In Venezuela, Does Christmas Start When the President Says?

Trees and lights may be all around Caracas, but churches don’t exactly appear on board.

A child plays in front of a Merry Christmas sign in Venezuela.

Jesus Vargas / Stringer / Getty

In Venezuela, a flower farmer from the country heralds the beginning of the Christmas season. For years, the legend goes, Antonio Pacheco traveled from Galipán, a town in the northern mountains, to capital city Caracas, arriving with his flowers to sell each December. When he arrived at the Plaza Bolívar on the first of the month, his appearance signaled the advent of Christmastime.

This year, when Pacheco arrived via the local reenactment, he discovered a Christmas season in full swing, with a large Christmas tree in the center of the square, lights adorning every major building, and an illuminated placard wishing “Feliz Navidad” to passers-by. In fact, some of the decorations had begun to fade, having been up for two months. According to the official state calendar, Christmas began on October 1.

Traditionally, the Christmas holidays begin with the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary on December 7 and end with Epiphany on January 6. But in recent years, the dates have been malleable.

In 2020, president Nicholas Maduro announced that Christmastime would begin on October 15. The next year, as the country was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and successive lockdowns, he ordered the festive season to begin on October 4. Last year, he told his TikTok followers, “Merry Christmas beginning November 1. Baby Jesus is coming!”

For this year’s October declaration, one that came just weeks after an internationally disputed election, the president’s communication team published a PSA featuring smiling Venezuelan children and senior citizens, and reporters on the official state news channel played footage of citizens enjoying Christmas lights.

Maduro decreed that the government put up Christmas decorations in public offices and parks. The government erects special lights in places like Plaza Bolívar and Plaza Los Símbolos. Waraira Repano National Park illuminated their iconic cross. (This year, oppositionist media reported that the government had imposed fines on businesses that refused to put up Christmas decorations early.)

As in previous years, the government, through the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP), increased the amount of food it delivered in the poorest neighborhoods, prioritizing areas with a dense population of Chavistas, or those ideologically aligned with the socialism of Hugo Chávez, who ruled Venezuela between 1999 and 2013.

This year, Venezuela’s Ministry of Education also issued a press release stating that, starting October 1, schools must offer “pedagogical, artistic, and cultural activities that reflect the ancestral roots, customs, and traditions” of Christmas in Venezuela.

Despite the government’s proclamations, the church’s calendar seemingly hasn’t shifted.

“The manner and timing of its celebration is the responsibility of the ecclesiastical authority,” the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference (CEV) stated shortly after this year’s Christmas announcement. “This holiday must not be used for propagandistic or particular political purposes.”

The evangelical pastors contacted by CT preferred not to comment on the early Christmas, due to the political tension in the country. But the social media of some of the largest churches in Venezuela, such as the Iglesia Maranatha, Asambleas de Dios, or the Iglesia Pentecostal Unida, did not include posts about Christmas during October and November. (In October, as evidenced in their Instagram posts, many congregations of all denominations did observe the Month of the Bible.)

Instead, only since December 1 have most churches, both evangelical and Catholic, been promoting cantatas, themed services, and Advent celebrations and begun singing villancicos (Christmas carols) on Sunday mornings.

“To declare Christmas extemporaneously is to turn it into a festival of waste and spending,” said Cardinal Baltazar Porras, former archbishop of Caracas, whose resignation was accepted by Pope Francis just a month before the presidential elections on July 28.

“Curiously, what is promoted has nothing to do with Venezuelan identity but with little trees, snow, reindeer, and figures foreign to our culture that try to make us believe that we are happy and content because we live very well here, forgetting the prisoners, the torture, and the lack of freedom.”

Other Venezuelans who have stood up to Maduro share this cynicism.

“This measure seeks to associate Maduro’s image with well-being and joy in an attempt to monopolize popular sentiment,” Miguel Ángel Martín, the former president of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, currently exiled in the United States, told Christianity Today.

Though Maduro declared victory in the July 28 elections, the opposition has accused him of election fraud, a claim shared by foreign observers and the United States. The government has arrested at least 1,300 people who protested the results. The opposition has also blamed state security for sanctioning the deaths of at least 21 people.

To political unrest, social and economic problems have been added. According to a survey from the Universidade Católica Andrés Bello, 50.5% of Venezuela’s population lives in extreme poverty, despite being home to the biggest oil reserves in the world. Persistent crises have triggered an intense wave of migration. The United Nations estimates that 7.7 million Venezuelans currently live abroad. (The in-country population is 29.4 million.)

“The intention of forcing a Christmas atmosphere seeks to empty the meaning that the church gives to this celebration of content and tries to replace it, presenting it as a superficial palliative in the face of social discontent,” saidTeresa Flores, director of the Observatory of Religious Freedom for Latin America, based in Lima, Peru.

But Ender Urribarrí, who pastors Encuentro con Dios church in Colonia Tovar, a town located 60 kilometers east of Caracas, sees an extended opportunity for evangelism.

“I wish it were not just three months that Christmas was celebrated,” he said, “but all year round.”

Hernán Restrepo is a Colombian journalist who lives in Bogotá. Since 2021, he has managed the social media accounts of Christianity Today in Spanish.

- More from Hernán Restrepo

Theology

Wicked or Misunderstood?

The Bulletin

A conversation with Beth Moore about UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione and the nature of sin.

UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect Luigi Mangione being led into the courthouse for an extradition hearing.

Jeff Swensen / Stringer / Getty

Each week on The Bulletin, Russell Moore, Mike Cosper, and Clarissa Moll discuss the media’s top headlines—the people, events, and issues that are shaping our world. In this conversation, The Bulletin talks with best-selling author and Bible teacher Beth Moore about the new hit movie musical Wicked and the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the suspected murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Are the wicked truly evil or simply misunderstood?

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full episode.

Clarissa Moll: When it comes to these headlines [about the acquittal of Daniel Penny and the arrest of Luigi Mangione], the central question of Wicked has been applied over and over. Were these men inherently wicked, or did the situation in which they found themselves compel them to wickedness? Is this a fair question, or is it a false dichotomy? Are we actually wicked, or is wickedness thrust upon us?

Beth Moore: I’m thinking off the top of my head of Psalm 51: “In sin my mother conceived me.” In other words, we are born into wickedness by nature. Even in the very beginning of Ephesians 2 is that we have all been “children of wrath.”

“Wrath” is a strong, strong word. So we would, biblically speaking, very much believe that we were born with a very sinful nature, yes. Now, can circumstances take that and make it something that becomes overwhelming to us and turn us into something that we might never have otherwise been? That’s another matter, and for much greater discussion.

CM: In the case of Luigi Mangione, folks have responded very powerfully to the story of the manhunt. For example, while some were condemning him as a cold-blooded killer, others have been flooding the Macy’s website to buy his look-alike Levi’s jacket and lauding him as a folk hero.

While there is clarity mounting that he might be the shooter, people are really struggling with seeing this young man as wicked. Why do you think so many people respond to a complicated story like this and try to make it simpler, perhaps, than it actually is?

BM: Right now, it would be hard to sever that response from what our culture is like. In the politicization of absolutely everything, I’d have trouble trusting that it is the heart of what would be normal, rational judgment. There might be side taking otherwise, but I’m talking about the kind of side taking we’re seeing right now. I think it is very much a part of this present mood that we’re in.

Russell Moore: I also think there’s a line here. You think about the way the Bible talks about us as both created and fallen. If you think about the pop culture version of it—the Wicked movie and, before that, John Gardner’s Grendel and other things—it would take villains and put them in the protagonist role to show, kind of, this is how that person developed into this.

Something about that is, I think, embedded in the way God made us to see even villains as created in the image of God. But another part of it I think is sort of cynical and self-justifying when it becomes this attitude that, Well, we’re all just as wicked as we can possibly be.

We’re just pretending in various ways. So you can’t expect anything other than just the most base motives in people, which then gives me the justification to think, I’ve got to be just as wicked as the next person if I’m going to survive. I mean, that’s a mindset you see in so many different aspects of American life right now.

