The old masters were not afraid to make a completely realistic portrayal of the newborn Christ Child. The sweet head of the child, with wavy hair, is large in proportion to the body; his limbs are woefully thin. The child has his finger in his mouth and sucks on it while he rubs the shiny soles of his feet together in reflection. The poor nursing child lies on the cold ground – at best there is spread a handful of hay or a little white cloth beneath him.

Like the shepherds in the old Nativity plays, it is tempting to give the mother some advice on proper bedding for babies. But the slender, lovely Virgin Mary kneels, deeply rapt in meditation and adoration. She looks at her little child which she bore in her womb and to which she gave flesh from her flesh, and she sees her God and Savior – the Creator who has chosen this world as his royal throne. The night sky over them with its starry host is his cape, which he has thrown over his mother and himself. Saint Joseph, the faithful and righteous one, stands as a watchman – near him are the angels, the faithful counselors of the carpenter. They have taken visible form and are richly decorated for a feast – they bear well-folded white linen clothes as servants at a festal mass, and round their beautiful red cheeks fall the luxurious locks of their hair. In order to keep their hair in place, they have bound it with gold crowns and wreaths of flowers. Only their Lord and King can come to such a feast without this kind of ornament. To him belong heaven and earth – he has established the round orb and all that exists on it; now he has come as the last and least of all to serve humankind in accordance with the will of God from all eternity – God’s secret decree which in our powerlessness and smallness we oppose and are offended by.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” Jesus says to the disciples, and “Fear not” – that is one of his last words. He says just that by coming to earth – more clearly than with words. Who can be troubled by a sucking babe? The half-crazed Idumean ruler in the castle in Jerusalem – but he has been a prisoner in the kingdom of his wild dreams for so long that he has lost his senses and his taste for the simple and sweet everyday things of life. The gang of wild hunters who rage in the storm clouds on Christmas eve – they are afraid. But for people of good will, the Prince of Peace has come as a newborn babe in a crib, and he wanted to come, wanted to be poor, so that we could do something for him.

Is not this the final and most secret cause of the joy of Christmas, that the world has been turned upside down? The Almighty has laid aside the marks of his honor and receives our gifts if we wish to do something for him. The mystery of salvation is introduced by a Christmas play, and the seriousness of the play far transcends our ability to portray what is happening: for almost two thousand years the cries and joys of children when they come to visit the crib have echoed through the world in midwinter, and people have grown warm as they play and are full of laughter because of God’s Son who became a child for their sake.

In the writing and the dreams of the Middle Ages, there wanders a figure, the Antichrist. When he comes, he appears as a full-grown man. He cannot make himself little and humble and the son of a woman. He who for so many ages has brooded over his plans of rebellion and destruction for the world, for him it is impossible to find time to play in the streets with other children in a little corner of the world. Only the Almighty, who has created and sustains all things, is ready to sleep among the carpenter’s tools of Joseph’s workshop and hang on Mary’s hand when she goes to the well at the city wall to fetch water.

The devil, as is proper and fitting for him, appears disguised in one or another human form. The important thing in tales of the devil is that they always turn on his disguise. The tempter, the spy, sneaks in everywhere in any possible costume. Of course it is possible that he, for reasons that we do not know, has some preference for appearing as a man with goat feet and with a clever horn on his forehead, but he can just as well appear as a beautiful woman or an honored brother in the monastery – or as a black poodle or an ardent little pig or a headless chicken, if those disguises suit his purposes.

But God comes to us, forever faithful and loving, and binds himself to us with flesh and blood to fight for the human race together with that human race, as God and true man among men. His heart, which contains the whole fullness of divinity, has beat beneath Mary’s heart; his mouth, which John saw with a sword proceeding from it, has drunk at Mary’s breast. Mary has lifted up her adored son, she has wrapped him in a cloth, she holds him in her arms. Jesus leans his head toward his mother’s breast – in the back of Mary’s supporting hand, his serious child eyes are looking down on all of us. He snuggles even closer to his mother and lifts his right hand in the air, now raised in blessing over the entering shepherds. Mary must sit down with the child so that the guests can properly see him. The old ruler from the Eastern lands creeps on his knees to the two of them and proffers a golden censor – perhaps it would amuse the Jesus Child to have it as a toy to play with – listen to how the chains on it rattle. For a second the child’s hand reaches out and his feet kick contentedly – then the little hand is lowered as a caress on the old man’s head.

People have made pictures for themselves of goddesses and divine children in order to worship them – Egyptian, Babylonian, and Chinese goddesses. Not one of them was able to display the blessing of peace upon a child at play. They were wild and vengeful, cruel and capricious, like the nature of which they were the visible images. Then appears a human child, a woman. A gentle virgin, full of grace, gently answers the angel who brings her tidings from the One who created both the angel and her: “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to your word.” And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Mary lifts up her child before us – as true God and true man, he has come into the world for our salvation, because each individual immortal soul is worth more than all the departing glory of the earth and the stars. Mary’s son says to us that all we have done or not done to one of the least who belong to him, that we have done or not done to him.

The pictures of goddesses crumble, abandoned and forgotten; the memory of orgies, the bloody rites of their cultists and their dirges sound forth in erratic myths and tales for children who, playing and smiling, gather around the Mother of Mercy, wherever she shows them Jesus in her arms.

Where she is driven away, there Herod slinks on his way back and people are seduced by the Idumean’s dreams of power and pleasure, of feasts in newly built palaces and blood in dark cellars, and in their hearts Herod’s hatred for his own descendants and his fear of children awaken. And the old visions of the goddesses of material change, gods of birth and decay, rising and falling life, again spring up.

Each of these goddesses presses her child to her breast, ready to fight for her child against others’ children. Leto’s child stretches his bow again and there is no mercy for the sons and daughters of Niobe. Let us then follow the children who sing with full voice:

Adeste fideles
Laete triumphantes
Venite, venite in Bethelem.

And when we give each other Christmas presents in his name, we should remember that he gave us the sun, the moon and stars, the earth with the forests and meadows, and the sea and all that moves, and all that leafs forth and bears fruit – and we have fought over these things and misused them. And he came to save us from our foolishness and our sins, and he gave himself to us as our Savior.

Venite adoremus, Dominum.

Source: Sigrid Undset on Saints and Sinners: New Translations and Studies: Papers Presented at a Conference Sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute, New York City, April 24, 1993, ed. Deal W. Hudson (Ignatius, 1993), 282–286. Used by permission.