President Donald Trump said Sunday that he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were “getting a lot closer, maybe very close” to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. Both leaders reported progress on security guarantees for Ukraine and the division of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that Russia has tried to capture. Mr. Trump said it will be clear “in a few weeks” whether negotiations to end the war will succeed.
The president meets today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss next steps in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu is also expected to focus on Israeli allegations that Iran is rapidly working to rebuild its ballistic missile arsenal.
On Saturday, Iran’s president claimed that his country is in an all-out war with the West. On Sunday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch of long-range strategic cruise missiles. Earlier today, China launched its most extensive war games around Taiwan as the country expands its nuclear warhead manufacturing capacity.
If you’re like many people, however, you’d rather not have to think about global war and peace this morning.
Today begins what some are calling “Twixmas,” “Dead Week,” or “Feral Week”—the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when, as one journalist reports, “We get the urge to take off and tune out, and our outstanding projects, deadlines, and other responsibilities become 2026 You’s problem.”
An Atlantic article calls this the “best week of the year,” explaining that “for many of us, this is the only time of year when it feels possible, and even encouraged, to do nothing.” Others are not so positive. One person said of this week, “What day it is doesn’t matter. Existence is confusion. Time is a flat circle.” Another wrote, “It’s just debris and crumbs and wishing the relatives would vaporize.”
Still another posted that this week “feels like one long Sunday.” I agree wholeheartedly, but not for the reasons they mean.
Losing the “melody” of life
When we lose the meaning of Christmas, we misplace the meaning of life. When the entry of Christ into the world becomes just another holiday rather than the day that changed human history, we lose what Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan calls the “melody” of life.
When Christmas is over, Christmas trees go to the curb or back in the attic. However, their original purpose was more transcendent than decorative: beginning in the seventh century, their triangular shape was used to describe the Holy Trinity and employed at Christmas as the “Tree of Christ.”
Christmas wreaths also go back into storage. However, the first modern Advent wreath also possessed abiding significance: it was used to symbolize the eternal nature of God and eternal life in Christ. Its prickly leaves and red berries represented Jesus’ crown of thorns and the drops of blood at his crucifixion.
Nativity sets go back into their boxes as well. However, when St. Francis of Assisi created the first crèche in 1223, he employed a living nativity scene, demonstrating the living reality and significance of Jesus’ birth.
“All for love’s sake became poor”
What if that birth had never happened? According to St. Augustine,
You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.
The greatest theologian since Paul was right. Paul said of Jesus, “He himself is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), because “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). He did this when “he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21; cf. Colossians 2:13–14).
Now when we confess our sins to him, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, my emphasis). Our Father then “blots out your transgressions” (Isaiah 43:25), removes them “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12), casts them “into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19), and “will remember [your] sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
Our sins barred us from the “tree of life” (Genesis 3:22–24) and consigned us to spiritual and eternal death (Romans 3:23). But because Jesus “bore our sins in his body on the tree” of Calvary, we can “die to sin and live to righteousness,” knowing that “by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). And one day we will dwell amidst the “tree of life” whose leaves are “for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).
All of this was made possible by Christmas. Billy Graham was therefore right to identify “the most important event in human history” as “the coming of God’s Son into the world.”
And all of this was our Savior’s gift of love, as the Anglican missionary Frank Houghton noted:
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love’s sake became poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love’s sake became poor.
“Ask if this were merited”
How should we respond? St. Augustine urged us:
Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time. . . .
For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become a son of God?
Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace.
When we embrace such grace, when we “joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption,” every day is Sunday.
And every day is Christmas.
Quote for the day:
“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” —Brennan Manning
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