Knock knock. Who’s there?  Anna.  Anna who?  Anna partridge in a pear tree!

I know, pathetic, right?  I’m hoping it’s one of those jokes that’s so bad it’s good.  But you remember what the partridge in a pear tree stands for, right?   Jesus!  So I figured, a joke like that’s a great way to start a Christmas sermon.

I loved learning about the Twelve Days of Christmas because I’ve always wondered how they counted the days.  Christmas Day is officially Day 1.  But our holy day celebrations all have Jewish roots, and we know that in Judaism, the celebration of all holy days begins on the evening of the day prior, just as their weekly observance of the Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday night and lasts through sundown Saturday night.  Christianity changed the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday, so every week we could have a mini celebration of Easter.  But, we kept the tradition of beginning our holy day observances the night before.  So Christmas Day, from a liturgical perspective, begins at sundown Christmas Eve.  So, Merry Christmas!  Whenever you’re reading this, it is Christmas time right now.

And really, why quibble over a few hours when we’re talking about something that happened 2022 years ago?  Well, actually, we know that our dating system was off by a few years.  Jesus was most likely born in the year 4 B.C., making this something like the 2027th Christmas in history!  Actually, give or take a few years, all of our days and years are marked in relation to the birth of Christ.  Right now it’s the year 2022 AD, which stands for Anno Domini.  Do you know what Anno Domini means?  In the year of our Lord.  Every time you write out the year, you are expressing the idea that all of time is Christmas time!  All of our time is defined by the birth of Christ.

Even YOUR birthday is defined by Jesus’ birthday!  Well, at least the year of your birth.  I was born in 1966.  Keeping in mind the dating was off by four years when the system was set up, my birth occurred one thousand nine hundred seventy years after Jesus born.  That’s a lot of Christmas time!   My birthdate, your birthdate, they were set up to show how many years have passed since Christ came and we arrived.

I really like thinking about time this way.  All of time is Christmas time.  No offense to those of you who are sensitive about no Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving is over with, but ALL of time is Christmas time.  We lack precision on the actual day Jesus was born.  We know it was most likely in the year 4 BC; but we really don’t have any idea which day of the year was Jesus’ actual birthday.  The Bible does not tell us the date of Jesus’ birth, only what happened on that day.  Since there were shepherds watching over their flocks, we know Jesus was not born in winter.  There isn’t much to graze on in the winter.  Jesus could have been born in the spring, summer, or fall, but not on December 25th.  Early Christians chose that day to celebrate because it coincided with the secular winter solstice celebrations. When you’re experiencing persecution, you have to find ways to practice your religion without calling undue attention to yourselves.  Placing the religious observance of Christmas in the middle of the winter solstice festivities offered them protection, a good cover story.  It also made sense theologically, because Jesus is the light of the world.  It’s when it’s darkest that we are prone to look hardest for the light.

How am I doing, convincing you that all of time is Christmas time?  Christmas is not just today.  Christmas time is not just the month of December, or even the twelve days between now and Epiphany. True, liturgically, the season of Christmas lasts only 12 days.  But the spirit of Christmas, well that is love, isn’t it?  And love is always and forever.

Not long after Jesus lived, an important Jewish man named Saul began to persecute the people who believed the Jesus was God’s Son, the long-awaited Messiah and Savior.  Saul was making life miserable for the early Christians.  He even oversaw the death penalty for some.  It was a very dark time.  But in that time of darkness, Saul was struck by a light so strong, it blinded him for a time.  Eventually he began to see that Jesus truly is God’s son.  Saul was transformed by God’s grace, changed his name to Paul, and went on to write many books of the Bible. We chose as our key verse for this service one of the sentences he wrote to the Christians in Corinth who were struggling to live the Christian life in a challenging time and place.  He wrote, these three remain:  faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

Roughly 2,000 years later, Paul’s words ring true with us, people who are struggling to live the Christian life in a challenging time and place.  A lot of people have told me, this year has stretched their faith and hope pretty thin. But they are hanging in there.  And they make a special effort to celebrate Christmas, because they know that Jesus’ birth means love.  And love is forever because God is forever.

I really like the Twelve Days of Christmas song, but even I have to admit, it is SO long!  I wonder if that was part of the lesson plan the writers of the song had in mind.  It’s a long song.  It starts over and over.  That is just like God’s love.  It never ends.  And it can always be born again, anew.  No matter what season you’re in, no matter what year it is, no matter if you’ve miscalculated a little bit, or even if you’ve made some really huge mistakes, I hope you’ll remember this:  it is always Christmas time.  God’s love never ends.  It is always waiting, like a newborn baby in a cradle, waiting for you to pick it up and bring it into your heart.

And so, with that, I will close with a final joke.  Knock knock.  Who’s there.  Mary.  Mary who?  Mary Christmas!  Amen.