OPINION: A winter's night

And perhaps it was for these reasons – and not just because he wanted a celebration that coincided with his own favorite festival, that of the Sun God – that the Emperor Constantine, when he converted to Christianity, chose Dec. 25 as the day to observe the birth of Christ. The actual date of Jesus’s birth, most scholars agree, is simply unknown.

One of my favorite Bible verses about all of this also succumbs to a broad range of interpretations. You would expect a former library director and writing instructor to love anything that says, “In the beginning was the Word,” which is how the Gospel of John opens. But the words I especially love, from my King James childhood, are about how the light “shineth in the darkness” and the darkness cannot . . . . cannot what? Depending on which translation you go with, the darkness cannot overcome the light, or comprehend the light, or apprehend it, or perceive it, or (my definite preference) extinguish it.

All of which — and I tend to forget this — is an echo of the first chapter of Genesis, which starts with “In the beginning,” tells us that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and has the Spirit of God “hovering over the waters” until God speaks and says, “Let there be light.”

So the author of the Gospel of John (whose true identity is another subject of much debate) was telling us that the arrival of the divine in our midst — the Spirit becoming flesh and dwelling among us — presented us with a second Creation Story. And Emperor Constantine probably did us all a great favor by giving us that other ancient echo of the Sun God.

Every bit of this was running around in my head last weekend, while I was at a party in a friend’s warm and welcoming home. He had stars and colored lights strung on all the windows, and tables of beautiful food laid out, and a room full of intriguing and congenial people of varying ages and ethnicities and from many different walks of life. And in the best of ancient traditions, we beguiled the winter’s night with stories and laughter. We could have been traders from camel caravans who met on the Spice Routes, or the characters in “Babette’s Feast,” who gathered for an extraordinary Parisian meal in the midst of an icy Danish winter and were brightened and roused by the warmth of hospitality. The light was shining in the darkness that night, in at least that one little spot on this old and seemingly uncertain planet.

And so may it shine for you this holiday season, wherever and however the festivities find you, and may your light so shine before others, and may we pass it on and spread it around and light up the whole world. Merry Christmas!

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.