The (N)Ever Changing Story (a draft anyway)

Christmas Eve 2024

It is his first Christmas (ogres don’t celebrate much after all) and Shrek is determined to make it perfect for Fiona and the babies. He is given a book called “Christmas for Village Idiots”. The book talks about decorations and feast but makes it clear that the highlight, the most important part of a good Christmas is the telling of the Christmas Story.

 
Of course in Shrek the Halls the story being told is A Visit from St. Nicholas (aka ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”, not the story we tell tonight but the fact remains that for many of us the most important part of Christmas is remembering the story – although maybe presents and chocolate come a really close second.

I believe that stories are always really important. I think stories are one of the best ways we have of teaching each other, and ourselves. Author Tom King says “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are”, United Church musician and storyteller Linnea Good says “For we are a people of a story, of stars that sing...”. When we gather in this place at Christmas we always make sure to tell the story of a baby in a manger, of shepherds in the fields, of angels proclaiming Good News and Peace on Earth.

One of the things that makes a story last long is that it can be told in many different ways. We can change some of the details, tell it from a different point of view, highlight a different character but as long as the core of the story is there it is still the same story. Sometimes we tell it differently to make it seem a bit more up-to-date (which I think is what the creators of the Gen Z Bible were attempting). Sometimes we do it to use imagery that is more familiar to a different culture – certainly that is what Jean Brebeuf did in writing the Huron Carol and why we now have an Indigenous Translation of the New Testament. A great story can be told in many different ways but remain the same story – it changes constantly without really changing.

I invite you to think of the different times and ways you have heard the Christmas story told. Maybe in a TV movie (part of me always hears the story in Linus’ voice from A Charlie Brown Christmas). Or maybe from a story book. Or maybe in a YouTube Video – there are some interesting ones out there, like the one I found a few years back that uses popular music (well popular for 2012) to tell the story or the couple I found in 2010 that told it using Social Media. Another way we tell the story is Nativity scenes. I have lost count of how many different ones fill our living room each year Mind you we don’t have this more modern-ish one
the imagery of the story can grow with the times it seems.

Or then there are Christmas Pageants. Those traditional little plays where we do our best to find parts for everyone. Sometimes the story takes on new twists – sometimes unplanned or unexpected – based on the surprises that come with giving young people a microphone. May favourite is the story of the child who was very unhappy to be cast as the innkeeper and so when Mary and Joseph knocked on the door he threw it wide open and said “We have lots of room! Come on in!”. We have never had that happen here but we have had the story told by birds one year and by a flock of sheep another. Then there was the year where we acknowledged that EVERYONE wanted to be Mary...

I think there was a year where our pageant had the various stable animals tell the story but I know that a few years ago we used a book  on Christmas Eve that does just that. 

What might we learn from a different telling? What does the cow think about this invasion of her feed trough? How might the shepherd tell the story (did that for a sermon one year in another place). Maybe telling the story in our own way allows us to immerse ourselves in it, to imagine where we might find ourselves (even if EVERYONE wants to be Mary).

One of the ways I like to retell the Christmas story is to make it feel a bit more ‘real’. They may be much beloved carols but somehow the image of a Silent Night or a baby of whom it is said “no crying he makes” don’t always match how I envision the story. I think it might have been a little loud, chaotic and messy. One of the new favourite Christmas songs in our house is a rewrite of the Pogues song “Fairytale of New York” into “Fairytale of Newborn” which begins with “It was Christmas Eve, babe Man, the place stank!” and includes Mary saying “When I made my birth plan I was oh so naive No midwife or doula Just strange men and sheep!” Sometimes the story needs a dose of reality to make us see it more clearly.

If you had to re-write the Christmas story for 2024 how would you tell it? (Change Slide) Would you set it in a barn with someone seeking shelter from a storm like this book – one of my favourites – does? Would you put it in a small farming town on the prairies (I was in a play 30 years ago that did that)? What would the characters look like? What parts would you highlight? Would you use traditional language or would terms like delulu, skibidi, or rizz show up? What songs and tunes might you choose to use to make the story more interesting

For me it depends what I wanted to bring out in the story. Or maybe it would depend on what someone challenged me to do (ended up writing about the Christmas Snail one year because I was challenged to do so). But I am sure that images like this would help shape my telling of the story. The never changing part of human existence is that there are always people living on the edges. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, Pippin the Christmas pig, maybe the Amazon delivery drivers in that Nativity scene, Shrek and his fairytale friends, even Jesus himself were out on those margins. At its core, the Christmas story is about the God who shows up at the edges of life and brings hope, and joy, sharing the promise of peace, reminding us that we are loved. That is the part that never changes.

We are here tonight to remember a story. It is a story that can be, and has been, told in many different ways over the years. Some we like, some we don’t. Some will seem too “out there” for us while for others the more outlandish the better. It is a story that changes frequently. It is also a story that has never changed. We might set it in small-town Canada or some metropolitan centre in Europe or a remote village in Asia or even in some future space port. We might change shepherds into gig workers, Mary and Joseph into into people living on the streets and the Magi into investment bankers. Still the story of God who loves the world, who loves their Beloved Children of every colour, age, and gender, the God who breaks into the world by living among us as one of us runs true. At Christmas we remember that God is with us, that God takes on flesh and shares our lives. It is a story that happened long ago. It is a story that still happens today. We can tell it however we want, the details are not always important. God’s action to bring hope, peace, joy and love into the world through the miracle of a baby are what count. Christ is born! Alleluia! Amen.