Don't put tinsell around the cross

The Christmas stories always need connecting with the grown up Jesus if they are not to be sentimentalised. Don’t put tinsel around the cross at Christmas. The magic of angels and the virginal conception are the embellishments to enable us to celebrate that life of compassion and self giving. In their own way they give us the radical message of inclusiveness: of the women, of the Gentiles, of the sexually suspected, of the pregnant girl. They lay before us the violence which grace confronts: the all maleness, the righteous Law observance, the willingness to abandon the pregnant girl, the murderous ruler, the slaughtered children, the aspiration to kill ‘the king of the Jews’. We have to work hard to keep it all from being reduced to jingles to promote shopping sprees or being perpetuated as just a bit more Christian naiveté in a world where the same geography and the same issues exist.
http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtAdvent4.htm