Summary: At an anxious moment for the city, the Lord gives the king a sign that he is master of the situation. Isaiah makes four predictions: Of a certain woman, that she is pregnant; of her child, that it will be a boy; that his name will be Immanuel; and, crucial to the king, that before this boy knows please from thank you, the enemies who have made the city anxious will have withdrawn. And it was so. In Matthew, we read of the woman, that her name was Mary; of the boy, that he is Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. Seven hundred years before the fact, Isaiah had predicted Christmas. I love Matthew's interpretation. I believe it too. In novels, short and long term meanings are not mutually exclusive. "Foreshadowing," we call it. As that technique is in an author's repertoire, so it is in God's. So we have short and long-term interpretations of this passage. The second magnifies the first. Christmas speaks to a whole world's anxiety. God has given us a sign. Last summer I saw Captain Fantastic, a movie about a father who took his family back to nature. By day, he teaches his children to live by their skill and wits from the forests and the streams; by night, under lamplight, they read Einstein, Marx and Dostoevsky. I went in thinking of Thoreau and Swiss Family Robinson. I went out thinking of Richard Dawkins, because the movie wore contempt for religion on its sleeve. Ours especially: the Christians in Captain Fantastic have all the charm of Harry Potter's aunt and uncle. So in lieu of Christmas, Dad and the kids observe Noam Chomsky Day. One of his sons protests: Why can't we just have Christmas like everybody else? The father retorts: Who is more worthy of commemoration, a great humanitarian--or a magic elf?
