Coal On Christmas
My mother has long maintained that getting coal in your stocking for Christmas might not be such a bad thing, and I know others who have agreed with her. I can definitely see her point. We take a lot of the infrastructure in the United States for granted because readily available energy is actually a fairly new concept in human history. Abundant – and perhaps even current – are the days when the majority of humanity has had to tend to fires in their homes to keep warm, and making sure that those fires have had enough fuel to burn on a regular basis would have been a chore at best and a matter of uncertain survival at worst. For somebody in that situation, a lump of coal might actually be a blessing and not a curse.
We have all heard the story, though, of how St. Nick keeps track of the naughty and the nice and procures a gift for them on Christmas based on which list they fall. Undoubtedly, at some point in time, somebody has tried to encourage each of us to behave over the course of the year by reminding us of the ever-watchful eye of the jolly man in red. “You don’t want coal in your stocking, do you?” they have pled, but of course, whenever I have asked them if I get more presents for being extra good, they get uncomfortable and say, “That’s not how that works.”
I have tried to study the history of coal on Christmas to understand if the things we believe nowadays match with the original stories, and oddly enough, I have concluded that nobody actually knows. If you ask five different sources, you will get five different answers, at least. A lump of coal could be viewed as a good thing or as a bad thing, and yet something in this uncertainty has begun to trouble me. If the value of the thing you receive on Christmas morning depends on how you have performed the year prior, it would seem to me to be your Christmas reward, not a gift. Is that really what Christmas is all about, or does celebrating Christmas involve something more?
As you probably know, the New Testament doesn’t begin with, “In the beginning, there was God, and when enough time had passed for men to figure out how to please Him, He sent them a reward.” It also doesn’t say, “All may sow, but the unrighteous man shall reap coal for his harvest of grain.” It does say, though, that “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, ESV). Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that Jesus – along with His completed work and the Holy Spirit’s continuing work in our lives – is God’s gift to man, not a benefit we have earned. To get what we have earned as sinners is to die – it is a fate worse than coal. Yet, after thousands of years of waiting in hope that salvation from such a fate would come, “good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10, ESV) went out to the world that the One who could save us had arrived. In light of these things, the first step to celebrate Christmas, then, is to accept and enjoy that gift. Toys eventually break, and chocolate eventually runs out, but the wonderful gift we have in Jesus Christ lasts forever and fulfills us far more. Did He not say that He gives life, and that more abundantly (John 10:10)? Forgetting to savor these truths is the most effective way to dull the spirit of the season; Christmas is here not because of what we’ve earned but because of the abounding goodness of God in Jesus Christ.
With that being said, whether we realize it or not, Christmas is a reenactment for us Christians. On one side of that reenactment, we need to remember that the gospel of Jesus Christ is transformative. Jesus doesn’t just save us by taking away the punishment for our sins, but He also makes us into new people when we become born again (2 Corinthians 5:17). New people make new decisions and follow new courses of action. As our faith in Jesus has made us adopted children of Abba God (Romans 8:15), we desire to become like our beloved Father as any adoring child would, and so the Christmas season extends us an opportunity to give others a taste of the same grace that we have been shown by God. We observe the tradition of giving gifts to our loved ones as one way of doing this, but while “gift” is often just another term for “grace”, grace comes in many different forms. Unfortunately, this is where Christmas tends to become a difficult time for some.
Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, haven’t earned, and have no business having. By its very nature, giving grace to others means that we do good things for people who may not deserve it in any court of law, parallel dimension, or cockeyed philosophy. For us, it may be an unkind neighbor who didn’t return that tool. It may be that relative who said such shameful things the last time we saw them. It may be a lifelong friend who treated us so terribly even after everything we had done for them. Everybody has valid examples of how somebody mistreated them or sinned against them, and it is important to acknowledge and grieve these things. However, to put it in perspective, how much more than these things were the offenses we committed against God? By every metric, we haven’t earned kindness from on high. Yet, by celebrating this season, we remind ourselves how God responded to what we deserved: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). We give grace – and gifts – this Christmas because He first gave them to us.
We Christians also reenact the other side of Christmas. To complete the original Christmas transaction, all we had to do was accept the gift of Christ in faith. We had to accept that we didn’t earn it, and we also had to acknowledge the heart of the Giver in the gifts He gave. To get to the point, more than likely, we’re not just givers but also receivers in this season. It’s human nature not to want to accept gifts – there is a helplessness to it that some other person had the power to do something that we did not. If we want any control over the situation – which we often do – the only thing we can do is deny the gift. If we accept the gift, we accept that we had control neither over the giver nor our worthiness to receive the gift. However, if we deny the gift, we remain in control of the transaction. Sometimes, we don’t even deny the gift but instead rush to give something back of equal or greater value to say that “we’re even”. The thing we need to remember is that the reason for the season is that we didn’t have everything under our control. If we did, we could have “disarmed the rulers and authorities” of our bondage and “put them to open shame” (Colossians 2:15, ESV) ourselves. To accept Christ is to agree that we couldn’t do that and that God helped us because of the abundant goodness in His heart. If we don’t practice receiving just like we practice giving, we run the risk of stealing the joy of giving out of the season for those around us. “It is more blessed to give than receive,” our Lord so accurately said (Acts 20:35, ESV); in a strange way, we need to be willing to receive good things from others so they can enjoy the gift of giving themselves.
To walk in grace is to be so committed to what is good that the evil that seeks to disqualify it is disarmed. If we withhold good from others because of even the most horrific and despicable evils they have done to us, then evil wins. If we stifle good because we are uncomfortable with accepting it being done on our behalf, we show that we don’t necessarily love good but rather something else. We know the Word is clear: “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:2). Let goodness abound this Christmas; we didn’t deserve it or earn it or even ask for it, but God secured for us all the blessings in the heavenly places through Christ anyway (Ephesians 1:3). This is why we have the season of Christmas, to remember the good gifts He has given us and to spread His message of joy by giving grace ourselves.
Oh, the fortune of the man who receives even a lump of coal on Christmas! As its flickering ember perseveres through a punishing winter’s night, he will live and not die. “What a wonderful gift,” might muse the person shivering outside his boiler room door. Coal is a reminder of the true gift we celebrate this season that burns an awful lot brighter and that we deserve an awful lot less. The true gift keeps us more than warm and keeps us more than alive – there is no winter’s night, dragon’s breath, sorrow’s embrace, or accusation’s sting that can overcome or nullify it in the end. Perhaps the best way to celebrate that gift this season is to share it with somebody, either in word or in deed. There are those who don’t know that the most wonderful gift they have ever received is waiting under their proverbial tree to accept and enjoy. They need that now more than anything they could possibly fathom; the world needs the hands and feet of Christ to do what only the hands and feet of Christ are capable of doing. Let us do that this Christmas to celebrate our King, and then perhaps, if the Lord wills, our joy in Him can be complete when they exclaim, “What a wonderful gift that He has given me!”