The gospel writer John seems to take all the fun out of Christmas. There are no cute babies, no expectant couple, no bleating lambs, no choirs of angels, and no confused shepherds. There are no scenes to put into a children's Christmas pageant, and not enough story or character descriptions to develop themes for a musical. About all John gives us—and this is a huge stretch—is a justification for putting Christmas lights all over the front of our houses.

There is a lesson for us in John's "humbug"-ish telling of the Christmas story that Christmas is far more than what it seems to be on the surface.

First, John made it clear that Jesus' life did not begin in a Bethlehem manger. Jesus participated in the creation of the universe, in the separation of the light from the darkness, and in the breath of life that transformed clay into humanity. If you have ever tried to start a campfire, you know how carefully you had to guard the flickering match from the breezes so you could light the leaves and dried grass. You then nurtured these tiny flames until the first of the twigs caught fire, and again as the twigs fueled the fire until more substantial branches caught and the fire could withstand the elements. John doesn't want us to think that Salvation came to earth as tenuous and frail as the beginnings of our campfire, desperately needing our nurture and protection. Just the opposite: this light shines in the darkness and the darkness will never overcome it.

In the same way, John revealed that the plan for Salvation is as ancient as creation. Salvation was lived out in the resurrection of Jesus, but it was not a new concept. The manger and the cross were part of God's understanding of what would have to be from the very beginning. It was not that Bethlehem was a "last ditch" effort by God, scraped together after all the other options had failed. Instead, God knew before time began that establishing a relationship with humanity would require taking on human form and dying an ugly death, and God created us anyway. God's love for us is so strong that God would do anything and everything to show us that love and save us from the mess we make of our lives.

John adds another startling side to this story in describing Jesus as the "Word". John was directly referring to the Greek concept of the ideal "logos", calling Jesus the personification of all that was pure and perfect. In contrast, reality is a flawed imitation of the perfect logos and can never achieve perfection, so Greek enlightenment set aside reality to focus mental energy on idealized concepts. Instead, Jesus, the Logos, comes to earth. Perfection steps into reality, and instead of succumbing to damage and contamination, brings wholeness to broken humanity.

John's reason for these verses is more than to marvel over philosophical impossibilities—John brought the message of hope in the Good News. Don't be distracted by his caution against a heresy of his time that attributed divinity to John the Baptist. John the gospel writer was emphatic that Jesus, the Logos, was not a removed and isolated concept but active and pervasive all around us. Just as light chases darkness from a room, so Jesus chases darkness from the entire world so that we all might be surrounded and engulfed in the light. To gain this "enlightenment" does not require chasing after knowledge, for the Light is pursuing us. God has made it so that we cannot help but to be illuminated, and all we have to do is to accept the gift of Light that came down at Christmas.