December 8 1997

ARTICLE TOOLS

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We wreathe our doors with juniper and if holly, deck our shrubs with tiny white lights and our living rooms with spruce trees, candles, Nativity scenes. We dress ourselves for Christmas: she sporting a cotton sweater with stars and snowflakes, he wearing a candy-caned tie, baby kicking green and red socks with tiny bells.

Ironic, all of this decking, when you consider that the Christmas movement of God is away from glitter and glory. To get ready for Christmas, God undressed.

God stripped off his finery and appeared—how embarrassing—naked on the day he was born. God rips off medals of rank, puts aside titles, honors, and talents, and appears in his birthday suit. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate deity. In the Incarnation, things heavenly and earthly are gathered into one: one in the naked flesh and folds of God.

Do we get Santa Claus and God mixed up? We think of a portly God with a long white beard, well covered in red flannel and fur. It's part of our great project—clothing God—making him as respectable as we are. No shirt, no shoes, no service, we tell him. Dressing God is, for many, a compulsive hobby.

God deserves the best-dressed celebrity award, as we have robed God not only in Santa suits, but in fine marble, gilt, marvelous mosaic. Let God be anything but naked. Yes, I want that cloth right there: Thank you, sculptors, for helping God where he could not help himself, covering God's bare flesh and unprotected love.

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Instead of laughing with the Romans, we've done a sleight of hand to turn the celebration of the Incarnation into Christmas. Into the hat we stuff a fleshly God; out pops tinsel, wrapping paper, photos of children with starry eyes. The incantation? Hocus pocus backwards—no, ...