Home for the Holidays
This sermon was given 12-25 by our rector, Bill Parnell.
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays,
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze
For the holidays, you can't beat home, sweet home.
"Are you going home for the holidays?" Perhaps you've been asked that recently. Perhaps you've been the one doing the asking. Perhaps you've even been walking around singing about it. Home for the holidays. The phrase captures a lot about our feelings about Christmas, our sense of belonging and connection to family and friends. It may even capture some of our holiday anxieties.
Some of you here tonight are back home, here with your family in the church where you grew up. Others who are regularly a part of our life are away from us, back in other places they know as home. If your household is like mine, this is a time for reviving old traditions, connecting with the familiar and the beloved -- reaching back to customs that comfort us and connect us to our history. Home is a state of mind. And to what lengths we will go to see to that! The freshly cut trees, the boxes of ornaments that seem like old friends coming to visit again, holiday dinner traditions, the eggnog, the poinsettias, the crhches, the shopping for the perfect gift, the wrapping and bows. In a testament to just how bizarre recovered memories can be we've gone totally retro at the rectory. In addition to the live fir tree in the entry hall this year there is an aluminum tree glistening in the den with the help of all the old ornaments I could dig out of the attic and a color wheel. I used to think I'd rather be caught dead than have one of those things in my house; now I find it comforting!
What's your earliest memory of Christmas? One friend recalled his first train set? Another remembers going to cut a fresh tree. What's yours? Do you try to recreate it each year? For me it's The Pink Pig. Ask any child who grew up in Atlanta in the 50s and 60s and they will tell you about the Pink Pig - a child-sized monorail that was put up every year by Rich's at their downtown department store. The Pink Pig would carry a load of wide-eyed children around the gigantic toy department of Rich's, passing all kinds of animated holiday scenes and mountainous displays of all the toys we hoped would be under our tree on Christmas morning. It stands out in my mind as the epitome of wonder and excitement.
Of course, sometimes our Christmas memories are hard to recreate. I was visiting with two of my cousins in August, and we realized that so much of what constitutes "home" in our minds is in the past: our parents have died and we find ourselves the senior generation in our family. We have lived long enough to understand that "home for the holidays" has to do with the homes we have created more than the homesteads of our ancestors. And in our much more mobile society, even our close family is scattered from Philadelphia to Florida to Japan. Rich's downtown store has been torn down now, and the Pink Pig is retired to a museum. Yes, there's a porcine successor that you can ride on the rooftop of a suburban store parking lot, but it doesn't have the mystique of the old one. Of course, neither do I. At 6'4", I've grown to big to ride the pig.
That's the problem with going home for the holidays, isn't it? No matter how hard we try to recreate what was, things just seem to keep on changing. We move. Circumstances change. Generations pass. The world keeps turning. And we find ourselves longing for home, but wondering just exactly where home has gone.
I cannot help but think of the nearly 150,000 women and men who are serving in our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are so far from home this Christmas and in such danger. I look at our neighbors who tonight sleep on the floor of our parish hall because they have no place to call home. I remember the many in this world who are displaced because of war and violence, and how they must long for home. "Home for the holidays", you see, is not just a matter of nostalgia for the way things used to be - it is the reality for many in our world.
There is a centuries-old tradition that is celebrated on this night in Mexico, and in many neighborhoods of the United States as well, called "las posadas". A young couple wanders through the neighborhood, going from door to door. "En nombre del cielo, os pido posada" they say - "In the name of heaven, I ask you for lodging." But the answer comes from behind the door, "Este no es meson, sigan adelante" ("This is not an inn, move along"). Jose and Maria move from house to house, turned away again and again, until they are finally led to the manger where the Christ child is born. It is their "home for the holidays".
It is a curious thing that the Christ child was born under those circumstances. A displaced family who have neither the money nor the connections to get a decent place to stay. A maternity ward among oxen and donkeys. A child born into danger. And yet shepherds heard angel choirs. Wise men discerned a king worthy of the rarest of gifts. In this makeshift home God came to be with us.
And there, my friends, is the mystery we celebrate tonight. "Home" is the place we return to, year after year, in spite of all the changes we endure, the losses we suffer, the traditions we endeavor to maintain, the dangers we face. We are, you see, Las Posadas, the seekers of home, and we will ultimately discover that home is where Christ is. The glorious mystery of Christmas is that God loves us so much that God chooses to make a home among us. That is why we return year after year to this manger, where all kneel in awe of the gift that is given - God with us, God at home with us. And that is the home we long for in the holidays and in every day, the place where God is found, where love endures, where hope is born. And whenever we gather at the manger of the Christ Child, God's message to us is "You're home".
May this Christmas find you home for the holidays. May you see God's presence daily in your roaming and seeking. May you know God's love that endures when all else fails. May hope be born to you in unexpected places.
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays,
'Cause no matter how far away you roam
If you want to be happy in a million ways,
For the holidays, you can't beat home, sweet home.
Christ Church Episcopal 
251 State St. : Hackensack, NJ 07601 (201) 342-2365