Mike Cosper: It’s interesting. I see it a little differently. The other way to think about it is that Wicked in particular is a product of a therapeutic culture. The dangerous message of Wicked is that once you understand somebody’s origin story, you realize that the evil they do is a result of their victim status.

At our core, at our inmost being, we’re creatures who are fallen and prone to sin. And the question then becomes what we do about our agency. I think there’s an aspect of these narratives—whether it’s about the shooter, whether it’s about Wicked—it robs people of agency.

Because it says, Well, they do these evil things because of what’s happened to them, because of where they’ve come from, rather than saying, I don’t care where you came from; you don’t shoot somebody because you’re unhappy with your health care coverage. That’s evil. There are lines we do not cross in civil society. And that seems to be lost a bit in this conversation.

RM: And it’s powerful because it is partly right. There are many situations where I will say, I don’t approve of what that person is doing, but I get it. It makes me think of when Joseph is receiving his brothers at the end of Genesis and he forgives them and says, You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

And many lives have been saved. Only Joseph can say that. The brothers can’t say that. The brothers can’t say, Well, in the end it all worked out, and kind of hand over their agency. And so I think there’s a sense in which we do need to look at people and say, in a lot of instances, they’re picking up what they learned.

We do need to understand that as we try to help them and disciple them, but never in a way that says you’re a victim of fate.

MC: And for every story of somebody who suffered something terrible and then did something terrible as a result, there are plenty of stories of people who suffered unimaginable suffering, and out of that experience, their contributions to the world were constructive and good and loving and for the common good, for human flourishing.

CM: When we think about the outside world, we have to consider that our culture does not operate according to the standards of the Lord, that it does not perceive sin the way we perceive sin. Taking this conversation into the church, though, we often tend to want to say as a method of defense that leaders are misunderstood. When we look at a pastor who maybe is an excellent speaker, we’re willing to push aside the things we don’t care for about him or explain them as, Well, he’s misunderstood, and that’s why he gets angry easily, without evaluating him with the clarity we might use to look at someone in the headlines.

BM: Yes, we have seen this so clearly. In recent years, it’s always been there, but this is not a recent thing. Social media just puts it out in front of us. If someone is particularly gifted, we sometimes act is if that means that in all areas of their lives, they are overtaken by the Spirit. In other words, if they can speak with what appears to us to be the anointing, we assume that every part of their life is like that. We’ve got to know better than that. There is the community life of the saints where there has to be the involvement of others close around us, where there is no elevation of leaders above the community.

I am already flagging when there is a leader who is unreachable, when there is a leader who is so authoritarian that no one will ever challenge them. I’m like, Listen, we might admire someone we cannot question, but we cannot love someone we cannot question. I truly believe that—we will never be able to trust someone we can’t question.

RM: There’s a kind of cynicism that assumes that if we only knew the real story, we would know that everyone is a villain and is out to get something. So there’s that kind of cynicism that people are trying to counteract, and there are bad actors who will use that. There are people who will exploit that.

CM: What would you say to the listener who says, I understand that I shouldn’t give the knee-jerk reaction on social media, but I’m nervous about being considered judgy? How can Christians practice real biblical discernment and avoid the twin dangers of moral relativism on the one side—the sort of Wicked mentality—and then simplistic judgment?

BM: I love where Hebrews says that we grow into maturity where we can distinguish between good and evil. It hits me profoundly because it’s conveying that discernment is something that comes with maturity—that in our more childish distinguishing, it’s like, This is all good. This is all evil—but as we mature in the faith, it’s a little more complex than that. It is a matter of discerning, by way of the Holy Spirit within us.

RM: It’s kind of unique how that requires both maturity and childlikeness at the same time. And so you’ve got that kind of language in Hebrews. You also have Solomon when he’s asking for wisdom: I am but a little child not knowing how to go in or to go out. So with the wisdom that’s granted to him, he’s able to deal with that situation with the two mothers who have a dispute over the child.

He’s able to understand enough about human nature, about what it means to be a person, to be able to ask the right kinds of questions to get to a discovery of what’s really going on with that person. We’re not always going to know. And so it’s important to have that sense of I’m not infallible in my understanding of somebody else’s heart. God is, and so there’s a limit to how much I can see and how much I can know.

Church Life

The Nine Days of Filipino Christmas

Samson Uytanlet

Some Protestants observe the Catholic tradition of Simbang Gabi, predawn services in the days leading up to Christmas.

Jam Sta Rosa / Getty

In the Philippines, Christmas starts in September with temperatures in the mid-80s (30 degrees Celsius).

The island nation with a strong Christian heritage celebrates the four-month holiday with street vendors selling bibingka (baked coconut rice cakes) and puto bumbong (purple rice cakes), colorful parol (ornaments representing the star of Bethlehem) hanging outside shops and homes, and people crooning Jose Mari Chan’s classic hit “Christmas in Our Hearts.”

For Catholics, who make up nearly 80 percent of the Filipino population, another uniquely Filipino Christmas tradition is the practice of Simbang Gabi, nine days of masses at dawn through Christmas Eve. The novena is held in honor of the Virgin Mary as she anticipates the birth of Jesus and is considered an opportunity for Catholics to ask for divine favors.

Some Protestant churches in the Philippines have adapted the tradition of Simbang Gabi in their Christmas celebrations by focusing on Jesus’ arrival rather than the expectant Mary. For three Methodist groups, Simbang Gabi is observed denomination wide. Other denominations, such as the Philippine Brethren Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Presbyterian Church of the Philippines, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance of the Philippines, give local churches autonomy over whether to practice it or not.

During the Philippines’ 300 years under Spanish rule (1565–1898), the Roman Catholic Church practiced Misa de Aguinaldo(Gift Mass), another name for Simbang Gabi, according to parish priest Virgilio B. Hernandez. Beginning on December 16, Catholics gathered as early as 4 a.m. so that farmers could attend the services before working in their fields. Simbang Gabi then culminated with the Panuluyan(lodging place), a dramatization of Joseph and Mary entering the stable, on the morning of December 24.

On Christmas Eve, families would gather for a meal with hamon de bola (spherical honey-cured ham) and quezo de bola (spherical cheese), along with buko (young coconut) salad and seasonal castañas (chestnuts).

Traditionally, Catholic churches in the Philippines have conducted these masses uniformly down to the songs that are sung, according to Hernandez. In recent years, however, the rise in urbanization has led some congregations to meet in the evening instead of at dawn and, out of convenience, hold Mass in malls instead of churches.

From the time Protestantism entered the Philippines in the early 20th century with the arrival of Americans, some denominations such as the United Methodist Church (UMC) have carried on the practice of Simbang Gabi. Unlike Catholic churches, the UMC’s services are less formal and follow the format of a midweek service, said Adonis Abelard Gorospe, pastor of St. John United Methodist Church in Quezon City. Each service ends with the congregation eating a breakfast of pandesal (bread roll) and coffee before starting their workdays.

The nine-day worship service allows more members to participate, Gorospe noted, as some are asked to preach, lead in singing, and prepare food.

“It’s a bonding time for the members,” Gorospe said. “Everyone looks forward to it because they meet with their friends and relatives and they can serve together.”

Another Methodist denomination, Iglesia Evangelica Metodista en las Islas Filipinas (IEMELIF), likely started practicing Simbang Gabi in the 1920s, said Roland Gernale Sebastian, pastor of Melchora Aquino IEMELIF Church in Quezon City.

Pastors of the local churches write the homilies based on assigned themes and passages. Guest pastors or lay leaders are also encouraged to preach at this time. A growing number of IEMELIF churches now conduct services in the evening after parishioners leave work for the day.

On the last day of Simbang Gabi, Christmas Eve, churches hold parties with food, presents, and singing. Members give gifts of appreciation to their pastors and pastoral staff.

Courtesy of IRMEC

Members of an IRMEC church gather for Simbang Gabi.

The I Am Redeemer and Master Evangelical Church (IRMEC), an offshoot of IEMELIF, celebrates a shortened version of Simbang Gabi that lasts four to six nights and focuses on evangelism, according to the IRMEC district superintendent of Bulacan, Norberto Gole Cruz.

