The Feast They Cannot Flee
by Donavon L Riley
Even those who mock the manger and deny the birth find themselves bound to its story, their lights and wreaths, their gifts and feasts, all echoing a joy they cannot name and a truth they cannot escape. — D.
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At the heart of this season lies a paradox so profound it even warps itself around the lives of those who claim they’ve no need of God. The ribbons and lights, the feast spread out upon a table like an ancient altar, the frantic joy of gifts exchanged—they all whirl in a ritual older than unbelief itself. These acts are the lingering gestures of a wound too deep to name, an unspoken hunger for the Guest we do not invite. The materialist denies the sacred, yet their hands still reach for it in every ornament hung, every thread of evergreen draped across a mantle. Like those who live in exile and unknowingly sing their homeland’s songs, even their dismissals testify to the Child who comes.
The wreaths and wreathings, these lights glowing against winter’s dark, are not empty gestures, though they may often appear so. They are a rebellion of beauty against despair, but they are more—they are evidence of a longing the atheist cannot outthink, the agnostic cannot bury. Even in rejection, there is participation. How else should we understand the holy ache they enact when they hang stars, cook a feast, or give away some precious small thing wrapped in glittering paper? They mock the Incarnation, yet their homes glow with borrowed joy, every act whispering: He is born; He is here.
But we must not laugh cruelly at this irony. Instead, we are to let it pierce us deeply. The feast does not belong to them or us—it belongs to the One who lit the first tree and placed humanity beneath it. The symbols of Christmas, unclaimed as they may seem, spill over with meaning that has not loosened its grip on their lives. In every dismissal, God compels them to touch the hem of His great robe. This is the untiring mercy of the Child who lies in a manger, waiting for the hands of strangers to cradle Him, whether they know it or not.