Occasion: Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)
Readings: Night: Isaiah 9:1-6; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14; Day: Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18 

WE OPEN with the classic images of the Christmas season. Not the mistletoe, the cookie dough, the lights aglow, or the trees in snow. I’m talking about the traffic; those news crawl graphics with weary airline travelers in tow, telling us that once again everyone is trying to get home to celebrate Christmas. “Home for the Holidays”—it’s a classic premise for movies as well, and ripe for comedy. We can all relate.

Why are we going home though? Why do we feel this pull, as Christians, toward home on Christmas? We are, of course, going home in order to take part in a number of traditions that recreate the events of the first Christmas. We place a figure of baby Jesus in our family nativity scenes, we place a star above the tree to recreate the star of Bethlehem, and we give gifts to recreate the three gifts of the wise men. But we may not realize that, even in our traveling home—in all its headaches and frustrations—we are already recreating and symbolizing the first Christmas; we symbolize an action of Joseph, Mary, and the soon-to-arrive infant Jesus.

We can think of our travel this season not as a mere trip toward celebration, but as a celebration itself.

As told in Luke’s gospel, Joseph was traveling to his hometown of Bethlehem with expectant Mary at his side. This homeward traveling is the first action of Christmas, and one that makes all us frustrated and weary travelers suddenly seem more sacred, maybe even celebratory! We’re retracing the actions of the Holy Family. We can think of our travel this season not as a mere trip toward celebration, but as a celebration itself.

At the same time, hearing that Joseph was returning to his hometown makes the fact that Jesus had to be born in a manger all the stranger. Where was the extended family?! We are used to hearing the story of Joseph and Mary being denied at the inns. As kids in Catholic school we may have recreated the scene, with two lucky kids playing Mary and Joseph as they inquire at three different inns and are denied each time. But why should they have to stay at an inn at all? Who travels home for Christmas to stay at a hotel? More heartbreaking than the fact that Joseph and Mary were denied room at the inn is the fact that they had to ask for a room at all.

The journey of Joseph and Mary was not just a visit home to the family. They traveled in order to be counted in the census that Caesar Augustus had ordered. Caesar wanted to know just how many people there were, where they came from, and where they were living. An extraordinary feat at the time, but one we are used to today. We are put into demographic lists, polled, asked how interested we are in a product, asked how useful to us an ad was on YouTube, asked to review every product we buy and every place we stay. We are constantly reminded that some stranger out there, some anonymous politician or marketing executive, wants to know who we are, where we are from, and what we want to buy!

We become justifiably cynical. We hold on to the sense that we are being “counted” only in order to be “counted on”—counted on to buy something, counted on to vote for someone, counted on to give a good review of this or that. Rarely do we just count. And this brings us back to the question of why we travel home for Christmas. We go there to count, not for what we have to offer, but because we are loved. This is how God counts. Jesus introduced a new census to the world—one that counts on the love we give and receive.