The Ugliness of Christmas (Selected Scriptures)

• For many years now, here at Grace Church, it’s  been my challenge and joy to preach Christmas   messages. In fact, some years I’ve preached two or  three Christmas messages, and so there have been   many different ways that we have looked at the  birth of Christ. This year, for whatever purposes   in the mind and heart of God, I’ve felt strongly  the need to preach on what I have chosen to call   the ugliness of Christmas. I don’t intend by  that to be negative in total.
• I don’t intend   by that to depreciate your joy at this time of  year but to enhance your joy, to create within   you a true joy by understanding another one of  the marvelous facets of the birth of the Savior. I suppose the most famous popular song about  Christmas is “White Christmas” – “I’m dreaming   of a white Christmas” – but if we may, I’d like  us to talk about the blackness of Christmas,   the other side.
• And I suppose that most  people, when they think of this time of year,   think only of the beauty of it. And  we’re surrounded by that beauty,   lovely trees with bright lights and  decorations, colorful ornaments,   beautiful candles, wreaths, snow scenes, warm  fireplaces in the hearth in a family home,   beautifully wrapped presents. Everything  is bright and light and cheery and happy.
• And I guess that all of that symbolism is  conveyed to us most significantly in the   Christmas cards that we receive, which present  to us almost a world of fantasy, beauty, wonder,   loveliness – and that is one side of Christmas,  without question. But there’s also another side.   There’s a very ugly side. And there are a  lot of ways we could approach that.
• I mean   we could talk about a dark, cold night in  a small, nondescript village in Palestine,   where a lovely young woman gave birth  to a baby in the most unsanitary,   wretched conditions imaginable, standing  in the filth and manure of a stable. We could talk about the ugliness of a man  named Herod who, because he feared the   loss of his control and power, massacred all the  babies in that region.