Book Review: Miracle on 10th Street and Other Christmas Writings

Disclaimer: I don't agree with everything this Anglican author believes or says in her book, but like much of life, I have learned a lot from those I disagree with.

Christmas is here again. Year after year it seems to be different, yet also very much the same, with all the familiar traditions and family nearby. This year seems particularly different to me. Not only am I spending Christmas in a place I’ve never spent the holiday before, but I have stumbled upon and read a book that has changed much about the Christmas season for me.

For my whole life I have spent the holiday season in a way many Christians do. I have listened to the story of the birth of Christ in Luke 2 and have passed over it as a nice but also familiar story. I believe that for Christians it is a dangerous thing to become too familiar with the Bible. I don’t mean that we should stop interacting with scripture by any means. What I mean is that we must not arrogantly push aside the beautiful and amazing stories in the Bible because we feel like we know them already.

In her book, Miracle on 10th Street and Other Christmas Writings, Madeleine L’Engle discusses so many different angles of the incarnation, that I constantly had to stop reading and think for a while on what I read. This meditation on the nativity and on Christ has stirred my affections for my Savior and has shown me a new way to view the baby in the manger.

An idea that L’Engle conveyed throughout the work has taken up residence in my thoughts: to be a Christian is to suffer and in our suffering we begin to understand what the incarnation of Jesus actually means. It means that Jesus shed his glory to understand us. It means that the second Adam has come to accomplish what the first Adam did not. It means that he allowed himself to suffer the life of a normal human, though he is God of the universe Who created the galaxies. And yet, in the tiny baby in the stable we begin to understand that the one who made us chose to live with us and become the least of us.

This amazing truth appears over and over again and reminds me that Christmas is about so much more than where we spend Christmas or what our traditions happen to be. Jesus Christ, come in the flesh, Maker of the universe, slept beneath the sky he made and entered his creation so he could repair the relationship between us and him that we had broken. Many insights like these cause me to stop and reflect on what the Christmas season is really for and is really about.

Though many times over I have dismissed the nativity and half-heartedly listened to its story, this book has given me a new perspective on what it all means. And so I say, rejoicing, along with the author, “Word of Love, enter our hearts as you entered the virgin’s womb. Come, Lord Jesus!”