Christmas is one of the most revealing seasons of the year. It brings together messages and messengers, emotions and remembrances, fears and wishes, tasks and anxieties, the poor and the affluent. Interestingly, where we experience Christmas informs how we enjoy life and communicate happiness or unhappiness...

Before moving into central Los Angeles 20 years ago, I had not thought that much about Mary. Mary was in the domain of my Catholic friends; we Protestants did not spend much time with her. But in my Latino immigrant neighborhood, Mary was everywhere, especially the Mexican incarnation known as the Virgin of Guadalupe...

I can get a little Grinch-y around Christmas, because of my ambivalent relationship to American consumerism. And the usual denouncements of materialism at this time of year seldom produce the countercultural effects they envision...

Lately I’ve been really into baking. My daily life as a seminary student—hunched over a laptop, scribbling notes, thinking until my brain hurts—begs for hands kneading yeasty dough, for fragrant cinnamon awakening the senses, everything eventually punctuated by chocolate chips...

“Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel … It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. (Luke 2:25-26)."

When God acts, who can reverse it?
And does God not often act in ways
that reverse human logic and thought?...

The book of Isaiah peaks in three summits throughout the story of Israel’s rise and fall and future hope. Each section (or climb) lands at a vision of joy, justice and peace. Notice Isaiah 39:5-8, 55:12-13, 66:22-24. At the end of chapter 39 this vision is stunted by the impinging reality of exile. But in Isaiah 55, the eternal covenant is reappropriated for a new tribe and a new day...

Usually, thinking about Christmas leads me to cynicism more than joy. I can't quite make sense of the celebration of the ungraspable and immeasurable God entering the narrowness of a bounded creation through unashamed consumption. Christmas CDs lined up in stores, contests for the nicest Christmas tree...

What’s in a gift? I don’t mean, What’s in the gift. I mean, What’s in a gift. It’s important you understand my emphasis. I mean it in the broad, contemplative way. Everyone, put on your existential thinking caps and let’s go on a little trip.

In being asked to write about Christmas joy, I debated on taking this little article a variety of directions. As Christians, we always try to convince ourselves that the “true” meaning of Christmas really lies in celebrating Christ’s birth. The “true” meaning of something, though, does not come from how we talk about it...