Christmas is a tough time to preach. The annual challenge for clerics is to present a story listeners think they know everything about — the Son of God being born in a manger to a Virgin far from home — and offer something new, memorable and helpful.

The Register asked several priests and bishops for their approach at Christmas Masses.

Col. James Hamel, a Catholic priest who is a U.S. Air Force chaplain, plans to preach at Christmas Mass at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, where he is stationed.

Like the narrator in the classic 1943 seasonal song I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Father Hamel notes, he and most of the other members of the military on the base will be far from home at Christmastime this year.

“But in a way, we are home. This is our home for now. ‘Whoever does the will of my Father is brother and sister and mother to me,’” Father Hamel said, quoting Matthew 12:50. “We are Christ’s family this Christmas and brothers and sisters to each other. Our houses are our mangers, and this chapel is our spiritual home.”

“Let us make Christ present in the world wherever we are,” he said.

Opus Dei Father Luke Mata, vicar of the personal prelature in California, invites listeners “to become like little children” — not just in simplicity, but also in making time for Jesus by “praying in a simple way.”

“The Gospel of the birth of Jesus says that ‘Mary placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn,’” Father Mata said. “Unfortunately, this continues to happen; it happens every time we get so busy that we do not make time for Jesus. Not making time for Jesus is the equivalent of not making room in our heart for Jesus.”

He notes that Pope Francis has spoken (in an interview with Andrea Tornielli) about how he has often spent “an hour or so alone in the chapel” between midnight Mass and the Mass at dawn, during which he says he “experienced a profound feeling of consolation and peace.”

“In order to experience God’s love, we need to remain in prayer, in contemplation, considering the incredible mystery of the birth of Jesus, the Christmas scene,” Father Mata said.

“We need to be in silence and contemplate the scene, as we are doing now. Close your eyes, all of us, and try to see the scene: a cold stable, Mary about to give birth, Joseph trying to make the stable into a more suitable, warmer, cleaner place. Mary is calm. The ox and the donkey are making noises,” Father Mata said. “And then, in the stillness of the night, a baby’s crying voice is heard. Jesus is born!”

The Nativity story so often prettified this time of year is actually severe — a nine-months-pregnant woman after a long journey giving birth in a cold and dirty place meant for animals, under the jurisdiction of a secular ruler who wants him dead.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone points out that St. Francis of Assisi’s first-ever Nativity scene more than 800 years ago portrays some of the harsh reality of the first Noel. “Francis wanted to emphasize the real human experience of that first Christmas night — that God truly became a human being, born as a baby from a virgin mother. The God beyond us and above us is also among us in the most humble way possible. This is a good lesson for us, especially at this time of the year when it is so easy to romanticize that night when Christ was born,” Archbishop Cordileone says in his sermon. “It is good that we put much effort, artistry and love into decorating our Nativity scenes, but the beauty of the art should inspire us to contemplate the historical moment in its full reality and not distract us from it.”

“Francis wanted to make real to us today the humiliation of the Son of God who became a child born in a stable in the midst of squalor and animals and poor peasants and yet was the model of spiritual perfection,” he adds. “He who is the ruler of all chose to be subject to his creation, to the point of offering his life on the cross to free us from sin.”

Father Dwight Longenecker, author and pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, South Carolina, quotes the poem “I Saw a Stable” by English author Mary Coleridge that identifies Jesus in the manger as known to the oxen, a stranger to men, and both “the safety of the world” and “the world’s danger.”

“Coleridge’s poem delights and disturbs us, just as the story of Christmas does each year. We’re delighted by the charming story of a pregnant young mother, a worried father, a long journey, cuddly animals and finally a beautiful baby boy. But we are also disturbed by the drama — the poverty of the family, the dark winter night, a cold stable, a cruel king, and an impending massacre of children,” Father Longenecker says in his sermon. “All of this reminds us of the deeper delight and disturbance of the event itself. That the Son of God should take human flesh of his Blessed Mother. What an astonishing thought! How unpredictable and poetic — dangerous and disturbing — that God would send his only-begotten Son to be enmeshed in human history!”

“While this great truth delights us every year, it should also disturb us,” Father Longenecker says, “for if the Virgin brought her Son into the world to be ‘the world’s danger,’ he also endangers our security, our selfishness, and our complacency.”

Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Diocese of Bridegport, Connecticut, says he once surprised three boyhood friends by telling them his favorite Christmas hymn is What Child Is This? — which begins:

“What child is this

Who lays to rest

On Mary’s lap is sleeping?”

Bishop Caggiano offered a standard Christian answer to that question during his December 2023 Christmas homily reminiscent of the multipronged epithets in Isaiah 9:5 — “Christ the Lord, the desire of every human heart, the fulfillment of what God promised us, the long-awaited Messiah, the one who gives hope, the one who gives life, the one who is love himself, God made man.”

But what does that information demand from its believers?

