"In the Bleak Midwinter" Here in New Hampshire

New Hampshire has been bitter cold since Thanksgiving, and tomorrow, a week before Christmas, we're expecting a break from the polar vortex, with temperatures rising into the 50's! 

Unfortunately, this will only last a day or so before it gets chilly again (although not as cold as it was before). The upside of all this is that there's a foot 0f melting snow on the ground and a few more inches are expected before Christmas, so one way or the other, we're looking at a Whie Christmas!

This year’s colder than normal December brings to mind a Christmas carol and poem I love, Christina Rossetti's "In the Bleak Midwinter,."

This carol, like all good Christmas carols, takes us not only to the birth of Jesus, but into the great mystery of an infinite God being born as a human baby placed in a manger:

In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Of course, the scene here is a northern European fantasy, a winter far removed from the Southern California climate of Bethlehem of Judea. Yet, imagining Christ's birth taking place in a time and place and climate we know is rooted in a godly instinct that understands God's arrival on earth as taking place here and now, "in the bleak midwinter," and not just in Bethlehem of Judea, two thousand years ago. As Jesus' words at the end of Matthew's Gospel remind us, "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20).

There's a deeper reading of this "bleak midwinter" scene, another way of reading "earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone." If God comes into the cold midwinter of a frozen solid December day, God comes to human hearts that are just as rock-hard frozen as an iron-hard frozen earth.

The carol tells us that it is this hard heart alone that we can give him. A sentimental reading here suggests that even hard hearts melt in the presence of babies. Yet, there is more going on here than sentimentality. The radiance of heaven has come to earth, and the earth begins to thaw in response, as the second stanza of "Silent Night" suggests:

Silent night, holy night,

Son of God, love's pure light

Radiant beams from Thy holy face,

With the dawn of redeeming grace,

Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth,

Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth.