I can tell you everything that’s wrong with Christmas. There is an explanation for tiny-terrorist present-demanding children, there is an explanation for holiday season loneliness, there is an explanation for passive aggressive, or even just directly critical extended family members, there is an explanation for why Scrooges exist as well as for the same sentimental seasonal stories on the Hallmark channel, there is an explanation for the over-decorators and the over-drinkers, there is an explanation for the abortions and the suicides and the divorces that will happen in December, there is an explanation for the hypocrisies in the mouths of so many politicians and parents (and even some preachers) who see the baby Jesus represented in the manger and yet who refuse to kneel before the risen Jesus in all His authority on the throne beside His Father.

The December advent season and Christmas itself are front line battle spots in the spiritual war. This is at least a 6,000 year conflict, a clash ordained by God. Though it took a critical turn about two millennia ago, we are still right in fight. Our worship, our communion table, our dining tables, our wrapped presents under the tree, our Cantus and carols, the fatigue in our bones and the circles of baked sugar on our paper plates, are all a part of it.

What Went Wrong

Christmas got off on the wrong foot from the start. Stated differently, the fact that we got off on the wrong foot is the reason why Christmas was born.

No matter how much you feel like you enjoy the feeling of things on Christmas morning—the family gathering in cozy pajamas and the smell of cinnamon rolls baking and the colorful lights inside with maybe a new blanket of snow outside—the Garden of Eden was better.

That said, even in paradise a liar showed up, the original Grendel, the unredeemable Grinch, the great dragon/ancient serpent (so called in Revelation 12:9). He came bearing gifts of doubt and discontent. He persuaded the woman that her Maker was threatening her to keep something from her, that the Lord hadn’t given His best, that she could stand on her own two feet without God making the rules (Genesis 3:5). So Eve ate the fruit, she gave it to Adam and he ate, the first human sin, the original sin. That sin brought guilt and shame (verse 7) and fear, so they hid from God (verse 8). That sin brought defensiveness and blame-shifting, “it was the woman’s fault” (verse 12) and really “it was the serpent’s fault” (verse 13). That sin divided the one-couple back into two sinners. That sin separated the sinners from the Holy One.

We learn all this in Genesis 3 as the LORD God asked questions (Genesis 3:8-13). Then the LORD God spoke to the serpent, the woman, and then the man (3:14-20).

The LORD told the man, “cursed is the ground because of you, in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life” (verse 17). Among many other examples, you will not get your tree posted straight with ease and a third of the lights in the strand will be burnt out having just sat in a box for the last eleven months, and work will take more hours during the holidays. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (verse 19), or you will at least find it painful how much inflation hit the supermarket. Sure, Biden did that, because Adam did that.

The LORD told the woman, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing” (verse 16). How broad is this? Just the contractions? Or how about the sleepless pregnancy nights, the hemorrhaging and mastitis, the diaper blow outs in their new advent jammies? And then the LORD said, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you,” and even though you can see how much he could help after dinner, he just sits there watching TV acting like the jerk patriarchy.

The Hope in the Story

There’s no salvation tying a bow on these judgments to the man or woman. The curse is inescapable to death, until “to dust you shall return” (verse 19). The hope comes in the LORD’s judgment of the serpent, which actually comes first in the story, and shines light over the judgments on the woman and the man.

The LORD God said to the serpent that he would be despised among the beasts and “eat dust,” and then,

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

The curse on creation (in which it groans awaiting redemption, Romans 8:20-21), is only the theater for the conflict between two sets of children. As we learn, the two “offsprings” or more directly, “seeds,” are more than physical, they form different spiritual families. The woman may have pain in childbearing, but a child born will win the battle against the enemy. The serpent has offspring, and God establishes an “enmity,” an active and ongoing conflict between the offsprings, and then the serpent’s head will be crushed.

Genesis 3 is what is wrong with Christmas. Genesis 3:15 explains, at the highest level, everything that makes advent, the last 24 days or even the 51 6/7th weeks of preparation for Christmas, a battle. The problem is sin, yes, and the problem is a declared war.

But in the midst of that is a promise. The promise was vague enough that Eve thought her firstborn, Cain, was the answer. “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD” (Genesis 4:1). When Cain killed Abel and she bore Seth, she seems to have thought Seth was the answer, “God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him” (Genesis 4:25). Cain was ruled by the serpent’s traits of selfishness and spite so much so that he killed his brother.

The next chapter, Genesis 5, is a genealogy, and in the generations from Adam to Noah there was no dragon fighter. The offspring of the serpent were so evil that Genesis 6-9 is the record of God’s global flood to wipe out all but Noah’s eight. Chapter 10 is another genealogy, more generations into nations spread over earth after the flood, and still no dragon defeater. This isn’t to say that there were no spiritual offspring of the woman who worshipped the LORD, it is to say that none of those men fulfilled Genesis 3:15.

In addition to the anticipation for the coming—the advent—of the woman’s offspring, and in addition to the length of time waiting for that coming, through generations of men who marked their lifespans in centuries, what has struck me in the Christmas meditation mindset this time around is what they were waiting for.

Man had blown it. He had one job. He had been given only good and obviously good gifts. He had unmediated walks with God and heard the words of God and yet he failed. The serpent was too crafty, the man listened to the woman who listened to the lies.

So what would God do? How would He accomplish redemption, and triumph over the serpent? At this point at the author’s desk, what sort of creature could come and defeat and deliver? What mythical, even angelic expectation might God have provoked in their imaginative hope?

If you have ears to hear, the good news is that God sent a Man.

It’s why Eve looked to Cain, then Seth; where is the man? It’s why the genealogies of men. It’s why the dragon chased Israel for centuries to devour a male child according to Revelation 12:4-6. Herod was doing the work of his father when he ordered all the baby boys killed.

Adam—whose name is the Hebrew word for “man”—sinned and all died in him (Romans 5:12, 15), the last and better Adam-Man makes men alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). God sent a Man, to share in flesh and blood, to defeat the devil and make propitiation for our sins (Hebrews 2:14, 17).

Yes, Jesus was and is Emmanuel, God with us. But Christmas is not the celebration that God exists, or even that there exists in the Godhead three Persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. Christmas celebrates that God was “born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7), the Logos made flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14). Jesus, as the genealogies in both Matthew 1 and Luke 3 make clear, became a Man. God sent a man.

The only reason we accept the fact that a Man came into the world as a baby and saved the world is because we’re Christians who’ve had a lot of Christmases.

Conclusion

One implication of the story is that there is nothing wrong with being a man, nothing wrong with having flesh. There is nothing wrong with the calling of Christmas, says Christmas, says the Incarnation, says the eternal Logos born of a woman. The problem is sin and the serpent, not man on earth.

“He comes to make His blessings flow / Far as the curse is found” through a Man (“Joy to the World,” Isaac Watts). “Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface, / Stamp Thine image in its place: / Second Adam from above, / Reinstate us in Thy love” (“Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” Charles Wesley).

Holidays are rough and lonely too because of sin and the serpent. Why would he like the faithful feasting? There is no neutrality, and God is glad to keep sending men, not who replace the Son of Man, but who represent Him.

God sent a Man, Let men their songs employ.

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God sent a Man. Jesus is “truly God and truly man…in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary…according to the Manhood” (Chalcedon Creed, AD 451). This is not a man-made myth, it is too unfashionable for humanity. The charge for you is also simple: eat and drink and find joy in your December toil in the name of this dragon-defeater, the Lord Jesus (Colossians 2:17).

Benediction:

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (Romans 16:20, ESV)