Sermons
December 14, 2025 (3rd Sunday of Advent)
Sunshine in the Valley
Isaiah 9:2-7
Years ago in Coffeyville, a bunch of new houses went up in a cul-de-sac off First Street. The young families who first lived in these new houses all got their heads together and decided they’d go all out decorating the neighborhood for Christmas.
I can’t remember what the actual name of the street is, but at Christmastime it was “Candy Cane Lane.”[1]
At the very back of the cul-de-sac, one house had a really tall antenna, and the fellow who lived there put a big, lighted candy cane, tied with a big, lighted bow, up on that antenna. You could see it all over town.
Each house had a giant candy cane in front of it, made from some kind of pipe with a bendy joint at the top, painted with red-and-white stripes. And each house was decorated with lots of lights and other decorations. One house had a nativity scene; one had Santa, his sleigh, and the reindeer; another had a giant book, open to “Silent Night” or something. The street was set up like a boulevard, with little grassy berms in between the driving lanes, and those were decorated too, with lights and little decorations.
By the time I came along, the original residents were older, and some had moved away. But for quite awhile, people who moved onto that street agreed to keep decorating, and whenever someone moved they’d leave the candy canes and other decorations for the next people who lived there. And so every year at Christmas, lines of cars would go through Candy Cane Lane—sometimes more than once—to see the decorations. It was one of the coolest things about Christmas when I was a little kid.
What is it about lights at Christmastime?
It used to be that this was the only holiday where we decorated our houses with lights; now we’re starting to see lights at Halloween, too, and sometimes for Fourth of July or even Easter—but Christmas lights are still way better.
What’s the deal with putting up lights at Christmas?
I’ve even seen ads at one time or another for companies that will install your lights for you—even permanent lights that don’t show when they’re not lit, but don’t have to be taken down at the end of the holiday season so your house doesn’t look silly with Christmas lights still up there in July. Some communities have contests, where somebody will go around before Christmas and decide who has the best light display, and they get a prize.
And then there are neighborhoods where people try to outdo one another with their lights. One year when we were down in Tulsa or Henryetta or somewhere, as we came home we drove by a neighborhood where one house had “OU” spelled out in red and white lights on the roof, and then the next house had “OSU” spelled out even bigger in orange lights.
Why do we put up lights at Christmas?
It turns out there is a good reason, and it doesn’t have anything at all to do with winning a contest, or getting your house on TV, or competing with your neighbors.
Do you know why we celebrate Christmas on December 25? There’s nothing in the Bible, in either one of the stories about Jesus’ birth or anywhere else, that tells us what day Jesus was actually born. We don’t know when it was, not what day, not what year.
Early on in Christian history, the general consensus was that we don’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday. Pagans celebrate their gods’ birthdays, and we aren’t pagans, so we don’t do that. But as the church began to spread out into the world and sought to convert pagans to Christianity, it became something that we decided we should do, to appeal to pagans who were used to having such celebrations. But there wasn’t agreement on what day we should celebrate Jesus’ birthday on, because nothing in the Bible tells us, beyond a few tantalizing but very small clues in the Bible, some Roman records about who ruled what part of the Empire and when, and discussions of various bright and unusual lights that appear in the sky from time to time, like Halley’s Comet and the bright light that happens when all the planets’ orbits put them in the same place in the sky at the same time.
Nobody knows for sure, so there was quite a discussion about it before the church settled on a date to celebrate the Christ Mass, or Christmas. Some say it was August 28 of 4 bce. Others say it was April 17 of 1 bce. Others are sure it was December 4 of some year or another. Some put it as far back as 6 or even 8 bce, and argue for a different day on the calendar.
We just don’t know. What we do know is that, if indeed there were shepherds out in fields watching sheep in the middle of the night, it has to have happened in the warmer months—probably between like April and November. So why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?
Before Mike retired, our weekday mornings generally started with turning on the Weather Channel, at least for a few minutes. We were, of course, looking for the day’s forecast—since Mike was the Orkin Man, he was out in his truck all day most days, and working outside, and it was important for him to know what the conditions were going to be like. But at certain times during the hour another screen would come up with statistics for the day, including times for sunrise and sunset for that day, the day before, and the next day. Late in December we would see that screen go by, and Mike would say, “Hooray for one more minute”—or better yet, “two more minutes.”
