By Daniel Schantz
“[White] is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. . . . God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously . . . as when he paints in white.”
“”G.K. Chesterton, from his essay “A Piece of Chalk,” 1905
Although the traditional colors of Christmas are red and green, no color expresses the spiritual essence of Christmas quite like the color white.
Grace
“Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7).
Snow is the perfect metaphor for grace because it covers a multitude of ugliness. Snow can make anything beautiful, even a pigpen or the town dump.
What snow does for nature, mercy does for mankind.
As a boy, I was mischievous, a prankster, full of devilments like: the well-aimed snowball, putting sugar in the saltshaker, a rubber worm in my brother”s chocolate milk, or red Kool-Aid in the showerhead. The list of charges against me was long.
Right before Christmas my father warned me, “Danny, if you don”t straighten up, all you will get for Christmas is a bundle of switches.”
Sobered by his warning, I tiptoed down the stairs on Christmas morning to see if Santa had brought me anything at all, in light of my criminal record. Imagine my surprise when I found a large pile of packages with my name on them, and not a switch in sight. It was my first experience with grace, and it humbled me.
The theme of grace pops up in Christmas carols, over and over:
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining. Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth” (“O Holy Night”).
“Cast out our sin and enter in, be born to us today” (“O Little Town of Bethlehem”).
“Adam”s likeness now efface, stamp Thine image in its place” (“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”).
For centuries, the sins of the world were just kicked down the road until the coming of Christ. With the birth of the Lamb, we finally had the one sacrifice that would actually take away our sins and clothe us in the white of God”s righteousness.
Celebration
“Go, eat your food with gladness . . . always be clothed in white” (Ecclesiastes 9:7, 8).
Joy is the automatic reaction to grace, the natural fizz of faith.
A student came to me with a prayer request. His eyes were downcast, and his voice was tight. “Pray for me, Mr. Schantz,” he said. “I am taking my fiancée home for Christmas break, to meet my parents.”
“Hmmm,” I replied, “are you afraid they might not like her?”
“Oh, no, it”s not that; they like her already. It”s just that, well, when I was in high school, I was not a Christian, and I did some things I am not proud of. What if my buddies bring up these things in front of her? It would just kill me.”
I smiled. “Well, you can tell them you are no longer that person, that now Christ is living in you.”
His face lit up. “That”s a good idea, Mr. Schantz . . . thanks!”
I saw him after Christmas break, and he was all smiles.
We all glance over our shoulder now and then, hoping our past sins aren”t sneaking up on us. But with the coming of Christ, we are freed from the blush of a bad conscience, from the gnawing worm of self-loathing. We can truly say, “I am no longer that person. Christ lives in me.”
What a relief!
We sang a lot of sunny choruses when I was a boy in Vacation Bible School, and most of them I have forgotten, but I have never been able to shake that little tune that says, “It”s bubbling, it”s bubbling, it”s bubbling in my soul. There”s singing and laughing, since Jesus made me whole.” It”s a song I can”t not sing from time to time. That”s the nature of joy, it bubbles up uncontrollably.
Christmas songs like “Joy to the World” and “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” express what we all feel, and every Christmas celebration is just a rehearsal for that heavenly party to come.
Triumph
“The one who is victorious will . . . be dressed in white” (Revelation 3:5).
If Jesus had said, “Hell is like an endless day in January,” well, I would try a lot harder to be good, so as to avoid it.
I hate the cold. Winter is, to me, the absence of everything I enjoy, like gardens and green grass, blooming trees and blue lakes, warm breezes and cool rains. It”s a dark season, a gray time of year.
I detest wearing puffy jackets and skull-tight hats, finger-pinching gloves, and clunky boots. I dread slogging down slushy sidewalks, and scraping frozen windshields. Most of all, I loathe being confined in the house during a snowstorm. I get cabin fever in 15 minutes flat.
You can understand, then, why I find a certain relief when the calendar shows that it”s December 21. It”s the shortest day of the year, and it signals the beginning of the end of winter. Starting on the 22nd, the days will get longer, by about a minute a day. Oh, sure, there will be more cold and snow, but we are on our way to spring! My seed catalogs are arriving, and I am setting up my grow lights, already.
The coming of Christ signaled the end of the winter of sin, with its darkness, coldness, and confinement. Oh, sure, sin and its consequences will continue for a while. There will be wars and crimes galore, disease and broken relationships. But we are already on our way to the spring of our resurrection! The wheels are in motion, and it can”t be stopped. The days are getting longer, and the sun will ultimately triumph.
“Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings” (“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”).
Splendor
“His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them” (Mark 9:3).
Prisms fascinated me when I was young. To me it was a miracle the way a prism could break the white light of the sun into all the colors of a rainbow. The colors were there, all along, but the prism made them visible.
Jesus was a prism, and he showed us the glory hidden behind the glare of man”s pride and showmanship.
At Christmas, Jesus revealed the glory of so-called “common labor,” when he chose a carpenter and shepherds for special missions.
Spurning the great urban centers, like Rome, Alexandria, and Athens, Jesus chose the small, out-of-the-way village of Bethlehem for the birthplace of royalty, thus giving a luster to little places.
No prestigious hospital was chosen for the baby Jesus. A bed of straw in a shed was just fine. Ironically, no hospital in the world is as famous as that manger. Not Johns Hopkins, not Bethesda, not Kettering. Not even General Hospital of soap opera fame.
God chose the Jews, a rejected, fringe people, as the genetic seed for his church.
He selected a poor, young couple to be the parents of his Son, showing us that it”s no shame to be poor. It is God who enriches.
He included the aged Anna and Simeon as early witnesses of the Messiah, reminding us we are never so old that we are forgotten by God.
The glory of the ordinary was there all along, but we just didn”t notice it, because we are too impressed by big things and loud things, fast things and costly things. But it”s not with the “roll of stirring drums,” that Jesus comes. “With deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.”
Silently, Jesus slipped into the world at Christmas, through the back door, but when he returns, it will be to the sound of trumpets and the heavens ablaze with light.
I”m dreaming of that white Christmas.
Daniel Schantz is professor emeritus at Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, Missouri.
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