By the REV. IRA GRAGG, (St. Louis, Mo.) A sermon preached at the Masonic Home of Missouri, St. Louis, on December 28, 1958.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE between the Christmas that is and the Christmas that was. Christmas was different when it started. Many are now yearning for the old-fashioned Christmas. What we should yearn for is the original Christmas.

The stores were not open then . . . the stable was.

The mother had no gift for the Baby’s birthday, unless her gift was nurturing love. The father had no gift for the Baby’s birth night, unless his gift was protecting love. Their gifts were not wrapped in attractive packages. The mother’s nurturing love was given by soft arms; the father’s protecting love was given by muscular arms.

Nor was there a tree for the different Christmas; the tree came thirty-three years later, hewn into rough arms and stripped of branches and leaves. There were no lights on that tree; instead, a life was given on it. At the crib for the day of his birth, there was their gift of love. At the cross for the day of his death, there was His gift of light. The Christmas that was different gave light to the darkness.

Two thousand years before radio, there was a night when God broadcast to the world. That night, it was not a station-to-station but a person-to-person hookup.
The Light of the World was born; not a bulb, but a baby.

The hope the Prophets held became the hope the Apostles had. The birth night took fading hopes out of mothballs and gave them into hands holding lights. The gloom in all the accents of dark untruth is replaced by the glow of the Christ Light that is shining in our darkness.

The Christmas that was different gave warmth to coldness.

All pride that is cold melts in pain. All snobbery that is ice thaws in sickness. Cold hearts cannot rebel against the warmth of the Christmas gospel, and Scrooge is the total witness to that. Tiny Tim is the picture of the eternal child-heart that holds the likeness of the kingdom of heaven. The warmth of the stable is the resource that comes to grips with the cold tragedies that intrudes into our days. The difference that Christmas made is seen in the difference a letter makes. Piety is cold, being only the frozen devotion that pretends at the real thing. Take the letter “e” out of piety for the word pity, and you have the essential mood that belongs to Christmas Eve. Gory is cold, being the description of the cold field of war and the cold bodies strewn upon the field. Add the letter “1” to gory for the word glory, and you have the essential tone that fills the sky at night – glory to God in the highest.

Five letters spell the words force and faith. Force is the cold of the keeper of the inn and the king in the palace. Faith is the warmth of wise men on the road and shepherds abiding in the field watching their flocks by night. There isn’t much difference in the words, but what difference there is becomes the distance between the cold heart in the palace and the warm hearts in the field.

The Christmas that was different gave strength to weakness. This night, most people are tired out from shopping. That night, those people were tired out from searching. Humanity was actually down to its last gasp when the new life came. It was a tired-out world into which the tireless Christ came.

We are showing little improvement in the record with our exhaustions and frustrations. By every recognized rule of our modern afflictions, Joseph could have had a heart-stroke and Mary could have had a nervous breakdown. But, these two persons were moved by what Horace Bushnell said is the only relic of Paradise left us – marriage. The man and the woman started a family, and, married to each other, married themselves to the strength of character and honor that produced the strongest power the world has known. That power came to expression in the life of their son.

We know him as Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christmas that was different gave life to deadness.

Love actually came to life in hate-deadened hearts. Giving actually came to life in self-seeking hearts. Goodwill actually came to life in hardened hearts.

Glenn E. Chandler, Snr.
M.I. Grand Master