In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken… (Luke 2:1).

Was the first Christmas impossible to miss?  I’d venture that around 99.99% of people alive at the time missed it.

I doubt Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man of the time, ever heard of Jesus of Nazareth.  After all, Rome’s first and arguably greatest Emperor died when Jesus was only around twenty years old.  Besides, Octavian (Caesar Augustus’ given name) surely thought he had more important things to do: enemies to defeat, an Empire to operate, a census to take, and a “personal brand” to burnish.  He had the nice idea that if he could declare his father to be a god (which he did), he could then be revered and even worshiped as a “son of God” (which he was).  What was happening in the remote eastern regions of his realm, where Bethlehem and Nazareth were located, couldn’t hold a candle to being proclaimed as “savior” (which he also was).

We know that King Herod heard about Jesus, and we know what Herod did with what he heard: ordered a bit of bloodshed to eliminate the problem of “another king.”

We know that the “religious experts” consulted by Herod in Jerusalem knew their Scriptures about Messiah’s birthplace, but seemed to have had other things on their agendas that precluded making a six-mile visit to Bethlehem with the magi to check things out.

We know that, whatever the “star of Bethlehem” was (Comet?  Supernova?  Planetary conjunction?), it hung there in the night sky for everyone to see, but only some strangers from the other side of nowhere paid any attention.

We can imagine that a mighty angelic choir, filling the night with brilliance and song, might have been noticeable, even to folks tucked in for the night.

How could they miss it?  Wouldn’t that have been … impossible?

We face something of an opposite sort of problem: “Christmas” starts being impossible to miss round about Halloween, if not earlier.  Of course, the “Christmas” that inundates us here, with its good news (told not by an angel but by ads) of sales and deals, sung not by heavenly choir but in jingles by celebrities, has next to nothing (oh, alright: nothing) to do with the Christmas given us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Let’s help one another not to miss it, not to allow favorite seasonal habits and beloved traditions to keep us from being interrupted, astonished and staggered yet again by what the good news of great joy really is: a Savior is born, who will save us from the Caesars and Herods of the world, and even more from the greater tyrants of Sin and Death and Hell. 

A Savior who will set the world right, and who will begin that process with each of us, if only we will not miss the invitation and the opportunity.

What can you do this year to not miss it, to keep alive the connections between the familiar and well-loved celebrations and “a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord”?