Set an Empty Place at Christmas

Good night, John-Boy

In 1972 the Walton’s Christmas Special (The Homecoming: A Christmas Story) captured the US television audience. It was the pilot for what would become one of television’s most important series which would run for 9 years. Unlike today, there were three network channels at the time, CBS, NBC, and ABC. Viewers did not choose between millions of options on streaming platforms but picked between one of three options. You watched what the networks served up. This might sound limiting, but it created a sense of national unity around television shows that does not exist today. When the networks hit a homerun, that show played in almost every household.

The Waltons was that homerun for CBS. It was an unlikely choice in an era of tumult. The family around which the show revolved, the Waltons, was a stark contrast to the cultural changes of 1972, the year the pilot aired. The sexual revolution was underway, antiwar protests were raging, the civil rights movement was boiling in the streets, the hippies were gathering, the radical group called the Weatherman was blowing up buildings, and Nixon was in the Whitehouse. “American Pie,” by Don Maclean, was the biggest song of the year. It was a time of significant cultural shift. Into this mix, CBS decided to create a television show based on a solid, traditional family, whose members were faithful and loving toward one another. It pulled Americans back to a time that felt like a foreign land.

The story is set in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. John Walton Sr., the father of the seven Walton children, had left to find work. It was the only way to pay the bills and keep the family together. As Christmas approaches, the certainty of the father’s presence at Christmas begins to give way to worry. Would he make it? What would Christmas be like without him? Was he okay? How come he had not sent word?

The story captures the family's anticipation over Christmas set against this question of the missing father in palpable ways. It could not be Christmas without dad home. Yet, life had to go forward. The cows had to be brought in and milked. Olivia, the mother, went to the store to buy sugar with the little money they had left, highlighting the reason for John’s absence. Along the way, two boot-legging spinsters supply the family with “The Recipe,” providing a scandalous overlay to the otherwise staid family’s Christmas prep. All the while, concern grows, first unspoken and then spilling over. John-Boy, the oldest son, plays “the man of the house” role, telling the other kids about the importance of Christmas in light of the fact that their father was not there to play this important leadership role in the home.

As Christmas dinner draws closer, they hear a report of an overturned bus. Olivia sends John-Boy out to find the father. He experiences the larger world, gains perspective, and endears himself to the audience. And still, the tension around John’s absence builds.

Christmas dinner is upon the family. No John. Olivia sets an empty place at the table. Then, the thing we all knew was going to happen (the show was titled “Homecoming,” after all) John comes through the door. The family is reunited, and all is resolved.

This story, an archetype in literature called the “Lost Hero” was filled with elements of faith. The paradox of faith is that certainty and uncertainty are juxtaposed against each other. The less certain something is, the more faith we need to see it come about. At the same time, those who are assured of something are exercising great faith. In the story of the Waltons, Olivia sets a table for John, a symbol of her faith that John would be present.

In Genesis 12:1-3 we find the Abrahamic Covenant. God promises us that through Abraham, all the families of the world will be blessed. In Revelation 7:9 we find the fulfillment of this promise (“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands”). We live between the promise and the fulfillment. Theologians note that Jesus talked about the Kingdom as already here and, at the same time, not yet here. This “already / not yet” dynamic is the tension for our “lost hero” story.

In our time, the table has empty places. These are the people from the unreached “tribes and peoples and languages.” We know the outcome, but we also live in a time of uncertainty. We have assurance that the promise will be fulfilled, yet it takes great faith to see how that will happen. Yet, until the return of Christ, we live in the “already / not yet” of the Kingdom. When will our missing family members come bursting through the door to join us?

This Christmas, I encourage you to set an empty place at your table as a reminder that the family of God is not yet all together.