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    Charlie's Christmas Letter: Things My Grandson Ought to Know
    Charlie's Christmas Letter: Things My Grandson Ought to Know
    Charlie's Christmas Letter: Things My Grandson Ought to Know
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Charlie's Christmas Letter: Things My Grandson Ought to Know

    By A. Kingsley Weatherhead

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    Charlie's Christmas Letter is a little document in the form of a letter to my grandson, which seeks to answer the questions that a bright teenager ought to be asking: Why were the shepherds in the fields in winter? Who were the three wise men? Why do we bring holly into the house? Of all the ways of entering a house why does Santa choose the chimney? What is the Messiah about? Why did Tchaikovsky drink unboiled water during a cholera epidemic? What is the Jewish Celebration of Lights all about?
    The letter presents some of the more interesting features of the season and incidental matters. Much space is devoted to details of the nativity and the transmittal of these through the uncertainties of the gospel reports; then there are the primitive rituals of food and drink; the origin of Santa Claus; and a summary of the wonderful legend "The Cessation of the Oracles."
    Then come features of the season not part of the nativity story: Messiah, The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, containing some of the more colorful and significant details of the lives of Handel, Tchaikovsky, and Dickens. Then Hanukkah. Then Shopping. At best tangentially related, these have in them elements of Christian value. Next, the climax of the season: church on Christmas morning and the carols. Finally the book concludes with an attempt to present for the boy the huge dimension of the inconceivable phenomenon of the Incarnation. The chatty, simple style avoids long words where possible and offers parenthetical explanations. It is not without occasional, innocent wit and is sometimes a bit didactic: there are grandfatherly prescriptions, which Charlie may find a bit pompous.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateJun 1, 2010
    ISBN9781498272797
    Charlie's Christmas Letter: Things My Grandson Ought to Know

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      Book preview

      Charlie's Christmas Letter - A. Kingsley Weatherhead

      9781608996995.kindle.jpg

      Charlie’s Christmas Letter

      Things My Grandson Ought to Know

      A. Kingsley Weatherhead

      18465.png

      Charlie’s Christmas Letter

      Things My Grandson Ought to Know

      Copyright © 2010 A. Kingsley Weatherhead. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-60899-699-5

      EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7279-7

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

      For Gerald and Gloria Johnson

      Foreword

      Dear Charlie,

      Now that you are a teenager and now that Christmas is approaching I think it is time to give you answers to some of the questions which you, being a curious little kid, used to ask. For example, Why did Dad stick that bit of holly over the Van Gogh in the living room? you wanted to know. Because it’s Christmas, you were told—a dusty answer in place of a long story. Why did Santa have to come down the chimney instead of through the door or at least through a window? Good question, Charlie. But good question unanswered; it’s another long story. Or, when seeing a card from your aunt, the question, Why do they have camels in Seattle? deserved a better answer than, Oh, Charlie, do be quiet! from your mother, busy at the door, giving his Christmas tip to the boy who brings back the dry cleaning. I wonder if you can remember, Charlie, now you are older, all the mysteries that a perceptive child must face. And everyone’s too busy at Christmas.

      Then beside those details, closely or distantly related to the birth of Jesus, there are other things going on in the Christmas season, like the Messiah, which you were dragged out to hear one snowy night when you wanted to watch TV; and the Nutcracker ballet; and Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. You ought to know something too about what your Jewish friends are celebrating while you are doing Christmas. These things and more I want to tell you about. So settle down on the couch, Charlie, leaning on one elbow as you love to do, and start reading.

      1

      The Nativity

      Introduction to the Bible News

      When we talk about Christmas, there are two things you have to remember from the beginning: first, the story of the nativity of Christ comes in two of the gospels in the New Testament, Matthew’s and Luke’s. Gospel means good news, and the news is a bit like the news we get today from whatever source: not altogether reliable. Remember, neither of the two people who wrote those two gospels and described the birth and what was going on around it had actually been there at the time; they didn’t know Jesus’ parents, and they hadn’t witnessed first hand what really happened on that amazing occasion. They were not there; they were probably not yet born. The events they describe had taken place some fifty or more years before they wrote their stories. It’s as if we were just now getting news of events from World War II or shortly thereafter from people who, though they knew about the war and had heard some of the details, hadn’t been there themselves. There is no document in existence written by a contemporary of Jesus.

      Then there is another complication: sometimes for the things we take to be part of Christmas there is no evidence in the gospels. Take for one instance the cow which is a feature of the crèche, the tableau of the nativity scene in the stable, said to have been pioneered by St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century. Neither Luke nor Matthew mentions a cow in the stable where the child lay; its presence came from a prediction in the Old Testament, and thus it is in our crèches with the lineaments of adoration painted on its silken face. Its breath then and forever after became sweet, according to legend. And its presence in the stable has given rise also to the legend that on Christmas Eve the cattle in the fields fall on their knees. But it isn’t in the gospel stories.

      But then, more importantly, there are things in the gospels that are not at all what had actually happened, but what had been predicted to happen by prophets in the Old Testament. Thus throughout the New Testament the gospel writers note that their news fulfills a prophecy, suggesting that what they are offering as news is what they have read in Micah, or Jeremiah, or Isaiah. It may not be something that actually happened the way it is described or it may not even have happened at all. The prophets of the Old Testament wrote of the coming of a deliverer they refer to as a Messiah who would liberate Israel. And the writers of the gospels have slanted their accounts to fit the idea that Christ is that Messiah and to show that the prophets were right.

      You have to notice also, Charlie, that the gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, from which we learn of the life of Jesus, were selected from a number of possible texts. Other versions of the story not included in the Bible as we have it are known as the Gnostic gospels, and they sometimes give a version of events different from what is given in the New Testament.

      Then, second, you must understand that many of the things we associate with Christmas are not to be found in the gospel reports at all because they have come down to the present day from pagan origins and have been blended into the story of the birth of Christ. The word pagan is used for a person who was neither Christian nor Jew. I’m using it to mean the people who

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