Christmas is a great season but, boy, I tend to lose focus around this time each year. Am I alone in that? All the staff Christmas parties, running around looking for those final pressies for the hardest-to-buy-for members of the family… Sometimes I stop, look around at it all and say, I wonder what Jesus makes of this worldwide holiday we have in his name?

I had my eyes opened to the larger significance of Christmas a few years back from an unexpected source—it was during an interview with Bryce Courtenay.

Well known for books like The Power of One, The Potato Factory, April Fools Day and all the rest, we were talking about his latest book at the time, Matthew Flinder’s Cat. In that book Bryce tells the story of a one-time hot-shot lawyer who ends up homeless and living in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens addicted to alcohol. As I read the book I was astounded at the detail he uncovered about street life, organised crime and the plight of the homeless. So when I got Bryce on air I had to ask him—how did a wealthy author like him understand so much about addiction and homelessness? Bryce’s answer was inspirational. It turned out that his original method of approaching homeless people directly for interviews proved futile—the streeties were too shy and suspicious to share anything of themselves. So, Bryce decided to get his hands dirty and taste homeless life for himself.

He started by spending nights sleeping on the park benches in the Botanic Gardens. In the morning he’d line up with his fellow street dwellers for a feed from the charity food vans. He took sessions at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic and spent nights at St Vincent’s casualty ward to see how the homeless were treated when they hurt themselves. Bryce befriended the mentally ill and discovered just how abused those living on the street could become. (For instance, at the mercy of groups of heartless, club-hopping youths, it’s not unheard of for a homeless person to be set alight in some back alleyway as they lie sleeping.) Bryce even spent a night in the Salvation Army’s ‘drunk tank’—a secure cell where inebriated folks at risk of harming themselves are brought to sleep off their binges. During this research phase Bryce told me he got home at 4am each morning, exhausted and weeping from his experiences.

As I listened to Bryce’s gruelling research methods I realised I was beginning to grasp one of those profound mysteries about God—the Incarnation. To talk about the problem of alcoholism, Bryce Courtenay didn’t just read manuals on addictive behaviours or observe the plight of the inebriated from a distance—he entered the world of an alcoholic. In a similar but even greater act, to address a broken, decaying, rebellion-riddled globe God Himself entered our world in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. In the most breath-taking event of history, Jesus let go of His heavenly comfort to become our servant, He left His world to enter ours, gave up His riches to experience our poverty, and sacrificed His life to offer us escape from eternal death.

Whenever I lose sight of what Christmas is all about I remember Bryce Courtenay sleeping in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. It makes me see the babe born in that manager in an entirely different light.