See the Christmas Star in 2020 -- Discover Where the Homeless Are At Home

 

The House of Christmas

by G. K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honor and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam,
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

This is the Christmas season of 2020, a time scarred by COVID-19. People everywhere are struggling to celebrate the holiday in a safe manner – most sacrificing large family and social gatherings to help stop the spread of the virus. To some, the loss of fellowship this Christmas is so troubling that they are overcome with regret.

Yet, people can find solace in a search for meaning this year. Perhaps the news of a very special event will help ease their anxiety and form a lasting impression of the true meaning of Christmas.

A phenomenon not seen for nearly 800 years will light up the sky this week. Two of the largest planets in the solar system will come together in “a great conjunction” right in time for Christmas, NASA reported. It is also the same day as the winter solstice.

“What has become known popularly as the ‘Christmas Star’ (the Star of Bethlehem) is an especially vibrant planetary conjunction easily visible in the evening sky over the next two weeks as the bright planets Jupiter and Saturn come together, culminating on the night of Dec. 21,” NASA said on its website.

The two planets rarely come together like other bright planets do. The conjunction of the two planets happens about every 20 years, but they’re not always the same. Monday will be the closest Jupiter-Saturn pairing since July 1623, when the two planets appeared a little nearer. This conjunction was almost impossible to see, however, because of its closeness to the sun.

Imagine. Considerably closer and in plain view was the March 1226 conjunction of the two planets – when Genghis Khan was conquering Asia. Monday’s conjunction will be the closest pairing that is visible since way back then.

“What is most rare is a close conjunction that occurs in our nighttime sky,” said Vanderbilt University’s David Weintraub, an astronomy professor. “I think it’s fair to say that such an event typically may occur just once in any one person’s lifetime, and I think ‘once in my lifetime’ is a pretty good test of whether something merits being labeled as rare or special.” Their next super-close pairing: March 15, 2080.

(“On Monday, ‘Christmas Star’ appears in sky for first time in 800 years: how to see great conjunction if weather permits.” The Associated Press. December 20, 2020.)

A Christmas Star leading to the meaning for the season – this may be an ironic occurrence during this perilous year. Or, the alignment could be a heavenly symbol of truth and love and a fitting paradox for the times.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. He has been referred to as the "prince of paradox.” Time Magazine observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories – first carefully turning them inside out."

(J.D. Douglas. "G.K. Chesterton, the Eccentric Prince of Paradox.” Christianity Today. May 24, 1974.)

Chesterton early discovered the value of paradox as "truth standing on its head to gain attention.” Chesterton showed us that life is full of paradoxes – full of those apparent contradictions, incongruous juxtapositions that point to deeper truths. Take, for instance, the fact that it takes a big man to know how small he is, or the fact that pride is the sin of a small man who thinks he is big.

Chesterton writes …

“Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured.”

(G. K. Chesterton. Orthodoxy. 2009)

Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism.

The paradoxical life of Chesterton gives joy to the season. Though he, himself, had no children, he knew many, and many children knew and loved him; and he knew that for them Christmas was a truly magical time.

As biographer Maisie Ward records: “From the Christmas party at Overroads (his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire) all adults were excluded – no nurses, no parents. The children would hang on Gilbert’s neck in an ecstasy of affection and he and Frances schemed out endless games for them.”

But Chesterton never subscribed to the notion that Christmas is mainly for the children: he claimed that he enjoyed Christmas more as an adult than he had as a child. “The fun of Christmas,” he profoundly believed, “is founded on the seriousness of Christmas.”

Understanding what was happening in Germany in the mid-1930s was a matter of understanding the phenomenon of National Socialism. To “make vivid the horrors of destruction and mere disciplined murder,” Chesterton wrote, “we must see them more simply as attacks on the hearth and the human family; and feel about Hitler as men felt about Herod.”

Of society and poetry, he explained …

“If we want to talk about poverty, we must talk about it as the hunger of a human being … We must say first of the beggar, not that there is insufficient housing accommodation, but that he has nowhere to lay his head.”

Chesterton's poem “The House of Christmas,” speaks of a universal understanding. “Christmas,” he wrote, “is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”

Author and former editor of The Catholic Herald William Oddie writes …

(Christmas was, he (Chesterton) believed, a concrete point of entry into much deeper levels of understanding of the human situation than those who simply enjoyed it understood at the time. It was an experience whose true meaning often made itself clear only after many years, sometimes after a lifetime.

“'The great majority of people,' as he put it, 'will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.'”

(William Oddie. “Christmas brought out the best in GK Chesterton.” Catholic Herald. https://catholicherald.co.uk/christmas-brought-out-the-best-in-gk-chesterton. December 20, 2018.)

Chesterton always believed in the concreteness of the nearest thing leading beyond itself to levels of spiritual depth we had hardly begun to suppose even existed. Thus, we had to be loyal to the family before we could believe in the nation: patriotism was the result of loving first what we knew and understood best. We had to begin with the tangible, not with the vague and intentionally spiritual.

Chesterton wrote …

“We must talk of the human family in language as plain and practical and positive as that in which mystics used to talk of the Holy Family. We must learn again to use the naked words that describe a natural thing … Then we shall draw on the driving force of many thousand years, and call up a real humanitarianism out of the depths of humanity.”

(William Oddie. “Christmas brought out the best in GK Chesterton.” Catholic Herald. https://catholicherald.co.uk/christmas-brought-out-the-best-in-gk-chesterton. December 20, 2018.)

In “The House of Christmas,” we find ourselves retracing steps to Bethlehem. We find a child in a manger. We find star in the east. And, we will find, as Chesterton said, a beautiful, meaningful paradox: “That home behind home for which we are all homesick.”

We can only take a sample of the universe, he once said, “and that sample, even if it be a handful of dust (which is also a beautiful substance) will always assert the magic of itself and hint at the magic of all things.”

“A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam,
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home …

“To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.”

The power of Chesterton's ironic verse is full of the the magic of the season. We all begin “homeless at home” and we find ourselves wandering “to the place where God was homeless and all men are at home, We look to the stars in wonder, but this infinite matter and space can provide peace and understanding.

You may think about the rare alignment of the planets this COVID Christmas. In doing so, your thoughts may lead to a simple understanding that even when we are separated and alone – away from family and friends in times of war and peace (and pandemic) – we can look to a bright star under miraculous skies that once led a holy family to a feeble place – a foul and isolated stable – that was, in truth, the strong dwelling where a homeless God established our eternal home.