As “the greatest story ever told,” there are endless ways of viewing Christmas. One that struck me this year was the surprising power of forces that may seem small, unimpressive, even pathetic. When Goliath saw the future King David, then a skinny shepherd boy holding a couple stones and leather sling, he couldn’t help but laugh at the idea that this opponent might defeat him. Many felt the same about Jesus, the new claimant to sit on the thrown of David, asking, “Isn’t he just a carpenter’s kid from a small town?”
But as Jesus himself noted frequently, what appears last in one accounting will be first in another, what begins as a mustard seed can grow to be the strongest tree, and one cannot enter the new kingdom without becoming like one of the children gathered at his feet.
Christmas brings this message home because it’s a story about the strongest force in the universe entering the physical world as a helpless child in a poor family. That’s a mystery you could dwell on your whole life and still need more time. It was the moment when a small spark caught fire in the hay of a manger, which would soon spread and consume the whole world.
For this reason, early Christians chose the Winter Solstice to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Light of the World, since it’s the shortest and darkest day and every day after gets longer and lighter. European painters would often use the Christ child as the light source in their depictions of the Nativity to make this point.
For us here in the Tar Heel State in 2025, Christmas is also a reminder of the power of small, how such a ubiquitous, monumental annual event can come together by the actions of countless company parties, family gatherings, small town parades, holiday lights displays, charity drives, and volunteer Santas (among many other actions). All of us, through the chaotic accumulation of organic efforts, manage to put something together that all the central planners of the world’s bureaucratic states couldn’t rival.
The free market, of course, tells this same story of the power of individuals and small groups with a variety of motives to accomplish highly complex tasks. One of my favorite stories to illustrate this is when Soviet President Boris Yeltsin visited Houston for an official visit to see NASA and other sites meant to impress him on the superiority of democracy and capitalism. But it was a suburban supermarket that actually convinced him socialism was inferior.
Stefanie Asin of the Houston Chronicle reported at the time that during an “unscheduled trip inside a nearby Randall’s location,” Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement” and told his Russian entourage that “there would be a revolution” if their citizens, who often had to wait hours in line for basic goods, ever learned what US grocery stores were like. But Americans, showing the power of decentralized knowledge and decision-making, just do their small part, trust the process, and get miraculous results.
This chaotic symphony of small actors is on beautiful display in North Carolina every Christmas. Wherever you go in our great state — from the stately Biltmore castle in the west to the charming coastal towns of Beaufort or Southport — you’ll see people doing their part to make Christmas happen, fanning the flame that first sparked in the manger 2,026 years ago. And every little action contributes, whether it’s the literal lights being hung on trees or lit in candles, or the more figurative (but still very real) lights of visiting lonely loved ones or donating time and money to charity.
And this is the time of the year that North Carolinians, like all Americans, give the most money to charitable organizations. About a third of charitable giving happens in the last month of the year, with 10% coming in just the last three days. I realize that a lot of that is due to end-of-year planning and trying to get the tax deduction for that year before it ends. But you’d have to be a cynical Scrooge to think none of it was motivated by the actual virtue of charity.
Charity, which is much more than donating to non-profits, comes from the Latin caritas — or agape in Greek — the self-sacrificing, unconditional, divinely initiated desire for the good of all. Charity is the law of the new world Christ came to initiate on Christmas. It’s that highest form of love which Paul says if you have all else but not charity, you have nothing; and which Jesus said if you possess for God and neighbor, you’ve fulfilled the whole of the law.
It can be a very dark world. Every day working in the news business reminds me of that. But, as Mother Theresa said, “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” And Christmas is a time for us all to reflect on how we can contribute to the divine arson project of lighting the world on fire with charity, to bring light where there is darkness and warmth to those who have grown cold. So let’s start our little fires, however small, in the cold, dark corners of the world directly around us and hope they spread.