Christmas and dreams go together, don't they? There's the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas ("'Twas the night before Christmas …") in which the children's dreams are filled with dancing sugar plums. While children's Christmas dreams today don't involve sugar plums, the dreams of gifts and treats still fill little minds in eager anticipation of Christmas morning. The Christmas dreams category is incomplete without Irving Berlin's White Christmas. This song revels in the romance of a snow-covered Christmas and the memories of Christmas associated with it. The power of Christmas dreaming in our popularizing of the holiday is so great that it's enough to bring us home for Christmas ("if only in my dreams").
Do you notice that our dreams about Christmas don't include any dreams or visions of the Christ Child? Yet the first Christmas was filled with such dreams. In today's Gospel lesson we are told of the first Christmas dream — a "vision" really — in which Joseph is told that Mary is pregnant with the Christ Child and that he would be privileged to be this child's step-father. It was a dream intended to inform, comfort, and guide Joseph. It was also the first of three dreams recorded in God's Word that would serve Joseph in his faith journey.
Rather than serve us as Joseph was once served, Christmas dreams today are more distractions than aids. Instead of focusing us on Christ, His birth, and the life that He brings into the world, Christmas dreams are filled with sentiments that often cause us to suffer through Christmas and it's disappointments rather than find joy and peace in the birth of our Savior.
What are your Christmas dreams? Are they dreams of presents? Dreams of harmony in your family? Dreams of a special holiday that will be cherished in your memories? Or are your Christmas dreams centered in the hope, comfort, joy, and peace that come in the birth of Jesus? One set of dreams is made up of distractions that often lead to disappointment. The other is the essence of Christmas that will last throughout the year. May your dreams bring you a clearer vision of Christ this Christmas.
