Many are the kinds of kissing. There is, of course, the romantic kiss with its variations and degrees of intensity; the parental kiss, also variable; the fraternal kiss, increasingly forgotten; and the obeisant kiss, placed on things we revere.
You can imagine each of these kissings appearing in the Christmas story: Joseph and Mary share a lover’s kiss; the Virgin kisses the cradled head of the infant Jesus; Elizabeth and Mary exchange a sororal kiss of greeting; etc.
But there is another kind among the species of kiss that features centrally in the Nativity story: the kiss of fealty. It is the kiss shared between a king (or queen) and his (or her) people.
Psalm 2:12 enjoins the rulers of the earth to “kiss the Son”, which is to hail him as the king-of-kings, lest they fall under his judgements. We can read Psalm 2 as a kind of leitmotif for Christmas, posing a question: Will Herod, when he hears of the new King, kiss the Son? Will the magi, wise-men from the East and probably also suzerain kings at home, kiss the babe they find at the end of the star? What about the shepherds, a biblical image of goodly kingship, will they kiss the Son?
As I wrote last year at this time, the twelve days that follow Christmas are full of bloody feasts: St. Stephen’s Day, St. John’s Day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the Feast of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the Feast of the Circumcision, etc. A new king arrives, the King arrives, and the world goes-up-in-arms as a consequence. We can ask the question of the kiss to all of these days, scattered throughout history:
When Stephen proclaims that Jesus sits at the Right Hand of the Father, what will the Jewish rulers and Saul, their chief, do? Will they kiss the son?
When John, in chains on the isle of Patmos receives the Book of the Apocalypse, about Christ and his Bride, the Church, how will the seven churches respond? How will the Beast, how will Babel, how will the Great Harlot, how will the Rome and the Jerusalem into which these forces are at work, respond? Will they kiss the Son, and pledge Him their troth?
When Herod hears of the king, how does he respond? He slaughters his own people in fear and terror. Terror, you see, is the instrument of those who are themselves terrified to death.
When Henry II’s power was checked by “that miserable clergymen” in Canterbury, how did he respond? Did that king kiss the King?
The list goes on.
Central to the nativity story is the princely kiss. The magi kiss the Son, the shepherds do likewise. Anna and Simeon hail him as the one on whom the kingdom comes. And Mary, we are told, treasured-up all these things in her heart, even as she too kissed the Son amidst all of her other maternal osculation.
Each year we renew the gospel proclamation: the King has come! The twelve days of Christmas is a good time to ask ourselves, “will you kiss the Son?”