12th Day of Christmas: Surprised by Joy ✨

On Christmas Pageants, Leaping Beyond Comfort Zones, and Epiphanies

Dear fellow traveler,

I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas pageants. I usually prefer the quieter night services to the often overly staged performances. But this year, we went anyway—our little one was cast as an angel, and there was no saying no to that.

Expecting another haphazard production, I braced myself. But from the moment it began, something felt different. The pageant was thoughtfully crafted, with a quiet reverence woven through the storytelling:

A preteen Jesus tells the story of his birth to his friends, and together they decide to stage the play.

But the manger is missing!

Someone from the congregation steps forward to bring one.

They continue, only to realize they don’t have a baby Jesus!

And a young mother stands up in the congregation with her babe in arms and says:

“I have one!”

She and her husband step forward and gently place their baby in the manger. A collective gasp rises from the congregation as the children gather in awe around the child.

“Beholding the child.” Berlin city cloister, 2023.

When they placed that tiny, living child into the stable, my heart cracked wide open. The congregation, which had been seated quietly, leapt to their feet as the children—kneeling around the crib as shepherds, angels, and wise men—began to sing, “Jesus, oh, what a beautiful child.”

Oh, dear friends, there was no guarding my heart against the radiant starlight beaming from that real-life crib. The joy of the children surrounding the baby, the awe in the eyes of the congregation—it was as if the entire church was illuminated with the glow of something transcendent.

This, I thought, must be the moment “when transcendence breaks in.”¹ The moment when we are surprised by joy, just as the shepherds must have been when the angel choirs burst into song.

This is why the Prince of Peace comes wrapped in the fragile simplicity of a newborn child. The Christmas story, at its heart, is about the sacredness of life—a reminder that every child is a child of God. And this year, the writer of our church’s pageant captured that truth with a profound and tender clarity.

As I watched, I felt the weight of that truth settle within me: the joy of Christmas is not found in perfection or grandeur, but in the beautiful, flawed wonder of life itself.

In his spiritual memoir Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes "Joy" as a profound, almost mystical longing for something beyond this world—a fleeting yet intense experience that offers a glimpse of the eternal. He explains that this Joy is not mere pleasure but a deep-seated yearning for transcendence, a desire that earthly experiences can only momentarily awaken but never fully satisfy.²

This understanding resonates with these unexpected, transformative moments when the divine breaks into our lives, much like the shepherds' awe upon hearing angelic choirs. Or our reaction on seeing the child. Such experiences remind us that every life, every child, is a reflection of the divine, and they invite us to remain open to being "surprised by joy" in our own journeys.

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Reflection Questions