For most of us in the US, despite the popularity of the "12 Days" carol, Christmas only lasts about 24 hours. Christmas trees are swiftly removed after the Nativity, decorations packed away as quickly as possible, and twinkling festive lights unplugged and tangled back up in their plastic bins. School is back in session and pink Valentine's Day hearts and chocolate candies greet you at the front of every shop. 

This singular emphasis on the Nativity is not universal. In Puerto Rico, for example, Christmas celebrations build through December until January 6, Dia de los Reyes Magos-the Epiphany. Straw is left about as a sign of the journey to the stable and kids leave a box of grass under their beds as they go to sleep awaiting the arrival of the hungry horses of the magi. Families write letters to the Wise Men outlining their wishes. In the morning, the letters and grass have been exchanged for gifts and treats.

Those twelve days between the Nativity and the arrival of the wise men following a star represent an important journey. We move from the awe of a baby being born who is to be "God with us" to the dawning of the understanding that the Messiah is in our midst. These twelve days, this hike to a stable in Bethlehem-this is us walking toward God, trying to find our way in a new world by setting our eyes on the child. Jesus will soon be on the move himself when his family is exiled to Egypt. It will not be his only exile. It seems the Christian life is full of walking toward a destination God has called us to only to find that forces of empire demand a new course. 

Andrew Marr, Abbot of St. Gregory's Abbey, writes this reflection.

Exile is how Empire sustains itself. The Jews knew this only too well as their exile to Babylon was one of their most formative experiences as a people. It was during their exile that the Jews came to understand fundamentally how Empire and its pagan religion operates and it was through this learning that the Jews began to really understand who really rules the world and has done so since the time of creation.

Exile...is the condition of the powerless, the one rejected by Empire. Exile is the fate most of us fight against tooth and nail starting with our earliest socialization as children. We want to be in an in group, not an out group. We want to be at the center of power, not the periphery. And yet the periphery was where Jesus found himself by the time he was old enough to find himself. The Empire knew it could not welcome Jesus and Jesus knew that just as well.

All of this suggests that if we want to be where the action is, we'll miss out on the real action. The real action may not seem very exciting: growing up as a human being in a backwater somewhere, where nothing good can come. And yet it is by growing up with Jesus, away from the centers of power, that we come to learn of what is important in life. We learn to value other people as people, not for what power that can broker for us. Here is where we find the lost coin, the lost sheep, the lost everything else, including what has been lost within each of us until we find Jesus where nobody else is looking.

This looking for power in unlikely places is the heart of the Christmas season, an essential Christian activity that we cannot pack away until it's time to pull it from the attic next Thanksgiving. The lives of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, and the devotion of the "three kings" to a child in a manger,  show us how God works in ways that don't always make sense, and in ways that ask us to say "yes" even when we are scared, or can't see exactly what the outcome might be. It likely means we'll find ourselves exiled to some strange places. 

Our reflections this season have called us to pay particular attention to refugees-those exiled from their homelands around the world. Many of those refugees, like Jesus, are children.  Twenty-eight million, actually. 28 million kids looking for relief from persecution, from sustained devastating violence, from starvation, from torture, from war, from genocide. 

Are we willing to hang a star out to welcome them? Or share cherished gifts at their bedside? O come, let us adore him! 

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Gislebertus Dream of the Magi, 1120-30 Cathedral of Saint-Lazare, Autun.