As with the other churches, IRMEC’s Simbang Gabi services are a time for the congregations to share meals and show appreciation to their pastors. In addition, they hold a raffle and put on Nativity plays. While some attend the services for the festivities, “the majority join because they are looking to be fed spiritually through the messages,” Cruz said. “Preachers make it their aim to prepare messages that would meet the spiritual needs of the congregation.”

Meanwhile, other Protestant churches shy away from observing Simbang Gabi. James Bryner Chu, pastor of Pilgrim Community Church in Quezon City, which belongs to the International Presbyterian Church (IPC), noted that they follow the regulative principle of worship, meaning that corporate worship must be based on specific directions from Scripture. Thus, Simbang Gabi is not considered part of their tradition.

Others avoid the practice because it was intended as a devotion to Mary. Benzon Shih Sy, pastor of the Quezon City Evangelical Church, who said he belongs to “an orthodox and reformed faith,” sees the practice as unscriptural.

Some Protestants push back against the practice, Gorospe said, because they want to avoid association with the folk belief that the Simbang Gabi novena(or nine days of prayer) guarantees the petitioner that their prayers will be answered.

Yet Gorospe noted that other Filipino Christmas traditions, like the hanging of the parol or the display of the belen (manger scene), also have Catholic origins.

Evangelicals can bring new significance to the tradition by focusing on the expectant joy of our incarnate Savior, said Laurence Gatawa, president of the PTS College and Advanced Studies (formerly the Presbyterian Theological Seminary). Gatawa also celebrates Simbang Gabi with the congregation he pastors, the Emmanuel Christian Church in Cavite.

“We want to remind the people that the Christian life is joyful, despite the sorrows and challenges in life,” Gatawa said. “We want to emphasize that we can have joy and a positive outlook in life, full of thanksgiving and worship. We can join all Christians in the celebration.”

- More from Samson Uytanlet

Books

Review

The Virgin Birth Is More Than an Incredible Occurrence

Patrick Schreiner

We’re eager to ask whether it could have happened. We shouldn’t forget to ask what it means.

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by CT

For the last 100 years, conversation around the Virgin Birth has centered on whether it actually happened. Could Mary really have had a child without a previous sexual union? Maybe, the thinking went, ancient people were simply more gullible in the face of stories like these.

While the historicity of the Virgin Birth is an important question, there are others worth asking. In his new book Conceived by the Holy Spirit: The Virgin Birth in Scripture and Theology, Rhyne Putman analyzes some of the most pivotal: Did the Virgin Birth need to happen? What if it hadn’t? And why does it matter today?

Not a lot of books exist on this topic from an evangelical perspective. But Putman, a professor at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, has provided a helpful overview.

In part 1, Putnam carefully examines the birth narratives of Jesus in the Gospels. Throughout this section, he responds to various objections critics have raised. Some have claimed, for instance, that the notion of the Virgin Birth came from pagan mythology. Some have posited that Mary’s place in the narrative of Jesus’ birth describes a metaphorical rather than a biological reality. Other challenges to the biblical accounts ask whether God violated Mary’s sovereignty, or whether the Virgin Birth contradicts the church’s belief that Jesus existed as God’s eternally begotten Son before his incarnation.

In part 2, Putnam discusses the theological meaning and implications of the Virgin Birth. Here, he puts this doctrine into conversation with others, considering how it bears on subjects like Creation, the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, his status as the Second Adam, and his second coming. Putnam closes with two appendices: one that proposes a “harmony” of the biblical nativity stories and another that evaluates traditional Catholic beliefs about Mary.

My favorite parts of the book concern the significance of the Virgin Birth. Putman argues that it was fitting for Jesus to come to earth in this way even if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

There are three reasons for this. First, the Virgin Birth is fitting because it reveals that Jesus is truly human as well as truly divine. Usually, when we think of the Virgin Birth, we emphasize the improbability of a virgin giving birth while downplaying the birth itself. However, treasures reside in both terms. The Virgin Birth is certainly amazing because Jesus was born of a virgin, but it’s equally amazing that God himself was born.

Early Christian heresies denied that Jesus was born. The Docetists, for instance, taught that Jesus was only a spirit being. The church responded by affirming that Jesus was truly and fully human and was born like any other human (except for the virgin part). Jesus took his flesh from Mary, and thus he could truly thirst, be tempted, and suffer. The second person of the Trinity descended from David and was born according to his flesh.

Second, the Virgin Birth is fitting because it signals Jesus’ uniqueness. It indicates that Jesus, though fully human, is unlike every other human being. He is naturally the Son of God but adopted a human father for himself in Joseph. The Virgin Birth displays Jesus, in the words of the Nicene Creed, as “God from God, Light from Light.”

Jesus’ existence did not begin when human sperm fertilized a human egg. In fact, Jesus did not ever begin to exist, since he has existed from before the creation of the world (John 1:1–3; Col. 1:15–17). The Virgin Birth bears witness to the fact that Jesus’ life didn’t begin at conception like ours.

Third, the Virgin Birth is fitting because it signals that we are saved by grace alone. Jesus’ coming was not the result of human ingenuity or the forethought of Israel. Like Mary and Joseph, we are simply recipients of God’s favor and grace. It was God’s action that caused Jesus to be born, not the grand plan of humanity. This reminds us that our salvation is based on God’s initiative. We didn’t orchestrate our salvation; it was wrought by God.

If the Virgin Birth is fitting in all these ways, then what we celebrate at Christmas is not simply an interesting factoid we can marvel at until the novelty wears off. Nor is it something that should cause embarrassment. Rather, the Virgin Birth contains the story of salvation. This miraculous event signals who Jesus is and how he will save us. It touches, then, on core Christian convictions.

I can’t think of many comprehensive books on the Virgin Birth, and Putnam’s volume is a wonderful resource to help people think more carefully about this essential event. (Amy Peeler’s book Women and the Gender of God touches on some of the same subjects, but her focus is narrower.)

Still, there are two aspects of Conceived by the Holy Spirit that I would alter. Putnam spends more time on the scriptural interpretation of the Virgin Birth (249 pages) than on the theology it communicates (92 pages). I think he should have flipped this ratio, or perhaps integrated these subjects more naturally. There are plenty of good biblical commentaries that walk readers through the narratives of Christ’s incarnation; not as many present a comprehensive theology of the Virgin Birth.

Additionally, by separating biblical interpretation from theology, Putman risks furthering the flawed impression that these are separate subjects. I’m convinced that biblical scholars and theologians alike should exemplify how the work of interpreting Scripture includes theological judgment as a matter of course.

Additionally, I think Putnam could have devoted more than an appendix to Marian dogmas within Catholicism. His discussion is quite brief, leaving little room to unpack the most controversial Catholic claims regarding her immaculate conception (the belief that she was born apart from Original Sin), her perpetual virginity, her bodily assumption to heaven immediately after death, her intercession before God, and her presence in various icons.

For example, Putman might have interacted with a recent contribution to Marian theology by Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary: Unveiling the Mother of the Messiah, which attempts to ground the Catholic position in typological arguments from Scripture. Such engagement might fall outside the scope of the book as Putman envisioned it. But I think readers would benefit from added attention to Marian points of division between Catholics and Protestants.

Ultimately, Putnam aims to encourage our faith, especially during Advent season, by having us carefully consider the Virgin Birth. Contrary to popular misconceptions, having faith doesn’t mean believing that which is opposed to evidence. Faith seeks out evidence.

If you carefully examine the scriptural texts on events like the Virgin Birth or even the Resurrection, you’ll notice that ancient people also had a hard time admitting such things could happen. Mary asks questions of the angel who announced she would give birth to Jesus. Joseph assumes Mary’s infidelity until an angel sets him straight. Thomas doubts the truth of Jesus’ resurrection until he sees and touches his wounds. Ancient people affirmed natural laws, but they could be convinced of realities beyond nature.

Faith, then, allows us to open ourselves up to what might initially seem unbelievable. As theologian Geerhardus Vos once wrote in his classic study Biblical Theology, “Religious belief exists not in last analysis on what we can prove, but on the fact of God having declared it to be so.”

