Christmas Eve/Day, December 24/25, 2025

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Christmas Eve (and Day) are high holy days in the life of the church. Preachers are both excited and apprehensive about leading the Christmas Eve Service. It is the day of the “CE” (Christmas and Easter Christians) or nowadays the “C” Christians. People are coming to church straight from Christmas dinners and parties or thinking of the festivities ahead. College students back from school are prepared to be bored and young children need to be entertained if not inspired. The preacher feels as if they need to hit a homerun, perhaps touching the lives of persons who have come in search of answers as well as regular attendees. Still, the preacher must remember that despite the varying degrees of interest and engagement, everyone present is loved by God and has been touched by divine inspiration even if they are unaware of it. The Light of the World enlightens everyone, including the most skeptical and jaded as well as faithful among us.
We wonder, “How can we tell the Christmas story during this dark time in a way that changes lives and that inspires those who think they know it and those who are hearing the amazing message of God with us in a little baby for the first time?” How do we as preachers hear the story as if for the first time in all its tragic beauty in ways that change us and awaken us to God’s incarnation in our lives?
Isaiah proclaims words of hope and promise, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Darkness is never final. Death cannot conquer life. Every lost sheep will be found. The enslaved will be liberated and God will act to vanquish the oppressor. There will be peace on earth and goodwill to all. Yet, on this Christmas as well as that first Christmas, we struggle to find peace and achieve justice. This Christmas seems darker than any in my lifetime as our leaders gleefully embrace violence, authoritarianism, division, and destruction of norms of governance and democracy. Despite Isaiah’s affirmation, can we hope for the emergence of God’s light in this dark time?
The preacher must struggle with joining the realism and romance of Jesus’ birth. On the hand, we must recognize that Christmas evokes feelings of wonder and beauty. Images of loving parents, the stable, shepherds, and magi can easily be romanticized. When we hear the ancient story, we are transported back to childhood. The Christmas lights, the tree, candies and cakes, dinner with friends and family, the expectation of presents, and the delight of opening presents under the tree. Although not all of our Christmases were that idyllic, there is the magic of Christmas, captured in Hallmark movies and the mystical transformations of Ebenezar Scrooge, the Grinch, and George Bailey. We come to Christmas Eve to hear glad tidings and believe that we can reclaim the Christmas joy of childhood, or experience it for the first time. The preacher cannot make light of the wonder and magic of Christmas even if the preacher sees the challenges of telling the Christmas story in faithfulness to the realities of the first Christmas.
Christmas is political and rooted in time and space. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” The family journeys from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and Mary was pregnant, expecting her firstborn. A peasant family, a difficult journey, living under the rule of oppressive Rome, taxation without representation. And houselessness, no room in the inn. Life was harsh that first Christmas. Then there are the shepherds, peasants living unhoused in the fields, the object of scorn and suspicion, also peasants at the mercy of time and circumstance. However, despite the oppressiveness and hardship of Jesus’ birth, God is with us. Holiness and incarnation in the ordinary and hard-scrabble moments of life. If God can show up, creating a thin place of revelation in oppressed Bethlehem, God can show up in the upheavals, uncertainties, and political malfeasance of our time. Even “in the days of Donald Trump,” the Christ Child can be born in us and the world.
There is the Holy Family, and then there are the shepherds. Were the marginalized shepherds forever changed by the angelic visitation and the journey to the Christ Child? Mystic and social activist Howard Thurman believes that their – and our – encounter with the angels of Christmas changes everything.
There must be always remaining in every man’s life some place for the singing of angels — some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness — something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning — then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory — old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all of the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.
We need to hear the songs of angels this year. We need a holy light and sacred hymn to cast out the gloom we feel when confronted by the daily newsfeed portraying leaders who have lost their reason and are hellbent on destroying what is best about our nation and the planet. (For more about Howard Thurman’s Christmas vision, see Bruce Epperly, “The Work of Christmas: The Twelve Days of Christmas with Howard Thurman,” Anamchara Books.) Amid the realism of the first century and our own, we need awe and wonder that inspires compassion and agency to heal the earth.
In John’s Gospel, we move from the embodied to the eternal and the finite to the infinite. Jesus’ birth is concrete and historical. It is also cosmic and all-embracing. The Word and Wisdom of God are made flesh in our embodied lives and political structures. The True Light enlightens everyone and that includes us. The hard-hearted ICE agent has a glimmer of light and so does the traumatized immigrant. The prevaricating politician may deny but cannot defeat God’s light and is on holy ground along with the prayerful protester. Dim as it may seem in our time or the first century, God’s unquenchable light shines, and in the spirit of early Christian theologians, God becomes human so that we might embrace our divinity. No original sin or shame here, simply acknowledging that God is with us and in us, and the Light of Christ is our deepest most constant and unquenchable reality.
On Christmas, we don’t need to hit a homiletic homerun. We can sing the carols, delight in the pageant, look forward to treats, anticipate presents, and invite our companions in worship to see the light in themselves and one another. And discover, with Howard Thurman, that the work of Christmas is year-round.
When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart.

Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over eighty books, including Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; Messy Incarnation: Meditations on Christ in Process; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries; God of the Growing Edge: Whitehead and Thurman on Theology, Spirituality, and Social Change,  and the soon to be released Three Wise Wisdom: The Twelve Days of Christmas with Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna (volume seven in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” series.)  He can be reached at www.brucepperly.com.