One of the fun things about Christmas music is that, because everyone is recycling a limited repertoire, the same song that can be sing-along-at-the-top-of-your-lungs fantastic can, arranged and performed differently, also be as painfully awful as having your ears bitten off by a particularly creepy nutcracker. There are exceptions, of course: there is an entire class of pop Christmas songs that can never be anything more than aural vandalism: Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time,” John and Yoko’s “Happy Christmas—War is Over,” Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas,” or Wham’s “Last Christmas.”  Some Christmas songs are hard to make bad without determined effort, but others, such as “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” (which stopped being funny decades ago) are impossible to make right.

Come, They Told Me

“Little Drummer Boy” can be pretty uninspiring if you are bound and determined to make it so (Jo Stafford’s classic version is guaranteed to induce a midwinter’s nap). It can even be unintentionally hilarious (what exactly was that, Rosemary Clooney?). And if you stop and think about it, the whole song is just kind of weird. I could be mistaken, but I think the “drummer boy” is intended to evoke images of the lads who accompanied 19th century armies (such as in the American Civil War), rat-a-tat-tat-tatting a cadence on their snares as the soldiers marched. From the perspective of linear history, dropping such a drummer boy into the manger of Jesus is wildly anachronistic.

On the other hand, in a spiritual sense aren’t we all plucked out of time and dropped into that stable? We are all surrounded by the lowing cattle and bleating sheep (that’s one way for lambs and oxen to keep time, I suppose) and the barnyard smells that come with them. We all stand amidst the hardscrabble shepherds, caught up the smells that came with them—and also in their wonder at the heavenly mysteries revealed to them as they watched their flocks by night. We all are overshadowed by the majestic presence of the Persian magi and their gifts of gold and perfumes, trying to make sense of the wonders God had written in the heavens and in the divine humanity of this child. We all, in a sense, stand face-to-face with the mother of Jesus, herself not much older than this hypothetical drummer boy, and yet she had already demonstrated faithfulness and obedience to God’s will that remains unmatched in human history.

Aren’t we all standing before the unfathomable mystery of Emmanuel, God with us, the divine taking on humanity so that humanity may be restored to the divine image in which it was created and may be redeemed by His sinless blood? Aren’t we all completely lost in that place; like Mary, pondering these things in our hearts; thoroughly unable to comprehend what and why and Who is swaddled and asleep in our presence, for the first time close enough that we can touch God and see God and know God?

In my mind, “Little Drummer Boy” is a quiet collision of despair with hope.

I think that desperation is why I like Bob Segar’s version of “Little Drummer Boy.” Yes, like Darren Aronofsky’s interpretation of the Nephilim in Noah, I do like to rock. But Segar’s gritty bar-blues working-class vocals capture the emotion and the muck and the mud and the blood and the hardness of life I see in my mind’s eye with this song better than my too-many words (and way better than the Harry Simone Chorale’s original rendition). In my mind, “Little Drummer Boy” is a quiet collision of despair with hope, our frail humanity trying to identify with an infinite God who doesn’t ever behave the way we anticipate He will.

I’ll Play My Best For Him

The crux of the Little Drummer’s story is the humiliation of having nothing of value to offer the newborn King, Jesus, and how the song deals with this tension is where I take some issue with it. In the song, the boy reckons that all he has is this drum and the ability to play it, and the Baby’s smile indicates that that is enough.

I’m probably making too much out of too little (which is my spiritual gift, along with picking the slowest line at the grocery store), but I don’t think that’s how it works. Nothing against the sentiment of the song or the desire to give God the best that we have to offer Him. But I don’t think the drum and the ability to play it are the boy’s gift to Jesus. I think the drum and the ability to play it are Jesus’ gift to the boy. In playing his drum for Jesus, even though the boy probably doesn’t realize it, he is only offering to Jesus what Jesus first gave to him. And don’t misunderstand: I have no doubt that Jesus loved every rum-pum-pum-pum of it. God loves His good and faithful servants who honor Him with the little things He entrusts to them like drums and talents and such (see Matthew 25:14-30). But what the Little Drummer Boy offers his Creator is not anything of himself; good as it is, it isn’t really his.

Stewardship of what God has given me has a value all its own, because my capacity to despise His goodness and abuse His gifts is so horrific. The things which make me a creature most like God–my mind, my will–can make me more beastly than any animal when I misuse them. That’s the risk of the freedom He gives us all. But the reason He has given me my best is so I can bless others with it. My ability to reason, my ability to speak, my ability to love—anything I can do well or can grow to do better—is a reflection of His goodness, not my own. When I play my drum for Him, and when I play it my best for Him, it is proof that He made me in His image.  Whether I am a wise man or a poor boy, that fact (and nothing else) is the reason I have any value at all.

So it’s not my best that I give to God. My best is what He has given to me.

Then He Smiled At Me

What I actually give him is my worst, in all its wretched horror. My secondhand darkness. My half-loved sin. My guilty conscience. Paradoxically, what I give Jesus is everything that separates me from Him.  It’s the best I’ve got, and it’s awful. But it’s all I have that is really mine. It is the absolute worst Christmas present ever, and yet it’s my finest gift to bring to lay before Him.

Merry Christmas, right?

But here’s the amazing part: My worst is exactly what He wants to receive from me. Because until I let go of my fear and darkness and shame, my guilt and my pride and my isolation, I can’t take hold of Him. My pride would render me too foolish to see I need Him. My shame would cause me to fear accepting the healing He offers. My darkness would leave me unwilling to trust His light. He offers His finest in exchange for my worst, and until I give Him my worst I am unable to receive His best. I must decrease, so that He may increase in me.

What I give Jesus is everything that separates me from Him. It’s the best I’ve got, and it’s awful. But here’s the amazing part: My worst is exactly what He wants to receive from me.

That’s the Christmas story: Giving Jesus the only things that are truly mine in exchange for a gift fit to give a King, from the nail-pierced hand of the King Himself.

Merry Christmas?  Yes…yes it is.