Abraham believed in his old age that he would become the father of many nations. His hope in God enabled him to believe this “against all hope” (Rom. 4:18). We must believe, like Abraham, that God can do what seems beyond belief. When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate God’s supernatural power not only to enter our world as a child but also to bring new life to those under death’s curse.

Patrick Schreiner is associate professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Transfiguration of Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Reading.

- More from Patrick Schreiner

Church Life

Why Armenian Christians Recall Noah’s Ark in December

Jayson Casper

The biblical account of the Flood resonates with a persecuted church born near Mount Ararat.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

If you want a break from Santa this December, try Hagop instead, an Armenian tradition that dates back as far as Old Saint Nick.

Santa Claus, the modern icon of Christmas, is derived from traditions associated with Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop of Greek descent who was known for giving gifts. He is also mentioned among the church fathers at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, for which the Nicene Creed is named.

If Nicholas was indeed at the council, he may have met Saint Hagop, who was also reputedly there. English speakers refer to him as Jacob of Nisibis, though in the Armenian language both Jacob the biblical patriarch and the Nicene saint are called Hagop. He is believed to have been a relative of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, who converted the Armenian king to Christ in circa AD 301. As a result, Armenia became the world’s first Christian nation.

Whereas Nicholas eventually became a secular stand-in for Jesus, Hagop is intimately associated with Noah. The Armenian Apostolic Church commemorates Saint Hagop in the second week of December—not because of any connection to Christmas (which its churches celebrate on January 6), but for his reputed role in demonstrating the historicity of Noah’s ark.

Many children delighted by tales of the animals that boarded the ark later turn skeptical, questioning the reliability of this miraculous story. But doubt about the Flood is nothing new. Back in the fourth century, Hagop heard reports that the local population did not believe the biblical account of Noah. A wandering ascetic, he undertook his own search for evidence and journeyed to Mount Ararat.

According to tradition, an angel appeared to Hagop in his sleep as he rested near the mountain peak and left a wooden fragment of Noah’s vessel by his side. Today, it is preserved within a reliquary dating to 1698, lying below an ornate gold cross and housed in Armenia’s St. Etchmiadzin Cathedral.

For many Western audiences, the story of Noah recalls little more than flannelgraph cutouts from Sunday school. But for Armenians, he is a national ancestor and figure of transcendent meaning. In fact, one of Armenia’s top soccer clubs is named FC Noah, and recently played a match against the English powerhouse Chelsea FC.

CT spoke with four Armenians to understand more fully Noah’s importance to their people, whether living beneath the shadows of Mount Ararat in the Caucasus Mountains or in the extensive Armenian diaspora. Each one shared memories of childhood, perspectives on tradition, and lessons from Noah for Christian faith today.

Hrayr Jebejian

Armenian general secretary of the Bible Society of the Gulf, headquartered in Cyprus and resident in Kuwait

The story of Noah and the ark fascinated me when I was a child growing up in the Armenian Evangelical Church. The fact that the ark landed on Mount Ararat gave us a special sense of pride as Armenians, that our land is mentioned in the Bible. We are an ancient people.

As we grew older, for some the sense of wonder turned into skepticism: How did the animals march two by two, and was the Flood truly worldwide? But as Armenians, we never wondered if it was a myth or a fairy tale—it was part of the Bible. And as evangelicals, the Bible is the essence of our faith and inspired by God.

It is different with Saint Hagop. Many friends are named after him, and we give them special greetings on his ecclesial holiday. But we treat everything outside of the Bible as tradition. We respect his importance in our Armenian heritage, but we do not consider his story within our doctrinal teaching. From our youth, we learned to go straight to our heavenly Father with our prayers.

As adults, however, we see the history of our people in the story of Noah. The Armenian genocide of 1915 was a flood, but God saved us and landed us again at Mount Ararat. The first Republic of Armenia was subsumed into the Soviet Union, but we survived, and the modern republic represents us today. These floods were of a different kind and context; we do not say they came from God. But as with Noah, God gave us new life as a people.

This is true in the diaspora as well. My family lost 25 members in the genocide that killed 1.5 million Armenians overall. Thousands went to the Levant, others to the West. But we viewed Beirut as a kind of Mount Ararat. My grandparents, displaced from Turkey, found new life in Lebanon.

In fact, our history has been full of floods—ups and downs—as our lands were invaded by Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Russians, and others. And the flood continues today, as Azerbaijan has ethnically cleansed Armenians from our ancient territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which we call Artsakh. We do not see ourselves as righteous, as Noah is called in Scripture. Yet even in writing this contribution today, I give evidence that God—as he did with the ark—has preserved us as a people.

Paul Haidostian

President of the Lebanon-based Haigazian University and the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East

I heard the story of Noah as a very young child in Sunday school, accompanied by the images of a large wooden boat and animals marching in, two by two. The lesson was that we live in a world that departs from God, who nonetheless calls us to safety as we await deliverance. The dove represented the good news of salvation.

Noah, the ark, and the Flood reflect an actual historical event. But our perspective of the scriptural narrative has evolved alongside developments in our understanding of God and humanity. We should not audit history as we do in accounting, nor can we. Yet while the Bible is not to be read as a classroom textbook of history, we should be humble enough to believe that as the Word of God, it includes concrete details of the history of human sin and God’s grace—and the story of the Flood is one illustrative aspect of that theme.

Chronicling human civilization is a subjective endeavor, and the biblical accounts of many events may be as well. As a university president and church minister, I am primarily interested in their meaning and how this connects with our Armenian self-understanding.

Mount Ararat is mentioned in the earliest documents of Armenian history. The Bible speaks of it in the plural, and our ancient ancestors lived in the regions surrounding its peaks. Its monumental presence above the fields below is a source of great strength, hope, and pride for the Armenian nation.

Noah, meanwhile, represents credibility, leadership, and obedience to God, along with the promise that God hears the prayers of the righteous. He will be on our side if we remain true to his goodness. Yet since we believe that the ark rested on a mountain that is now on the Turkish side of the border, the Noah story also recalls the loss of our land and the Armenian genocide. This is a constant reminder of continued injustice, in contrast to the promises of God for deliverance.

As evangelicals, we do not have differences with the Orthodox in these matters. Perhaps we see more lessons about the need for personal piety. But in the face of Armenian suffering over many centuries, including the ethnic cleansing of our people from Turkey and Nagorno-Karabakh, the biblical story reminds us all to respond through faithful Christian witness. And like Noah before the Flood, we patiently await the justice of the Lord.

Arthur Aghajanian

Founder of Contemplatives in Conversation and member of the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art

The significance of Noah for Armenians is rooted in the notion of sacred land; we revere Mount Ararat as a symbol of resilience and God’s favor. But as an American Armenian, I grew up disconnected from much of its biblical context, even though my family belonged to a local Armenian Apostolic church. And over the years, despite enthralling Sunday school stories and Protestant church sermons, Noah’s ark remained for me no more than a colorful episode in the grand narrative of the Old Testament, like that of David and Goliath or Jonah and the whale. Simply fantastical, the story seemed impossible to interpret literally and was therefore easy to dismiss.

It wasn’t until I began visiting my ancestral homeland and studying Armenian Christianity that the story of Noah evolved beyond a childhood tale.

Two fifth-century foundational texts, The History of Agathangelos and Movses Khorenatsi’s The History of the Armenians, present the Flood as a literal event. Yet for me, the importance of the ark lies not in its historical plausibility but in its mythic resonance. Myths convey spiritual truths and provide guidance in times of despair, along with rites and rituals that offer strength and purpose when the resources of the rational mind fall short.

The fourth-century church father Eusebius of Caesarea connected Noah to the Armenians through his great-grandson Togarmah, father of the nation’s ancient founder, Hayk. But on the mythical level, the integration of these figures into a biblical ancestry is the creative adaptation of a sacred lineage meant to distinguish Armenia from its neighbors. As a people whose history involves displacement and the struggle to survive, this gives us a profound sense of continuity and belonging.

