literally, and then killed them all.

When Caesar conferred upon him the title, “King of the Jews,” Herod really got violent. First, he turned on his own family, suspecting a family plot. In succession, he murdered his wife, Mariamne, then two of his sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, then three hundred officers in his army. Then he turned brutally on any in the civilian population who dared oppose him. This last act of violence happened during the famous census we read about in the Christmas stories. It was Herod’s job to carry that out in Israel. Six thousand Pharisees refused to take part on religious grounds. Herod’s response to that protest was to kill all the Pharisees he could find. And he found several thousand.

It reminds us of events in Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany, doesn’t it? And, indeed, historians have speculated that Herod may have been paranoid or criminally insane.

Certainly, the events surrounding the familiar story of the Wise men should not surprise us given this background. In some ways, the Wise Men do not seem very wise at all! Surely, everyone knew of Herod’s reputation. Surely, you would not tell such a man that you have come to locate and worship his successor! But the story reveals that Herod could not only be violent and jealous, but also cunning. He tells the Magi to complete their mission and then report back to him with their findings. At some point, the Wise Men, as we say, “wised up” and had the good sense to go home by another way.

Again, it should not surprise us that Herod’s response to the rumor that a successor king had been born in Bethlehem was to order the killing of all male children born in the last year or so. The record of that terrible moment was part of the reality of the first Christmas “in the days of Herod the King.”

The poet Robinson Jeffers contrasts the sentimental view of Christmas that we love to cling to with a realistic view of Christmas:

“Only an hour, only an hour from wars and

confusion turn away

To the islands of old time when the world

was simple and gay,

Or so we say.

And light lay the snow on the green holly

While oxen knelt at midnight,

Or so we say.

Caesar and Herod shared the world,

Snow over Bethlehem lay,

Iron the empire, brutal the time, dark was

that first Christmas day.”

A few years ago, Barbara and I visited our son, David, who was studying in Scotland. As part of our trip we visited London. I remember my first trip there many years ago and my puzzlement and then amusement when I discovered the meaning of the name of a strange stop on the London underground: the Elephant and Castle. It seems that hundreds of years before this spot commemorated the visit of a princess of Spain, the “Infante” of “Castile.” Londoners corrupted the name to “Elephant and Castle.”

In a similar way, most of us recognize the name “Bedlam” as referring to a hospital founded in London in the 13th Century as a place to care for the mentally ill. The original name of the hospital was St. Mary of Bethlehem, but, again, over the centuries, Londoners corrupted the name to “Bedlam.”

From Bethlehem to Bedlam! Would you agree with me that there is a powerful symbolism here? As time passes we forget what we have experienced at Bethlehem. The calm of Christmas fades away and we return to the chaos, cruelty and craziness of a world gone mad, a world of Bedlam.

Sometimes we tell ourselves that is the way it has to be. As wonderful as Christmas is, the spirit simply can’t last. As much as we regret it, it’s time to get back to business as usual. It’s time to return to a world where children are neglected, abused, and destroyed by the wicked and powerful of this world. It’s time for decent folk like Mary and Joseph to try to find whatever sanctuary they can to protect their family.

But when we surrender to that kind of cynicism and pessimism, I tell you that we have all gone mad. That is not the world God intends for you and me and all people of good

will. We have a choice, a real choice. We can choose to live in Bethlehem or Bedlam all year long. We can take appropriate and responsible action to be sure that the special spirit of peace and good will that comes at Christmas does not last just for a few days, but all year long.

My dear friends, Lloyd Rediger (now sadly gone) and his wife, Vera, kept a Christmas tree in their bedroom all year long. Isn’t that a wonderful idea?! Perhaps all of us could find some way to remember Christmas all year long by putting a Christmas tree ornament or crèche where we can always see it. If we do I believe we won’t be driven crazy by this world we live in but find the peace and hope and joy of Bethlehem always with us. We will remember that Christmas means “Immanuel,” “God with us.” Merry Christmas to us all! Today, Tomorrow and forever.