Don’t Pack Away the Manger
Each year, we’re sold a picture of Christmas that’s more mirage than reality. We’re told that the perfect holiday is out there if only we can shop, decorate, and remember hard enough. When that doesn’t happen, we reach for nostalgia—a golden memory of a Christmas that maybe never really existed. It’s easy to settle for the Hallmark version: serene manger, glowing faces, a baby who never cries, a world scrubbed clean of disappointment.
But if we read the Christmas story the way the gospels actually tell it, something different emerges—something far more real and much more hopeful.
Mary and Joseph weren’t home or surrounded by family. They were far from comfort and certainty, displaced by imperial decree. Their “nursery” wasn’t a cozy cradle, but a feed trough—improvised, ordinary, not staged for the perfect photo. The first people to hear the news weren’t high-ranking officials, but shepherds: the night-shift, the working poor, outsiders who were used to being overlooked.
It wasn’t tidy. It wasn’t staged. It was real, and it was messy. And it was right there, in the middle of everything ordinary and human, that God arrived.
This is the radical invitation of Christmas:
God does not wait for perfect conditions. God doesn’t wait for us to have our act together, to clean up our lives, or to manufacture just the right mood. Instead, Christmas is about God breaking into our complicated, unpredictable, sometimes exhausting reality—bringing hope, light, and love in ways we least expect.
That’s why Christmas isn’t just a day, or a fleeting feeling. Christmas is a season—a whole twelve days, at least. It’s meant to linger, to seep into our lives long after the tree has come down and the decorations are packed away.
So here’s my invitation to you, as we move through this season:
Don’t pack away the manger. Don’t rush past the mystery or let the world convince you this is just a fleeting sentiment. Let Christmas linger. Look for the sacred not in the flawless or the filtered, but in the mess and beauty of your real life. Open yourself to the possibility that God-with-us is exactly that—with us, right here, right now, in all the joy and all the struggle.
May you and those you love live these days with hearts and homes cracked open for the miracle of Emmanuel: God with us.