The Apostolic Church affirms the ark’s historical reality while also embracing its mythic significance, which is not contradictory. This multidimensional lens infuses the received text with traditions that reach far beyond the literal. Noah’s journey then becomes an allegory of salvation, spiritual renewal, and rebirth after catastrophe. The Flood becomes a metaphor for purification and the ark a symbol of spiritual refuge, as even our ecclesial architecture envisages the church as a ship that embodies the journey of faith. Others have posited that the distinctive, pointed dome of the Armenian church may be a reference to Mount Ararat itself.

And why shouldn’t it be? The ark’s arrival imbued the mountain with holiness, and from that sacred foundation, Armenian churches rose. Built from the very earth touched by this divine legacy, they continue to sustain the spirit of Armenian identity today.

Christine Tanielian

Lebanon country director for the Jinishian Memorial Association, dedicated to poverty alleviation and spiritual support for the local Armenian community

Since I grew up within the Armenian Apostolic Church, the biblical story of Noah’s ark has always held profound significance for me. It is an integral part of our Christian Armenian identity, a cherished narrative passed down through generations. In our community, the story of the ark is often recounted when Mount Ararat is mentioned, for the two are inseparable in our collective consciousness.

Even though Mount Ararat now falls under the jurisdiction of Turkey, it remains a symbol of inspiration and aspiration for Armenians. The story of the ark is deeply embedded in our heritage, representing a divine privilege in hosting the vessel that carried Noah’s family. The region at the foot of the mountain, known as Nakhchivan, translates to “First Descent,” reflecting its connection to Noah’s journey. This area is now within Azerbaijan, but many hope our nation can regain sovereignty over the biblical lands within historic Armenia.

One of the major feasts of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Vardavar, celebrates this connection through the tradition of sprinkling—and sometimes drenching—each other with water. Mentioned in the book Avandapatum (The Book of Preserving Armenian Traditions), this practice was initiated by Noah after the ark’s descent for future generations to remember God’s preservation. Commemorated each July, Vardavar was later associated with the Transfiguration of Christ.

The landing of Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat takes on even greater significance when viewed in the context of other pivotal events. The Armenian church teaches that the land of Ararat, which became the cradle of humankind, was later blessed by the teachings of Christ’s disciples, Saints Thaddeus and Bartholomew. Tradition states that Thaddeus came to Armenia in AD 43, with Bartholomew arriving in AD 66. Both are reputed to have been martyred in Armenia, and monasteries were established for each, respectively in northern Iran and southeastern Turkey—which were then part of our historical kingdom.

Unlike some Christian communities that question the historicity of Noah’s ark, the Armenian church, along with its sister Oriental Orthodox denominations, upholds it as an undeniable truth, affirmed by Jesus Christ in Matthew 24. Symbolizing Noah’s unwavering faith and closeness to God, it represents the salvation of the one human family spared from the Flood—an enduring metaphor for eternal life. Just as the ark withstood the storm and bore its passengers to safety, our faith teaches that salvation comes only through Christ and our membership in the new ark—the church—which leads us from life to Life.

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Books

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CT Editors

A conversation with Russell Moore, Book of the Year winner Gavin Ortlund, and Award of Merit winner Brad East.

Join Christianity Today editor-in-chief Russell Moore and other CT editors in celebration of our annual Book Awards.

Hear from this year’s Book of the Year winner Gavin Ortlund (What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church) and Award of Merit winner Brad East (Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry) about the inspiration behind their books and the big ideas that animate them as they answer questions from CT staff and subscribers.

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Theology

Glory to God in the Highest Calling

Sandra Glahn and Seana Scott

Motherhood is honorable, but being a disciple of Jesus is every woman’s primary biblical vocation.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Henryk Siemiradzki

WikiMedia Commons

One Sunday when my son was a baby, a woman approached me (Seana) at church. I dreamed of changing the world for Jesus, but I had exchanged traveling the globe as a missionary for perpetually changing diapers and scrubbing dishes in the suburbs. The woman declared, “I am so glad you are staying home. Motherhood is your highest calling.”

At the time, this felt true—I’d left a career I loved to stay home with my child. Yet this woman had seemed to shrink all my gifting and capacity for serving Christ into one role and season of life. And sadly, I held on to that comment as if it had come from the mouth of God. So when motherhood with a neurodiverse child failed to fulfill my longing for wholeness (as some Christian parenting books taught me it would), I felt I was failing both as a woman and as a Christian.

Early on in my married years, I (Sandra) identified more with Ramah, convulsing over the innocents that Herod ordered killed, than with the little town of Bethlehem. For ten Christmases, infertility and multiple pregnancy losses attuned my heart to “Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” (Jer. 31:15–22; Matt. 2:16–18).

My husband and I had adoptions fall through on December 22—two years in a row. So amid the aroma of gingerbread and the sight of twinkling lights, we shut the door to the nursery and tiptoed away, exchanging dreams for empty arms. The deepest pain of all came from my failure to live out what I perceived then as God’s highest calling for every woman: motherhood.

And after the successful adoption of our daughter, who is now a mom herself, I wore the hat of a work-from-home mom all through her childhood. As my daughter grew, I needed to revisit where and why I owned the view that God had only a maternal vision for godly womanhood.

Over the years, the two of us—a work-from-home mom of three and a seminary professor and grandmother—wrestled with these important questions: Is motherhood truly every Christian woman’s highest calling? How did Christ view motherhood? Was motherhood the highest calling for women in the early church? If motherhood isn’t a woman’s highest calling, what is?

In the process, we’ve read stories of ancient Christian women and explored how the biblical ideal of womanhood differs from some of the heralded visions of motherhood in modern evangelicalism. And what we found was that both the Scriptures and early church history can help realign some of our off-kilter views about a Christian woman’s “highest calling” in the modern church.

Let’s start with the universal female ancestor, Eve, whom the Bible hails as “the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20). In the first chapters of the Genesis narrative, we see how God creates our first parents to rule together and to fill the earth with image-bearing worshipers of God (Gen. 1:28). In this way, male and female humans shared the same mandates of ruling and multiplying.

Although parenthood was part of how Adam and Eve were meant to glorify God and partner together to multiply image bearers, nowhere in these early chapters of Genesis do we find language that suggests having children is a woman’s highest good. And in the New Testament, instead of finding a reiteration of the Genesis mandate to multiply humans, we find Christ issuing a similar mandate to multiply worshipers by making disciples (Matt. 28:18–20).

Now, let’s turn to the next most famous mother of all time, who birthed the God made flesh—Mary, “the God bearer,” as the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) called her.

In Luke’s gospel, the angel Gabriel visits Mary and prophesies that she would birth a child conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:30–33). Mary’s motherhood to Jesus throughout his life was an honor which played a vital role in the provision of salvation for all of humanity. It’s clear that God ordained parenthood, including Joseph’s role, as part of his miraculous plan.

As we continue following the story of Mary, we arrive at the scene where Jesus is grown and ministering to a crowd of people. As he is teaching about the kingdom and speaking against the legalism of the Pharisees, someone in the crowd interrupts him to say, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

In response, Jesus asks, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:47–50).

By this, some people might think Jesus is dismissing or putting his mother down. But by Jesus’ own definition, Mary would have been included in the group of family members he affirms. Did she not tell Gabriel, “I am the Lord’s servant. … May your word to me be fulfilled”? (Luke 1:38). Did she, of all people, not agree to align her will with God’s will?

Still, Jesus reframed what is most valuable in his kingdom, which is not a natural relationship bound by blood—though family can be one of God’s greatest blessings—but rather a mutual kinship defined by obedience to the will of God. When seen in this light, Mary’s calling of motherhood to Jesus was secondary to her ultimate belief in and obedience to her Son.

Then there’s the familiar story of Mary and Martha. Martha is doing all the traditionally feminine tasks, while her sister, Mary, sits at Jesus’s feet—taking the bodily stance of a first-century disciple before a rabbi. Martha accosts Mary, expecting her help with domestic tasks. But instead of sending her back to the kitchen, Jesus affirms Mary for choosing “what is better” (Luke 10:42).

