By Larry Efird

I’ve always loved Christmas. As a kid, I remember going out in the woods beside our house and finding some big, fallen limb from an oak tree to drag into my bedroom so I could decorate it. Having four brothers, I never had a room of my own until the older two went off to college. I’m sure they probably didn’t appreciate that they also had to share a room with not only a little brother but with a dead part of a tree as well.

This fascination of Christmas has never left me, although when I was in college the “spirit of Christmas” was harder to feel, mainly because of exams and papers at the end of fall semester and the accompanying, newly found responsibilities of young adulthood. But after my wife and I had our first child in our early 20s, the magic reappeared. 

Something else that still nurtures my love for Christmas is literature. During November and December, there are stories that I try to re-read in an attempt to briefly leave this world and enter another. One holiday favorite is Truman Capote’s short story, “A Christmas Memory.” This childhood tale of his growing up in Mississippi and how he prepared for Christmas always rings true with me. Henry van Dyke, another American writer, also  has a provocative short story entitled “The Mansion” which is rather long, but worth the time invested to read it. Dr. Peter Marshall, a Presbyterian preacher and former U.S. Senate chaplain in the 1940s, composed a classic sermon called, “Let’s Keep Christmas.” I was thrilled when I saw it in book form years ago so I snatched it up.

One unlikely book, however, I have read at Christmas for over 30 years is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, and undoubtedly the most misunderstood and underappreciated. To be honest, over half of its 22 short chapters could be more fitting for Halloween, filled with disturbing images of dragons, beasts, judgments and death. It also reads much like Greek mythology in places where the images and symbols are so fantastical that they are often frustrating to interpret — or believe.  

I choose not to debate the myriad conflicting interpretations of Revelation simply because many of them explain away the mystical elements. I choose to focus on the wonder and the mystery of this elaborate vision John received on an island in the Aegean Sea in the first century. And just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I have to deny its reality, though veiled in apocalyptic terminology. On this point I stand with the ancient Church Father, John Chrysostom: “A comprehended god is no god.” 

The first three to four chapters of Revelation are filled with common Christmas images such as stars, candles, trumpets and angels. About 20 years ago, I had the idea of decorating a tree with the symbols from these chapters during Advent. (I’ve moved on from collecting a dead tree limb in the woods to an artificial tree I paid for at Hobby Lobby. And my wife is more tolerant than my brothers.) I found my original star ornaments and candles at Old Salem. Nothing says “Christmas” more than Moravian stars or beeswax candles. Today, my tree has over 50 other ornaments, all which come from symbols found embedded in Revelation.

Though most of this book can be troubling, not to mention confusing, I find great comfort in remembering that all evil and threats to humanity will one day be destroyed. If that were the only message from the Book of Revelation, that would be sufficient. It gives me hope when I see a world that is constantly trying to destroy itself by feeding on hate rather than on love. It’s  also a positive way to end one year and launch into another.

Recently, I read through the 22 chapters of Revelation in one sitting, during a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” in the glorious Duke Chapel. (It only takes around 90 minutes to read straight through.) As my ears were awakened by these familiar lyrics  yet once again, my eyes were opened to the same words simultaneously: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain…” and “Salvation and glory and power belong to our God…” I sometimes wonder if we spontaneously jump in triumph to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” year after year because the signs of the season point us to the signs of the times. Maybe that’s something our hearts, if not our minds, can read — and understand.    

Larry Efird is a retired Kannapolis teacher now living in Durham.