As young children, my siblings and I looked forward to putting up the Christmas tree at the start of the season of Advent since this marked the beginning of the preparations for Christmas. As the days to Christmas fast approached, it was time to clean the house, help mum with getting the cookies ready, and wait for the day when we would all go shopping for new clothes. These were the things we looked forward to for many years. But as I got older, I realized that Christmas is more than just putting up a tree or making cookies or new clothes because these things no longer excite me. In fact these days I hardly put up the tree… all I have to remind me of the old days is a one-foot tree that sits on my work desk, plug it in and it lights up.

For many shopping malls in the city, the Christmas tree is the highlight. In fact even before we started Advent, malls already had their Christmas deco up. As I was driving to work one day, I saw workers in a car showroom working hard to put up the Christmas tree and it made me wonder, is this what Christmas is all about? Can we look beyond the tree?

For many people, the mystery of the Incarnation is far from their minds this season. Probably the only reminder we have of this is the nativity set that we lay out in our homes once a year reminding us that Jesus was born. But the fact that God chooses to enter into our world when in fact he did not have to, often eludes our minds this season. One of the clearest indication we have of God’s intention is found in John 3:16, “for God so loved the world that He gave us his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. In short, it is all about love.

The Incarnation can remain a mystery (if we choose so) but is an ordinary sense, it is about God expressing his love in a concrete and tangible way through his son, Jesus. The kind of love that Jesus manifested during his life on earth went beyond all human reasoning. We can easily acclaim Jesus is love but the challenge is to be able to make that acclamation concrete and tangible… to forgive seventy times seven times, to go the extra mile, to turn the other cheek, embrace my “enemy”, etc.

The Incarnation happens every day. We often look for God in extraordinary signs that we forget to embrace him through our everyday and ordinary actions. We look for God up in the heavens when he has already chosen to live amongst us. It is when we truly realize that he is in our midst, then he becomes so much a part of our lives because we can engage with him as we engage with one another. As long as we do not recognize this, then God still remains in a distant place and the Incarnation remains a mystery. Looking around us it is not difficult to say that the world needs God’s love but if each of us does not strive to make this love as our way of life, the Incarnation (Christmas) will remain stuck on a tree. Let’s go beyond the tree. Blessed Christmas.