From the Lord’s own example, we learn that the highest calling of any person—regardless of marital or parental status—is to follow him. And the highest calling of a disciple is not to make children but to make disciples (Matt. 28:18–20). Sometimes the two will overlap—for example, both of us have labored to disciple our children in the faith. But our disciple making extends far beyond hearth and home into building up the church to fulfill its calling as the body of Christ.

In her article for Christianity Today, Jeannie Whitlock writes about how her birthing a child reminded her of the church: “Our bodies are as crucial to God’s plan as Mary’s was. Like Mary, whether single, married, parents, or otherwise, we are called to bear Christ’s life into the world.”

Paul honors many women for their faithfulness to the gospel. Of the 29 people Paul greets in his letter to the Romans, 10 of them are women. We find names like Phoebe—deacon of the church in Cenchrea—and Prisca, or Priscilla (more about her later). We read about another Mary, who some believe refers to Mary Magdalene. There was also Junia, prominent among the apostles, and Julia, relative of Philologus. Tryphena and Tryphosa were workers in the Lord. Paul honors both Nereus’s sister and Rufus’s mother, who was like a mother to Paul.

Of these ten, only one was honored for her biological motherhood, yet all were recognized for their faithful service in the kingdom.

The apostle Paul encourages young widows to marry, to have children, and to manage their homes (1 Tim. 5:14). He writes that “it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9). He also honors the faithfulness of Timothy’s mother and grandmother (2 Tim. 1:5). Yet nowhere does he hint at marriage or motherhood being a woman’s highest calling. In fact, in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul famously encourages believers to remain single for the work of the gospel (1 Cor. 7:8–9). For him, “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21), and so it should be for us.

To understand how women in the first-century church viewed their callings, we turned to the Book of Acts. There, we found that when women appeared in the text, it wasn’t because of their roles as mothers but because of their gifts to strengthen the church. Priscilla, together with her husband Aquila, taught the skilled preacher Apollos (Acts 18:24–26). If Lydia, a prominent businesswoman, was a parent, the text does not mention it. Instead, she was recognized for leading her household to faith and for her hospitality (16:14–15). And the unmarried daughters of Phillip were mentioned for their exercise of the gift of prophesy (21:8–9).

If motherhood were truly a woman’s highest calling, wouldn’t we find the women of Scripture honored foremost for their motherhood rather than for their service to God’s kingdom? But that is not what we find. Yes, Christian women who married and had children were called to love and care for their families well, yet this work was seen not as their primary calling but part of fulfilling their ultimate call to follow Christ.

When Paul lists qualifications for an older woman to be placed on the “list of widows” cared for by the church, he advises she be “well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds” (1 Tim. 5:9–10). Of that list, only one point is related to motherhood.

Paul also doesn’t specify that the children the widows raise need to be biological (most children would be fully grown by the time their mothers reached the prescribed age of 60!). In fact, many of the widows who are “really in need and left all alone” are likely not biological mothers at all, since Paul says those with children and grandchildren should be cared for by their own families instead of the church (v. 5).

The apostolic instruction was so clear in this and other passages that male leaders in the early church acknowledged a legitimate office (clergy) for an “order of widows” in the Apostolic Consitutions, an ancient manual of church order used in the third century.

We see the same pattern of discipleship over motherhood in early church history as well. When a third-century noblewoman, Perpetua, became a Christian through the testimony of her servant, Felicitas, the authorities threw them into prison. The young Perpetua had an infant son, whom she was allowed to nurse in her cell. But when she was told to either recant her faith in Christ and worship the Roman gods or die and leave her child motherless, she chose death over her child because her highest allegiance was to Christ. While in prison with her, Felicitas gave birth and also chose to leave her infant in the care of her local Christian community rather than recant. Imagine the gut-wrenching pain of these decisions!

Perpetua’s anguished father even tried changing her mind multiple times, but she responded that only by devoting herself to Christ and his glory would she remain a “perpetual daughter.” If motherhood were truly a Christian woman’s highest calling in the early church, such heroines of our faith would or should have chosen their marriage and family over dying for Christ.

Such stories inform how I (Sandra) pray for and care for my daughter, her husband, and their daughter, and how I (Seana) find fresh perspective on motherhood with my kids still at home. Following Christ led our mothers of the faith into the arena, whereas following Christ leads me to my kitchen sink, laundry piles, and dinner discussions about the Marvel universe. Whatever arena God leads us into, we sacrifice ourselves to serve the Lord as our highest calling. And regardless of parental status, all women in our churches today can be nurturers of faith.

Especially in this holiday season, when we hear someone ask the dreaded question “When will you have children?” of our childless friend, will we intervene? When we see an exhausted mother, will we choose to say something besides “Motherhood is your highest calling”? Or when we feel we must bake dozens of cookies, attend every festival, and decorate the tree as if it’s on display at Magnolia Market to be the perfect mother—will we miss attuning our hearts to the presence of our Savior and serving him? Will we be like Martha, fixated on fulfilling all that our culture expects of us as women, or will we prioritize sitting at the feet of Jesus like Mary?

Ever since the angel’s announcement to Mary, following Christ has been every woman’s highest calling. And whether or not we end up being a wife or a mother, we can all become perpetual daughters of God.

Sandra Glahn is a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, president of the Evangelical Press Association, and the author or coauthor of more than 25 books. Seana Scott is a writer, speaker, and content creator passionate about disciple making.

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Culture

Advent Doesn’t Have to Make Sense

Christian Gonzalez Ho

As a curator, I love how contemporary art makes the world feel strange. So does the story of Jesus’ birth.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek

The first piece of art I bring my art-history students to see in the museum is a glass cube, four feet by four feet. Square sheets of glass infused with metal make the sculpture simultaneously reflective and transparent. The cube has a polarizing effect on visitors, inciting responses that range from confusion to curiosity to contempt. I invite my students: “Turn your attention to the cube. Observe it for two full minutes.” That’s an eternity to look at something that seems to resist meaning.

By the time the exercise has finished, the students can’t wait to talk about the work, the way it refracts color and light. Our conversation is punctuated by laughter. The two-minute exercise underscores art historian Jennifer Roberts’ adage: “Just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it.”

Looking at art is confusing. Looking at contemporary art can be especially confusing. That remains true for me in my work as an art historian and curator. But I’m also assured: When I persevere in being with a piece, it imparts the “eyes to see and ears to hear” it.

In the meantime, the confusion caused by good art is valuable. It challenges what we think we know and how we know it. It resists our authority, not by exerting equal and opposite force but by striking us obliquely, throwing us off balance. Good work defamiliarizes us; it makes the world feel strange, new, and other—sometimes frighteningly so.

Earlier this year, I started curating a show for my university’s museum, featuring Larry Bell’s glass cube among other works. I sensed that these pieces had something important to teach me about Advent, even though they aren’t illustrative like the Merode Altarpiece or even made by Christian artists.

Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Gift of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, and Mary Patricia Anderson Pence 2014.1.090

Larry Bell, Glass Cube, 1984, metal film on glass and chrome-plated brass 36 x 36 x 36 in.

Immured by two millennia of history, Advent often strikes me like that cube—complete, hermetically sealed, indifferent to my presence. But when I look into the glass, I find myself becoming remade in its reflection, startled by its alterity. It causes me to see myself, others, and the world differently. So too with Advent.

“Do not fear”: It’s one of the most repeated phrases in the accounts of the birth of Jesus. The angelic prologue is not followed by “I will explain everything to you” or “Everything will be okay.” Rather, it precedes unmitigated uncertainty. “Do not fear” was an invitation to see with the eyes of the Spirit rather than look with the logic of humanity. Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds were all invited to exchange their earthly understandings for the knowledge of eternity.

“Do not fear” has too often been translated into the American ideology of “happily ever after.” But in context, it was spoken by a terrifying, numinous being. It was a warning: Brace yourself to witness the eternal God in the form of a human baby.

Near the glass cube in the gallery hall loops a video made by the sculptor and dancer Nick Cave. His “sound suits” are composed of buttons, sequins, and fishing bobbers of all sizes, colors, and shapes, plus bundles of twigs and antique figurines. The result is a collection of surreal sculptural figures exploding with colors and textures, exuding an electric energy.

