{"id":142398,"date":"2026-01-05T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=142398"},"modified":"2026-01-05T18:20:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:20:22","slug":"frederick-buechner-on-the-meaning-of-christmas-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=142398","title":{"rendered":"Frederick Buechner on the Meaning of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have&nbsp;<em>happened<\/em>&nbsp;otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed\u2013as a matter of cold, hard fact\u2013all its cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before&nbsp;<em>this<\/em>: \u201cGod of God, Light of Light, very God of very God\u2026who for us and for our salvation,\u201d as the Nicene Creed puts it, \u201ccame down from heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Came down<\/em>. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014<strong>Whistling in the Dark<\/strong>&nbsp;(New York: HarperCollins, 1988), pp. 30-31<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Among all Nativity scenes in art history, I believe this one is the most beautiful\u2728<br><br>\u201cThe Adoration of the Child\u201d (or \u201cNativity\u201d) by Gerard van Honthorst, known in Italy as Gherardo delle Notti, painted in 1620<br><br>This masterpiece can be admired in Florence\u269c\ufe0f at the Uffizi Gallery <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Q286baTdh6\">pic.twitter.com\/Q286baTdh6<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Mambo Italiano (@mamboitaliano__) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mamboitaliano__\/status\/1995797151826198763?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 2, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have&nbsp;happened&nbsp;otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=142398\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[575,162,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas","category-christology","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142406,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142398\/revisions\/142406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}