the dark side of Christmas

Newtown, Connecticut (14 Dec 2012).  Bethlehem, Judea (Matthew 2:16).  Christmas has not yet arrived.  Still, our proximity to it prompts an observation.  The dark, and usually overlooked, reality is that the Christmas story carries within it the slaughter of little children.  Two weeks from yesterday, we observe the feast of the Holy Innocents. 

Pointing out the reality of the massacre of young ones doesn’t explain or excuse it.  How could anything?  But what it does do is to show how Jesus was born into a world with the same hatred and insanity that still plague us.  Our challenge is to work for the “peace on earth” that the angels proclaim—to ask for and use that courage.