Nick Cave made his suits in response to the 1991 beating of Rodney King. “As a young Black male, you know, I was … feeling dismissed, discarded,” he reflected. “I was just trying to process that, and, you know, what does that mean. … I found myself one day in the park, and I looked down on the ground, and there was this twig. And, I don’t know, I just started collecting these twigs. … I sort of brought them back to the studio and started to build this object.” When he donned the suit, he noted its shimmering sounds and named it accordingly.

Discarded objects become joyful revelations. Despised, weak, and rejected materials become a strange conduit of hope, a profound illustration of 1 Corinthians 1:27. This is the kind of artwork that requires us to set aside our sensemaking—the suits are weird!—in order to see splendor.

Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune / Getty

Soundsuits by Nick Cave

During Advent, God defies earthly power and reason; he uses a baby born into dirty straw to bring about redemption. We are reminded that we must surrender our ways of looking and knowing if we hope to see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).

Of course, it’s not just contemporary art that can help us understand Advent more clearly. Canonical works have something to teach us, too, if we can get past the layers of commentary and critique and see them anew.

Caravaggio’s Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602) isn’t included in my show. (The “secular” version is in a German gallery.) And once again, it’s not a Nativity scene. But it always makes me think about Advent too.

It’s hard now to comprehend how disruptive Caravaggio’s work was; Nicolas Poussin, one of the greatest painters of the 17th century, went so far as to say that the Italian painter “came into the world to destroy painting.” In the Incredulity, Caravaggio offers up a surrealist representation of the interaction between Christ and Thomas, taken from John 20:24–27. Christ guides Thomas’s hand into the wound in his side.

WikiMedia Commons

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio

I find this the most moving, compelling metaphor for what happens when we begin to see an artwork—as we give our attention to it, we are drawn into its depth. Christ does not point the confused Thomas toward a scar that will satisfy his intellectual doubts. Instead, Thomas is being drawn into Christ’s side, toward a terrifying and gaping darkness.

In this version of the painting, Caravaggio renders the wound as neither past nor present but an eternal mystery—the lamb slain before the foundations of the earth, a God incarnated as a child.

My prayer is to see Advent as God does: to surrender to its wisdom and enter into its wonder.

Christian Gonzalez Ho is earning his PhD in art history at Stanford University and is the cofounder of Estuaries.

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Church Life

Advent Calls Us Out of Our Despair

Joni Eareckson Tada

Sitting in the dark helps us truly appreciate the light.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

As a child growing up in the Reformed Episcopal Church, the first day of Advent was lovely yet a little strange. At the evening church service, we sang the most mournful hymns, with lines like “O come, O come, Immanuel, / And ransom captive Israel.” They were always songs that moaned about our sin and captivity and, well, the hymns sounded gloomy.

And so did the Advent Scriptures—like this Advent reading from Isaiah 30:1, which says, “‘Woe to the obstinate children,’ declares the Lord, ‘to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin.’” I was only a little girl, but I thought this was a very odd way to begin the Christmas season.

How could we possibly appreciate the gift of Jesus Christ as Savior of our sins unless first—like right now—we take time to consider what we need to be saved from?

God wants us to understand the depth and breadth of our transgressions against him and come face to face with the utter lostness of our plight. He wants us to own our sad and sorry situation, understanding that our sin offends him and that his wrath is upon us. That without Jesus we are held captive by the Enemy.

I know what it’s like to be held captive by a sad and sorry situation. Decades ago, when a reckless dive left me paralyzed at the age of 17, my world went dark. My despair seemed like a bottomless pit. I was lost to life as I once knew it—riding horses, playing sports, and hiking through the beauty of God’s creation. But now? I felt enslaved by a life sentence of quadriplegia.  

Lying in the rehabilitation hospital after my injury, I wanted to end my life. Unable to do even that, I determined to end my life spiritually. I told my mother to shut the door and close the drapes. I wanted to shut out the light—shut out the whole world. I was lost.

Only when we appreciate the fact that we are lost can we fully celebrate being found. Perhaps that’s why James says, “Grieve, mourn, and wail” over your sin and God “will lift you up” (4:9,10). Only when we face our lostness can we say,

Joy to the world! The Lord is come.

Let earth receive her King.

Let every heart prepare him room,

and heaven and nature sing!

There is a method to the mystery of Advent. As each week of Advent progresses, the Scriptures—and the hymns—turn from somber to joyful. They become lighter, happier, and full of hope.

Even Scripture’s tone changes in the hope-filled call of Isaiah 40:3: “Prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” And in Isaiah 41:10, God says to the captives, “Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

The journey through Advent teaches us that we need Jesus. The Light of the World is coming to set the captive free.

As December 25 draws near, it is time to reflect on the manner in which we wait for Christ in the darkness of our captivity and respond to his eternal light.

We all have different responses to the incarnation of the Son of God. Are you searching? Wanting to draw closer? Or are you a little indifferent—almost uncaring that another Christmas is here already?

People likely responded similarly to Jesus’ arrival. Think of the answers people gave when they heard of what had happened in Bethlehem. There were many, like the innkeeper, who couldn’t have cared less. He had things to do, pots to wash, beds to change, stuff to pick up at the market.

Other people were cruel and even malicious, like Herod. He did everything in his power to stop the celebration, hunt down this so-called King, and put an end to the events God had already put into play.

Still others were frightened, even terrified—like the shepherds. It was only after the angels bent over backward to explain what was going on that their fears were put to rest.

Other people were curious, like the wise men—the searching types. They sincerely wanted to know what was going on. They sensed that something different, something important, had happened. And they knew, without even having the Bible to guide them, that it would mean a big change for the world.

Some people waited, like Simeon in the temple. Other people hoped, like Anna the prophetess. Still others like Mary and Joseph knew the answer to “What Child Is This?” and worshiped this little one sleeping in his mother’s arms.

Do you, like the innkeeper, just have too much to do to take time to truly celebrate Christ’s birth? Do you, like the innkeeper, just have too much to do to take time to truly celebrate Christ’s birth? Or like Mary and Joseph, do you take time to stare out from the gloom of your daily struggles to contemplate the brilliance of God’s perfect light?

The miracle that has illuminated human history also illuminates our weary hearts. The God who overflows the universe has poured himself into baby flesh. The high and holy who shrouds himself in his own dazzling light, whose chariot is the wind and fire, who crosses the heavens on storms and lightning, who shakes the foundation of the earth—he has entered history. Jesus has touched down on this chaotic, fragile, and noisy planet. You can hear his Christmas footsteps if you stop, look, listen, and be still.

Tonight, bundle up and head outside. Gaze at the stars and ponder: The same night sky overhead peered down on that Christmas miracle over 2,000 years ago. And then, if you can, sing, “All is calm, all is bright,” deep from your soul.

Because of that night in Bethlehem, the Spirit of the Lord has invaded your heart and taken up residence in your very soul. He boldly intruded into your sin, calling it what it is and challenging you to leave it behind.

So come, oh, come, Immanuel! This glorious Advent season, may we realize afresh our need of you, our Savior, and may we own our desperate condition. Only then can we truly have a very merry Christmas.

Joni Eareckson Tada is the founder and chief executive officer of Joni and Friends, a Christian nonprofit ministry committed to reaching and serving people with disabilities with practical help and the saving love of Jesus.

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Books

Excerpt

There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Proper’ Christmas Carol

Andrew Gant

As we learn from the surprising journeys of several holiday classics, the term defies easy definition.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Wikimedia Commons

One Christmas I found myself on London’s Oxford Street, admiring the twinkly decorations and listening to a piped version of “Jingle Bells.” In Chinese.

Our Christmas songs and carols turn up in some surprising places. They come from some surprising places, too. “Ding, Dong! Merrily on High” began life in a French Renaissance dancing manual. The tune of “Good King Wenceslas” was first published in Finland (to completely different words, about priests and virgins, mostly). Certainly, not all of them began life with their seasonal associations attached. Some were born to Christmas, some have achieved Christmas, and some have had Christmas thrust upon them.

