Reflecting The Light As More Than Tinsel

OK, Christmas decorations are up almost everywhere.

Some folk started decorating right after Halloween.

Others waited until the middle of November.

Some families kept Christmas at bay until after the American Thanksgiving, while still others started in the first week of December or so.

And some, God bless them, Christmas purists that they are, wait until after the Sunday before Christmas.

When I grew up, the finishing touch for our tree was always the tinsel – thin bright strips of metallic ribbon that never stay quite straight but twist and turn and reflect the light in thousands of ways. I don’t know about you, but for me it just isn’t a Christmas tree and the task of decorating for Christmas isn’t complete without tinsel.

My family had a special tradition about the tinsel. You see, we never threw it out. After the celebrations of Christmas were over – usually about the second Sunday in January, we took down the tree, and each little strip of tinsel was taken off individually and straightened out and laid in our tinsel box!

 

(I’m not going to tell you about the time I gathered it all in a ball and stuffed it away before my folks noticed. Actually, I am not going to tell you about what happened eleven months later – when my Mom opened the tinsel box!)

Tinsel is bright but basically lifeless. It reflects light and colour, but has none of its own. The expression “Tinsel-Town” captures the shallowness, superficiality, and skin-deep glamour of the place it refers to – Hollywood. And too often, our fast-paced and busy lives become like tinsel – bright on the outside, but shallow, lifeless and lightless. Peer-pressure, the compulsion to conform to others’ standards, and political correctness are some of the forces that can make us tinsel-like. Not to mention the variously sized flat-screens we spend far too much time watching, which exude shallowness and superficiality. Like the common cold, “tinsel-ness” is all too easy to catch and pass on to others.

Instead of having lives that merely reflect things on the surface – like tinsel – you and I are called to lives that shine radiantly from within. Christians tend to think that the light with which we are to shine is reflected light – that by copying Christ (What Would Jesus Do?) we will shine with His light reflected from His radiance. After all, Jesus Christ is the Light of the world. [John 8.12; 9. 5]

But such reasoning does not take into account the intimate union we are to have with Christ. We are called to actually partake of His nature, so that we become by His Grace what He is by Nature. In pursuing such union – and deliberately opening ourselves to it – we become little “Lights of the world”, much as the pagans in ancient Antioch referred to the followers of Jesus in that city as “little christs” – “Christians”. He Who is the Light of the world has declared

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.  [Matthew 5. 12-14]

We are called to be more than tinsel, reflecting a light that is outside of ourselves, while possessing none of our own. We are called to shine with a light that takes root in our innermost being – through our participation in the fullness of life in the Church. By partaking of the Mysteries of Christ, by practising the grace-filled disciplines of the Faith, we discover Christ within us, the hope of glory! [see Colossians 1.27]

This is an important part of the message of Christ’s nativity in the cave over 2000 years ago. We do more than just commemorate an event which happened in ancient times. In our celebration of the Nativity (including the preparation which leads up to it) we are blessed to actually participate in it and Christ our true God is born in us, as He was born in a cave. Indeed, in receiving His precious Body and Blood in the Chalice, you and I can become the cave in which He is born and from which He shines radiantly!

When we receive Him – when we welcome Him – not just for a day or a season, but for our whole lives, He begins to shine forth from within us, transforming our lives from tinsel-like existence unto something radiant and bright.

Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!