He noted that the main entrance of the Basilica of the Nativity, built at the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, has been blockaded since the 1500s to prevent improper uses of the building by nonbelievers.

“And the only way to enter into it is a small door. And the only way to enter in is literally to bow down, to go into the basilica and enter into the presence of this child,” Bishop Caggiano said in front of the altar. “And that gesture is the answer to the question. What is it that you and I are to do for this Child? You and I are to bow down through this door of humility and dare to walk in his footsteps to give over to this Child our very heart, our very life.”

“You may be saying, ‘Bishop, what does that look like?’ Allow me to paint a brief picture: You see, my friends, in a world of great entitlement, you and I are asked to bow down and offer a heart that is grateful for everything we have, big and small, extraordinary and ordinary,” Bishop Caggiano said.

“In a world then, as now, that did not find room for God when he came, you and I are to offer our hearts in humility and have a welcoming heart to all around us, even those with whom we don’t agree, even those who are our immigrants in our midst, even those whom the world has no place for. In the world out there, my friends, that oftentimes divides, a world out there that finds no mercy, a world out there that is sometimes cold and cruel, as it was on the day Christ was born in Bethlehem, so too, you and I respond. How? With a humble heart that dares to be forgiving, understanding, kind, and loving, even when it hurts.”

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski is also thinking of the Holy Land at Christmastime, noting that it is beset by violence and turmoil, as are Ukraine, parts of Africa, and Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, among other places.

“Yet, in faith, we proclaim this night a ‘Holy Night’ — and we break the silence of this night with joyful songs,” Archbishop Wenski says in his Christmas preaching. “We sing with renewed hope: Joy to the World. That we can do so is because, as St. John Paul II once wrote, the limit imposed on evil of which man is both perpetrator and victim is ultimately Divine Mercy.’”

“That mercy is born for us today in Bethlehem — for that Child born of the Virgin is God’s promise fulfilled. In the Christ Child laying in a manger, we see the face of the Father’s mercy,” Archbishop Wenski says. “In the tragic and complicated history of fallen man, God has the last Word. And that Word became flesh and dwelt among us: Emmanuel, God with us.”

For Christmas spirit, it’s hard to beat Father Joseph Marquis, pastor of Sacred Heart Byzantine Catholic Church in Livonia, Michigan, who has served as a professional Santa Claus/St. Nicholas for 52 years and founded the Saint Nicholas Institute as a ministry to “grow in ho-ho-holiness.”

Contemplating the Gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke is a good way to keep the focus where it should be this time of year, he says — as is considering a saint closely associated with December.

“May these biblical accounts revealing constant availability of the Divine Source of the peace, joy and love associated with the Christmas spirit serve to inspire each of us to lift up our hearts to the self-same Holy Spirit holiness that animated the life of St. Nicholas on Christmas Day and all days of the year,” Father Marquis says in his sermon.

Msgr. James Shea, president of the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, linked the birth of Jesus to the Eucharist in a talk July 18 during the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, noting that Jesus was born into the world to become human beings’ “life-giving food.”

Mary’s response to God’s invitation through the angel Gabriel overturns the rejection of God by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

“A conversation was staged in a town called Nazareth, which means the ‘branch’ of the Tree of Life. That conversation was the reverse of the wicked conversation of lies from the garden. And suddenly, there was fruit on the tree again — the fruit of the womb of the Virgin Mary,” Msgr. Shea said. “She went to Bethlehem, which means the ‘House of Bread,’ and gave birth to God and laid him in a manger, the feeding trough of animals who depend on their food day by day.”

True food, he said, comes from Jesus, and in fact is Jesus.

“It’s time for faithful Catholics to stop trying to live for God and start living from him — the Body and Blood of the Lord, the source of our life, our energy and our joy,” Msgr. Shea said.

Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, host of EWTN Live, plans to celebrate Christmas Mass at Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church in Lewisville, Texas.

He told the Register that the 2024 presidential election has brought about a lot of tension in the United States, but he said that Christmas is an invitation to put it in proper perspective — mankind depends on God, not mere human leaders. Moreover, Jesus the King appears on Earth in a surprising way — not in a castle, but in a cave.

“We can learn from that. We don’t look to our fellow human beings, with their weaknesses and foibles, as the end-all and be-all solution to our problems,” Father Pacwa said. “And, secondly, the solutions to our problems may not be the same as we picture it, just as the birth of Jesus in the cave is not how Our Lady probably pictured her Son the King being born.”

Msgr. William King, associate professor of canon law at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., likes to quote a story about a famous English Catholic convert and author at Christmas Masses.

“A story is told, whether true or not, that the author G.K. Chesterton became lost one evening in the thick London fog,” Msgr. King says. “Somehow he contacted his wife to let her know. Her reply was terse: ‘Am sending a boy; follow him.’”

“Is that not the Father’s Christmas greeting to all of us?” King asks. ‘Am sending a boy; follow Him.’”