Around 1302 years ago – give or take – there was a Miracle.

Around 1293 years before the Miracle, there was a disaster. Roman forces invaded Germania, seeking to subdue to unruly population. What followed was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

Also known as the Varian Disaster.

The greatest army in history marched into the barbarian lands of Germania and lost. Badly.

Back to a Miracle.

Saint Boniface – a man, not an army – marched into the barbarian lands of Germania. He found them worshipping an old oak tree, calling it the earthly representative of Thor. Maybe even Thro himself. That makes sense. An ancient, living thing that attracts a lot of lightning? What else would a pagan Germanian call it?

But “that makes sense” isn’t the same as “that is True” or “that is Good”.

The Germanians were wrong – the tree was a fine tree, but not worthy of worship. Saint Boniface couldn’t have convinced them of that using words. He put their faith to the test – their god versus his axe.

Science in religion.

The gathered folks (volks?) expected Thor to strike Saint Boniface down. They taunted him, cursed him, waited for his doom. Neither doom nor lightning came for him. He swung his axe into the tree, gouging out a shallow cut.

And then a sudden breeze toppled the ancient tree. Not lightning and not a storm – a random gust of wind.

The fallen tree split into four pieces which were used to build a church. The Germanians converted on the spot.

Remember this story when you next look at your Christmas tree. That’s what it’s there for.

“Myth! Propaganda!”

The story of Saint Boniface is the most reasonable and least impressive possibility.

We know Germanians, after resisting conversion for centuries, became Christians in huge numbers and in a short time after Saint Boniface showed up.

What explanation do you put forth instead? That one monk conquered an unconquerable warrior people, converting them at swordpoint, breaking their indominable spirit forever? Or did he give brilliant speeches that led them to utterly abandon generations of paganism and polytheism?

Either explanation brings greater glory to Christianity than a mere meteorological Miracle.

About 723 years before history’s greatest feat of forestry, there was another Miracle. The second-greatest in all of time, where a baby was born to a virgin.

(The greatest Miracle of all time would come 33 years later. But that’s another story.)

This world has many oaks elevated into false idols – some ancient, some modern. They all must fall and become Churches – monuments created by divine breath and the hands of man working together. A building like that will stand for Truth, Beauty and Goodness, just as you are called to stand for them too.

All that’s waiting is for someone to swing the axe.

But the axe’s time is not today. Today is a day of peace and rejoicing. And part of celebrating is seeing the road that has led to here. People waited for the Messiah for millennia. Billions have come to find Him over millennia.

And it all pivots around a moment in a manger, in a forgotten corner of a forgotten corner of a long-fallen earthly empire, where the Word took His first breath with human lungs.

Merry Christmas.

Christ is King.

Praise be to Jesus, the Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.