It seems there are no lovelier and more heartfelt songs than those we sing at Christmas, such as, for example, “Come, little children” and “Silent night, holy night”. It must be admitted that these songs are no longer the property of churchgoers alone, for they have long been sung outside congregations as well, outside the course of worship services. They are sung in concert halls, played on the radio, and can be watched and heard in television broadcasts in different renditions. Children sing the songs in kindergartens and schools, they are sung in families at the festive dinner tables and in many other places.
The heart trembles, and a solemn feeling comes over us when the songs whose words young and old alike know can be sung anew and experienced once again. And we do this with genuine, childlike joy. In singing, the differences of age, sex, race and nationality disappear. And it seems that everywhere “Silent night, holy night” or “Come, little children” resounds, the anxious and until then unstoppable rush of time, as well as of the singers themselves, comes to a halt.
Singing these songs, we all meet in their musical garb, in their words and, alongside this, also in the feelings of childhood, which are not foreign to anyone. In my opinion, Christmas songs have an irrational power to awaken the child within us, often without our even being aware of it. Singing them, we come down from our heights of wisdom, unwind from the routine of experience and climb out of the depths of cares and suffering, in order that each of us may return to his own childhood. And here we truly all become alike, even if only for the duration of the song, yet alike – like children at the Christmas tree. And that is so contrary to what we desire and what we strive for once childhood has passed and the feverish time of competition and rivalry has begun, which naturally leads us and rules over us for the whole of the rest of our life. Aware of this tragedy of adult life, Jānis Poruks writes in the poem “Riding home from church on Christmas Eve”:
Ah, mother dear, shall I forever
Be able to be so pure,
Or has fate decreed
That I become otherwise here on earth.
For Aspazija, childhood is like a “sunny little corner” to which one returns in thought and is refreshed when one is weighed down by the cares of life:
If many blossoms did not bloom
And others were stifled in the shade
By that black little wall of life,
Then know – one little place
Remained to you still: childhood
Like a small and sunny corner.
I dare to claim that all people long for the purity of childhood days, and perhaps it is precisely this often unconscious longing that leads so very many on Christmas Eve to the house of God, in order to return to childhood even for a moment. And here Jesus’ words ring out fittingly: “Let the little children come to me, for to them belongs the Kingdom of Heaven.” Or in another place what He said: “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it.”
Both of the cited passages of Holy Scripture are often applied only to children. Yet their spiritual depth is far more encompassing. Jesus reveals an unchanging spiritual principle on the way to the Kingdom of God. We must long to be pure as in childhood, when the good was truly dear, but the evil we feared and did not wish to identify with. We must strive with all our heart for the purity of childhood days, which made us blush at the very moment we happened to lie to our parents, for we had after all been taught, and we believed, that to act so is wrong. We knew that one must not steal, and if someone happened to secretly help himself to the tempting apples of a neighbour’s garden, then they burned the conscience until the guilty one confessed to the deed. But for joy it was enough to have only the burning sparklers on the tree, for they truly seemed like a miracle, and the gift received, which Father Christmas had brought from distant lands. He always knew what the little heart longed for. It was a time when we did not yet understand what it means to experience disappointment, to be deceived, fooled, and we had not yet experienced the bitter sweetness of revenge. Perhaps because of this purity of heart that children possess, the time of childhood seemed to Aspazija like a “small and sunny corner” to long for. But as it turns out, the longing for the purity of childhood days has been placed in our hearts by God Himself, so that one day we might return to Him.
Understanding the unchanging existence of this spiritual principle – to return to childhood – on the way to God, it becomes clearer why Jesus, before the Last Supper, says to His disciples who were already mature in years, among whom some were even older than Jesus: “Little children, yet a little while I am with you.” And after the resurrection, meeting those same disciples, He asks them: “Children, do you have anything to eat?”
Yes, truly there is no other way to God than to lower oneself, but perhaps also to rise to the simplicity and purity of childhood. And so that this return to childhood may not remain merely a nostalgic feeling to be met with only once a year, and so that the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, at this moment when we again feel a child within us, may be open and accessible, God Himself at Christmas reminds us that He too comes to us as a child, in order to meet this little child that dwells within us. How simple and at the same time how profound is this wisdom!
And so we stand before the child Jesus anew each year, singing together with others “Come, little children” and “Silent night, holy night”. Many, in singing the words “Oh, receive us ourselves as a gift to You”, do not even realize that this is the true time when, from memories of a sunny childhood, God wishes to lead us into a new reality and to give us a new identity as God’s child. This is the Christmas message that the Apostle John sends to us all: “But to all who received Him, He gave the power to become children of God, to those who believe in His Name…” The Apostle Paul clearly points out to us that the new identity is connected with faith in Jesus Christ: “You are all children of God, believing in Jesus Christ.”
The new status, the new identity is no longer connected with the past that has gone, with nostalgic memories of a sunny childhood, which as a reality is in truth
irretrievable. The newly gained status of God’s child never ends and is never lost. If you, singing the song “Silent night, holy night”, truly come to believe that “now the soul is redeemed, for You are born for us”, then the time has come for your festival of being born again.
But for those who have already once experienced these wondrous transformations that lead into being God’s child, Christmas offers the opportunity to renew once again their status as God’s child, casting off everything superfluous that hinders being pure and true as in childhood.
I understand, I feel,
That here on earth purity –
That is the highest that can be given to us,
And to be pure is glory.
/J. Poruks/
Rudīte Losāne
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