An Empty Stable

There is this compilation of the cheesiest instrumental Christmas songs ever collected called the “Narada Christmas Collection, Volume 2.” A routine of mine when I was young, during the summer, no less, was to sit at my family computer, equipped with Windows 95, and play a computer golf game… while listening to Christmas music.

Imagine it: a prepubescent teen, playing computer inside on a beautiful July day, listening to Christmas music. I don’t know that I need to say a whole lot more to illustrate to you what kind of kid I was. To this day, when I hear the opening piano chords of the album, I imagine that pixelated golf character hitting a little white dot down a perfect green fairway (Yes, of course I found the album on iTunes and bought it so I could listen any time I want. I even checked out Volume 1, but it is just not as good).

The aforementioned first track of this album is this really obscure Christmas song called “Il Est Ne.” The first half of the song is all instrumental synth. The entire thing could have been played on an electric piano with different instrument settings for all I know. The second half, however, are these real, live, actual vocalists singing in a completely different language that I do not understand. Yet I know every syllable of what I think they’re saying. And I loved it. If I was alone in a car, you knew I was belting out gibberish.

At this point, it should go without saying that I love Christmas.

Well, I used to.

My love of Christmas was highly nostalgic and highly musical, but more than that, I loved the Christmas story. Not the one involving Santa, of course. The one about a fallen humanity, a God who loves and empathizes, a historic plan, thousands of years in the making, finally come to flesh in the form of a helpless baby. I loved the miracle of Christmas. I actually vowed never to pull the wool of Santa’s red and white hat over the eyes of my children because I wanted them to know the real “reason for the season,” as they say.

I was hardcore.

There is a Christian singer/songwriter named Sara Groves. I was first introduced to her because another favorite artist of mine produced this album of hers called “Station Wagon: Songs for New Parents.” She also happens to be from the Twin Cities. There is a lullaby on this album that my wife, in her indescribably angelic voice, still sings to our kids. It’s a great album for anyone who is a parent. So, I connect her songs to parenthood and, in some way, to the innocence of children.

She also has a Christmas album called “Star of Wonder.” I am typically a purist when it comes to Christmas music, mostly only enjoying the traditional carols with varying degrees of artistic expression. However, there is an original song on this album that really catches me called, “It’s True,” and the opening lines go like this:

“In your heart you hope it’s true

Though you hold no expectation.

In the deepest part of you

There’s an open hesitation.”

I remember traveling last year for a Christmas with family, listening to this song in our car while our kids were asleep in back, tears streaming down my face, finally knowing exactly what Sara was talking about, feeling far more than openly hesitant. The song wanted me to believe that it is all true, even in light of my crippling doubt, and I was tearing up there in the car, I think, because I knew it was not true. I knew that this story I was told as a child, that I cherished so deeply, was not true at all. Like a child who found out that mom and dad are the ones who stuff the stockings and take a bite of the cookie, I was heartbroken, in disbelief that my favorite part of the Christian story was not true.  

I was in disbelief of my unbelief. Try to wrap your head around that.

Something many Christians don’t realize is how incredibly powerful their narrative is. I used to be one, and I never connected the dots, probably because I didn’t see it as just a story. But really, the story of Jesus is a terribly compelling one that has started the largest religious movement in history. There is something to be said for that.

And right now, the thing I can say about that is how the absence of it has made me realize what I am now lacking: A story. And now that Christmas is gone, now that Jesus is no longer real to me, what do I have?

There is actually a pretty amazing story I can tell… There’s no virgin birth, or star, or wise men from the east, but it does have one thing that the Christmas story doesn’t have:

I know it’s true.

I don’t know the exact circumstances, but something pretty significant motivated my great grandfather to emigrate from Norway to the United States of America in 1886. They settled and claimed a plot of land in rural South Dakota, and there on that land my great grandfather built a farm, consisting of a barn and a small farmhouse, and raised his family of twelve in it. Yes, twelve.

One of my great grandfather’s sons married and had two daughters and one son. This son enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, made it home safely, and went to college and married a nice girl from Fargo, North Dakota. They had 3 children, and they decided to name the middle one “Jeff.” They grew up in rural North Dakota, got into a fair amount of adolescent trouble, and were taught to love the tradition of Christmas (and computer golf games).

It was sometime later that my dad became an accomplished wood worker. His homemade furniture adorns our home. Before they tore down the homestead in South Dakota, he was able to collect some of the old barn wood. From that wood he made a miniature wooden stable, meant to hold our little nativity figurines that we proudly displayed every Christmas season.

I have to say, shamefully, that I have never in my life appreciated the sacrifices my great grandparents made to allow me to have the life I have right now. Even now, I don’t think I can fully appreciate them. But, what is clear to me is that, before I lost my faith, one of the crowning moments of Christianity overshadowed any ancestral artifacts I could compile, no matter how meaningful.

Think about it. The fake, commercialized, sold, and distributed figurines of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus, they are what meant more to me than a piece of the very structure that housed them on my mantle, the very wood that allowed me to be who I am.

I had no identity other than my Christian mission, no lineage other than the genealogy found in Matthew, nothing of meaning in my life other than my Christian faith, a hope for the world, born out of a stable in Bethlehem. 

And so, now that I have no mission, now that I still don’t have any idea who I am… What am I left with?

I used to be a Christian, and now… not.

I used to love Christmas, and now…

Well…

I used to love Christmas. And now, I struggle mightily with the idea of it all. There is hope, of course, and that hope is still somewhere inside of me, I’m sure. But it’s not just a hope for me. It’s a hope for all humanity, not just those who live in a country that happens to be Christian. And it has nothing to do with a narrative that no one can prove, on a premise of eternal need that no one can justify.

I suppose it is the same hope my great grandfather had.

There is a hope in me for something better for my children. There is a hope in me for something better in the world.

And none of it—not a shred of it—seeks to prove the unprovable, justify the unjustifiable, or apologize for the irreconcilable.

So, this December, when the songs and glimmer and green and red are all around me, I will put the lights on the tree, I will put the ribbon on the wreath, and I will take my namesake manger and place it upon my mantle with a lighted garland draped across it.

And I’ll leave it empty.

The absence of the things that used to be there have much more meaning for me right now than anything, good or bad. An empty stable is who I am right now. In the middle of it all, I will try to remember the significance of both things represented there, the emptiness and the story.

And I may shed some tears.

But I will try to be thankful.

And I will be happy, for a moment, at least.