For example, every Christmas, you will find yourself singing a song whose original words were about a dead cow and a delinquent ploughboy. The song was heard in a pub in Forest Green, Surrey, in the leafy commuter-belt fringes of London, by the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and it was sung to him by an old man called Mr. Garman. Vaughan Williams found a use for the tune a few years later when he was given the job of music editor of The English Hymnal. He wanted to include a poem by an American bishop called Phillips Brooks but didn’t know (or didn’t like) the tune that Brooks’s own church organist had written for this text back in Philadelphia. So Vaughan Williams helped himself to Mr. Garman’s folk song. The result—“O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

That’s not the only transatlantic immigrant into our English carol tradition. “We Three Kings” is American. So is “Away in a Manger,” which was first published in the journal of the Universalist movement in Boston. The editors confidently informed their readers that the poem is by Martin Luther. It isn’t: They made that up. They claimed they were celebrating the 400th anniversary of Luther’s birth. They weren’t: They made that up, too (or, at least, got the date wrong).

“O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Away in a Manger” are both sung today to different tunes on either side of the Atlantic. Many of our best-known carol texts have had many musical partners over the years. Different tunes sometimes represent differences between one denomination and another, or from one village to the next. Sometimes, a carol would be sung to one tune in church and to a different tune in the pub afterward.

Often, tunes turn up in different parts of the UK in slightly different versions. London gives us a good example. The composer John Stainer once heard “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” raggedly sung on the streets of the capital by a tattered band of Dickensian urchins. A little later, the folklorist Cecil Sharp collected the same tune in Cambridgeshire, England. The same, but different: Stainer’s tune has a different first note from Sharp’s. Somebody, once upon a time, traveled those 70 miles singing carols and got that bit wrong, or misremembered it, or changed it. That’s how an oral tradition works. There is no “correct” version. Even today, hymnbooks and carol collections don’t agree on the exact words of “Away in a Manger” or the precise rhythm of “Angels from the Realms of Glory.”

This ability to absorb influences from everywhere and nowhere produces memorable, and often rather odd, results. This partly explains why, for most of its history, the English carol has been an outdoor creature, kept tied up in the churchyard, not allowed to show its muddy face in church. For much of the 18th century, only one carol was permitted in worship, Nahum Tate’s “While Shepherds Watched.” Hymns like “O Come, All Ye Faithful” weren’t granted access until the first half of the 19th century. Even long after that, the idea of singing secular things like wassail songs cheek by jowl with holy writ would have been deeply shocking.

The word carol, too, has had many associations over the centuries. Shakespeare describes a pair of young lovers:

This carol they began that hour …

How that life was but a flower.

The carol sung by this lover and his lass is a springtime love song: It has nothing to do with Christmas, still less church. Some later composers like Gerald Finzi used the term carol for purely instrumental pieces with a songlike character.

Even in a sacred context, the carol was never exclusively a Christmas song—many collections include Easter carols and other varieties, and folk carols like “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” have many verses which cover the entire Christian story, often from the creation of the world to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If someone tries to tell you that such and such an item is or isn’t a proper carol, remember that, like so many catchall musical terms, this one really defies precise definition. It captures a huge range of types and influences. That’s part of its appeal.

Tracing the history of our carol tradition can be a bit like trying to sweep up all the stray pine needles when you’ve taken down your Christmas tree: There’s always a corner you find you haven’t reached. There’s really no such thing as the history of the English carol.

But there are phases and themes.

Folk and oral traditions provide the earliest sources. Folk carols appear in manuscript sources from the 13th century on. Familiar items such as “The Boar’s Head Carol” and the various holly-and-ivy carols start turning up in the 15th and early 16th centuries. The explosion of printing in the 16th century saw the advent of the broadside ballad: cheap editions of popular songs, including countless versions of carols and Christmas poems of all kinds, a practice that persisted well into the 19th century. Protestant hymnbooks and schoolbooks give us well-known songs such as “In Dulci Jubilo” and “Personent Hodie.” Eighteenth-century hymn singing added “While Shepherds Watched” and the lyrics of Isaac Watts and John and Charles Wesley.

Up to this point, most written versions of Christmas carols and hymns would have reached their performers as words only, leaving the singers to provide suitable tunes which they already knew and which happened to fit. Together with the vagaries of the oral tradition, the lack of any sort of copyright control, and the willingness of different religious traditions or even different villages to adopt their own local variant of a much-loved song, the idea of any sort of correct or standard version of many of our most traditional items gets thoroughly lost in the undergrowth. In “I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In),” the titular vessels have been recorded sailing to Newcastle and up the English Channel. Sometimes the passengers are Jesus and Mary, sometimes Mary and Joseph, occasionally the archangel Michael or the bodies of the three kings on their way to burial in Cologne Cathedral, and sometimes a group of pretty girls.

The intellectual currents of the 19th century brought two main influences to bear on the broad meanderings of our carol tradition. First, scholars and antiquarians started to take folk culture seriously and to collect and write down versions of songs and carols from manuscripts, ballad sheets, and their own encounters with carolers. As the 19th century moved into the 20th, their work was continued in important books edited and collected by, among many others, John Stainer, Sabine Baring-Gould, Lucy Broadwood, Cecil Sharp, J. A. Fuller-Maitland, Edith Rickert, George Ratcliffe Woodward, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Most carols with their roots deep in folk traditions reach the versions we know today in this period: You will probably find yourself singing Stainer’s “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” this Christmas, but his setting preserves only one version among countless possible variants of detail. The compiler exercises an element of choice as well as scholarship. It is a rich and fascinating process.

The second strand of 19th-century thought to feed fatly into what we sing and hear today was the tradition of churchmanship around the Oxford Movement and High-Church Anglicanism. Alongside its theological tracts, the movement gloried in a theatrical style of worship with plenty of ceremony and lots of music. At the same time, its message of social inclusivity gave rise to an explosion in parish choirs and in hymns for congregations to sing.

Tunes could be drawn from wherever a good melody was to be found. The muscular, high-minded, high-collared clergymen who led this revival put new words to melodies they found in old books (as in “Good King Wenceslas” and “Ding, Dong! Merrily”). They edited and translated items from all sorts of traditions, turning the Catholic torch song “Adeste Fideles” into “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and using Lutheran chorales as inspiration for songs like “Good Christian Men, Rejoice.” They borrowed and bolted together art-music and nonconformist lyrics (think “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”), as well as writing many pieces of their own.

These habits—gleaning in the highways and byways of folk and liturgical traditions and composing new items to fit into that tradition—meet in hybrids like “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a new poem married to an old folk melody.

Next, poets and composers wrote new songs, but in a deliberately archaic style to match the faux-medieval and Victorian sensibility which had so thoroughly colonized the English carol tradition with songs like “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Many of our most cherished moments of Christmas magic have their roots in the fireside imaginings of Victorians like Christina Rossetti and George Ratcliffe Woodward. (There are no frosty winds in Luke’s gospel.)

The next time you clamber to your feet from some buttock-numbing pew or cheap plastic chair to hear once again those familiar old tunes banged out on a wheezy organ or cracked school piano, remember just how English this most English of traditions actually is: not very. Remember the American Phillips Brooks, finding peace from the horrors of the Civil War in the Holy Land at the birthplace of Christ, where the silent stars go by. Remember the dead cow and the naughty ploughboy, carried off to hell by a genie in a puff of blue smoke—all very festive. Remember Mr. Garman of Forest Green, Surrey.

And what about “Jingle Bells”? That one’s American, too, composed by a man who ran away to sea in a whaling ship at age 14, lost everything in the Gold Rush of 1849, and was the uncle of the founder of the J. P. Morgan banking house (more than one cowboy in that family, then). A carol used to be just a party song about love, keeping warm, or having a good time. “Jingle Bells” can surely claim its place in that tradition.

This wonderful, rich musical pudding gives us a unique insight into what makes us who we are. Even more importantly, it gives us lots of great songs. Happy Christmas.

Andrew Gant is a composer, conductor, and lecturer in music at St. Peter’s College at the University of Oxford. This article is adapted from his book Deck the Hall: The Stories of our Favourite Christmas Carols ©Hodder Faith. This article may not be reproduced for any other use without permission.

- More from Andrew Gant

The kingdom of God is near.

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