Talking to the Animals on Christmas Eve 2025

I first posted this in 2009. It’s been a perennial favorite. Here it is again with some light edits.

---

When you were young, did anyone ever tell you that animals speak at midnight on Christmas? I don’t remember who told me, but I do remember looking expectantly at the family Dachshund for several years. For the record he never said anything, at least not to me.

Like many legends, the origins of this one are hard to discover. But that gives us space to speculate and theologize a bit.

There is a longing in people of all ages to talk with animals. What else explains the Doctor Dolittle stories, or Stuart Little or Winnie the Pooh? What else explains the long one sided talks with a patient dog or cat. (Or horse or hamster.)

I suspect that longing is the remnant of a memory of the way things were supposed to be. Somehow, particularly as children, we know that our relationship with animals is not what it should be. Babies should be able to put their hand near the hole of the asp. Little children should play among wolves and lambs, calves and lions ¹. As children and adults we long for the harmony that we know is missing from the world.

We hope for a glimpse of the missing harmony at Christmas. Long before we have the theological language of incarnation we know that when Jesus is born, God comes among us. When Jesus is born the healing of ourselves and of creation has begun. The Good News is here. At the birth of Jesus, heaven and earth meet and rejoice. Angels and shepherds sing. And legend suggests that animals joined in praise. The world set right for a moment.

The underlying belief of the legend is that animals know God and are known by God. Until we get talked out of it, many of us start with the very Biblical assumption that all of creation, everything and everyone, praises God. Animals in their animal way praise God. On Christmas, the legend suggests, the animals let us humans join them.

I’m a grown person now, well past the age of childhood dreams. I have learned enough theology and lived long enough to once again believe that animals are indeed in relationship with God. Fish in fish ways. Birds in bird ways. Dachshunds in Dachshund ways. This relationship doesn’t require our help or our participation. Still, I find myself each Christmas looking at my cats and hoping this is the Christmas I hear them speak. That this is the Christmas we rejoice together. Hoping that this is the Christmas when all creation is at peace.  

Merry Christmas!

First published on this blog in 2009.

1. Isaiah 11:6-9 “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the whole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” ↩︎