After the winter solstice, which this year happens a week from today, the days will start getting longer, and then, probably in a month or thereabouts, we’ll start noticing the difference—a little more light in the morning when we get up, or at night when we’re on the way home from work or a meeting.
In the ancient world, many people actually worshiped the sun. It makes sense when you think about it: without the sun nothing could survive on Earth. And these ancient people didn’t know about our God who created the sun and who was more powerful than the sun. They believed that the sun was the most powerful thing there is, and it gave life, and they worshiped it.
Every year, especially the further north of the Equator they lived, people would notice that as the temperatures grew cooler and the leaves on the trees turned brown and fell, the sun would shine for less and less time, and when it did it was so low in the southern sky that it didn’t provide a whole lot of warmth. But then, finally, there came a day when things turned around, and the sun started staying up a little later at night and getting up a little earlier in the morning. And the people threw a party in honor of the Solstice, which is when the shortest day of the year happens and then the days start getting longer.
They built monuments where the sun would cast a particular shadow or shine through a particular opening in a wall on the Winter Solstice, like Newgrange in Ireland or Stonehenge in the southwest of England—which turns out not to be a single circle of stones standing alone out in the middle of a plain but part of a massive ritual landscape made up of avenues, other stone circles, and even holy springs.[2]
Just about every culture north of the Equator (because in the Southern Hemisphere the Solstice in December is the middle of summer, not winter) had a big party of some kind late in December. It was a dreary, dark, and cold time of year, the kind of time when folks really need a party to perk up their spirits. But, like I said, they didn’t know our God.
Then one day, into an unimportant Jewish family living in a fairly unimportant part of the Roman Empire, a baby was born. A few people at the time knew this little baby was someone really special. When he grew up and became a man, going all around Galilee and Judea teaching and healing and casting out demons, a lot more people came to know he was someone really special.
Maybe people noticed that everything seemed a little lighter, a little cleaner, a little brighter, when he was around. Some of them even figured out that he was the Son of God, the Messiah they’d been waiting for.
Unfortunately, in our world there are people who prefer darkness—in some cases because they are doing things or have attitudes in their hearts that they want to keep secret. Light is a problem to such people, so this Jesus, the one who called himself the Light of the world, had to go. But that light can’t just be blown out, and even though Jesus was crucified, his Father, God, raised him from the dead.
After all that happened, his followers began to tell others about him, and soon lots of people all over the place believed in Jesus and were Christians. Eventually they decided we needed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, at first with a special worship service, the Christ Mass.
But there was a problem: nobody knew what day his birthday was. For some reason it didn’t seem important to the first people who told stories about him and who eventually wrote down those stories.
So they looked at the people they lived among—and remembered the festivals they had celebrated before they became Christians—and saw how they were celebrating the return of the sun’s light at the end of December. And remembering how Jesus called himself the Light of the world, they decided that would be a perfect time to celebrate his birthday—and maybe, if they did that, the people who were already celebrating then might come to know him, too.
Over the years, it became common for there to be lots of lights—at first candles, but later electric lights—shining as part of the celebration of Jesus’ birthday, which has come to be called Christmas. We put lights on our Christmas trees, in our windows, and on the outsides of our homes, in celebration of the coming of the Light of the world.
This is the darkest and the coldest time of year. Some days the sun isn’t seen at all, and it’s cloudy and foggy and dreary all day long. The nights are long, and the days are short, and the sun hangs low in the southern sky and doesn’t do a whole lot to warm us up even if it does come out.
But even as we walk in darkness—the prophet uses the same language as what’s in the 23rd Psalm, “the valley of the shadow of death”—there is light: not just strings of light on trees and houses and draped over the streets downtown, but the Light of the world, Jesus, who never leaves us. In the midst of the darkest time of year, in the midst of sadness that envelops us like a grey blanket, we have lights all around us to remind us of the Light of the world, Jesus, the baby in the manger, and to remind us what John said about him, words we hear at Christmas Eve every year:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:
come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
[1] Candy Cane Lane sort of petered out for quite a few years, but recently new residents have decided to revive the tradition.
[2] The things we learn watching Time Team… There are many ancient monuments that are configured to mark solstices and equinoxes throughout the world. See the website of The Old Farmer’s Almanac for information about a few of them: https://www.almanac.com/content/ancient-sites-aligned-solstice-and-equinox.