John Buttrick writes from his Vermont Rocker in his Concord home, Minds Crossing. He can be reached at johndbuttrick@gmail.com

As I write this piece, there is Christmas music on my radio in the background. The music is jazzy, bright, sentimental, romantic, family-oriented, and a background for “all I want for Christmas…,” The Night Before Christmas, and reminders of the miraculous transformations of Frank Shirley and Ebenezer Scrooge.

I sing along with the familiar tunes and remember the stories. (I can recite The Night Before Christmas word for word). But even with all the musical cheer, I’m haunted by a shadow of depression. A Christmas of sweetness and light has little or no impact upon the reality of our troubled world. The daily news reports persist, fed by painful divisions, mass shootings, terrorist atrocities, and wars leaving in their wake revenge, death, and massive destruction of homes and infrastructure.

However, Christmas may be more than sweetness and light, a feel-good time sustained for a few days. With a closer look we may discover a Christmas time that comes as an alien force seeking to disrupt the life of the principalities and powers that lead our world astray. We are not the first generation to experience the turbulence of misrule. It was also a tumultuous time for the Palestinians and Jews at the time of the birth of Jesus. They lived with the memory of the 150-year occupation by the Seleucid empire, except for a brief rebellion led by Judah of Maccabee to recapture the temple in Jerusalem. They were now helpless under another occupation by the Roman Empire. The narrative of Jesus’ birth includes an account of the slaughter of innocent children in an attempt to prevent some child from growing up to lead a resistance movement against the Romans. Unending occupation, death of innocents, and resistance; these are the familiar experiences, then and now, of observers and victims alike.

The historical setting for the birth of Jesus is the source of the Christmas celebration. However, not everyone who celebrates Christmas relates to stories about a divine intervention of a manger-birth, the voices of angels, and the devotion of shepherds, cattle-a-lowing, and Magi. For some, Christmas may be only a time for gift-giving and a season of goodwill and family reunions. For some, the birth and life of Jesus may be a model for healing relationships and creation that are groaning in despair.

The spirit of Christmas may be the universal cosmic response to a despairing population and an over-stressed environment. It may be a seed planted to disrupt the normalcy of war imagery, retaliation, power abuse, revenge, and acceptable collateral damage and death. The challenge to the Christmas spirit is to find people who are acceptable receptacles to nurture the seeds of a just peace.

For Christians, Jesus can be the seed of inspiration to rebel against the principalities and powers that have been setting the norms of disingenuous relationships and oppression of the weak. Others may be able to shed the simple glitter of Christmas trees and presents for the display of a moral imperative to care for one another, care for the gifts of creation’s abundant earth, and bond with an awe-inspiring view of cosmic spheres dwelling at great distances and over seemly limitless time. These are gifts worthy of the songs of angels and worthy of human incentives to align with the bounty of the earth that seeks to nurture all its inhabitants.

Yes, Christmas is specific in the birth of Jesus. But also, Christmas is evidence of a universal initiative determined to create peace and goodwill among all people, all nations, and over the whole earth. Blessed with the creative will and power of the cosmos in all its manifestations, “Merry Christmas to all.”