When our now-adult children were small, we would pile into the car after supper and ride around looking at Christmas lights. We deliberately chose neighborhoods whose streets were lined with glittering homes and with yards dotted by illuminated crèches, snowmen, and festively-dressed Snoopies.
Awe-inspired gasps, thrilled giggles, and shouts of “Look! Look!” tumbled out of the back seat as we rolled along. Light piercing the night cast a spell on all of us back then. Honestly, it does the same to me still.
My post-sunset drives are now mostly solo. On these shortest of days I am usually traveling home from the office or finishing the day’s rounds. And the neighborhoods through which I pass are frequently not those we would have chosen those many years ago for Christmas-light viewing.
On a recent night I drove one of my usual routes. Shotgun houses line these dimly-lit streets. In this sort of house, a single door opens to a hallway. That hallway runs down one side of the tiny wooden-frame structure to the back door. Cramped rooms lie on one side of that interior passage.
Peeling lead-based paint or battered asbestos siding inadequately seals the exterior walls. Renters furnish their stoops with the shabby love seats and rickety office chairs they’ve retrieved from trash heaps littering the curb. Evidence of their neighbors’ evictions.
House after house retreated from my sight into the gloom. And then, ahead to my left, green and red flickered in the corner of my eye. I slowed to see a strand of lights rimming the frame of the single window and another strand around the door of the house to my left.
Those few lights cast a new spell. John captures its essence in the opening chapter of his Gospel. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)
And as Luke tells us, heaven bends low to touch the earth, to infuse the earth with the very presence of God. Among scruffy shepherds in the midst of a mucky field. In an outbuilding of an over-full hotel in crummy backwater of the world’s largest, most dangerous Empire. (Luke 2:1-20)
God joins us even in the midst of our gloom. The gloom of poverty, of racism. The gloom of loneliness or grief. The gloom of family dysfunction or addiction. The light shines. God is there. God is with us. And the gloom cannot overcome it.
When I got to the office the next day, I looked up the origin of shotgun houses. I had always heard that they got their name from that single, unobstructed hallway. People say that you could shoot a gun straight through the house from front to back without hitting a thing.
But what I learned in my brief research taught me about the meaning of the birth of Jesus.
Some scholars believe that the word “shotgun house” is actually a corruption of the West African term for that type of dwelling. Slaves originally built these cheap, practical dwellings in what is now Haiti. They brought the design with them to New Orleans when their masters relocated.
These slaves called this kind of dwelling a “shogon.” That word means “God’s house.”
They knew in their bones that, despite their cruel captivity and harsh treatment, God dwelled with them. To live at all—to live with God in their midst—was a profound act of rebellion. Rebellion against the forces of this world that would imprison, impoverish, diminish, harass, and oppress the children of God. To be light in the darkest gloom, refusing to be extinguished.
God sent Jesus into this world. And the address that God chose for Jesus’s birth turned out not to be 1600 Palatine Hill, Rome. Instead, Mary gave birth to her baby boy in a shed whose address was so obscure that Fed Ex probably wouldn’t have found it on time.
In Jesus we see that God comes to dwell in the midst of gloom. Not merely to provide the comfort of a little light to those who happen to believe. But to be the light that once and for all dispels the gloom—in all its forms—that too often hangs over the beloved children of God.
To follow Jesus is to be an inextinguishable light in the gloomy places of the world. No just on Christmas. But every day.
I’d never heard of shotgun houses, interesting story! Loved the obscure address and Fed Ex
…observation. (Accidentally hit the “send” button above.) Have a very happy Christmas and sending my warmest best wishes for the New Year 2019!
Merry Christmas, Liz! I always love hearing from my friend halfway round the world!
“This little light of mine…” Thanks for sharing the shogun theory vs. shotgun that we all knew. Makes much more sense and good passes through, not evil. Merry Christmas Jake. You let it shine!
Merry Christmas, Mary Pat!
Reblogged this on Pastor Michael Moore's Blog and commented:
A beautiful and poignant reminder, Jake!
I grew up in New Orleans and have always heard of shotgun houses, but I am glad to learn another term reflective of their history. Reading a bit further on the meaning of the shogon house, I found that while it means “God’s house,” it functions practically as the spiritual center of its inhabitants, a home where “everything comes together around a nexus of faith and family” ….. further expanding your message. The shogon indeed becomes for its family the center of their spirituality, a “light in darkest gloom that refuses to be extinguished.” Thank you for your message as well as a new term!
That’s a wonderful addition to what I learned. Thanks, Nancy! And Merry Christmas to you and yours!
From Wikipedia article on “Shotgun House”.
“Alternatively, folklorist and professor John Michael Vlach has suggested that the origin of the building style and the name itself may trace back to Haiti and Africa during the 18th century and earlier. Vlach claimed the name may have originated from a Dahomey Fon area term ‘to-gun’, which means “place of assembly”. The description, probably used in New Orleans by Afro-Haitian slaves, may have been misunderstood and reinterpreted as “shotgun”.” So “God’s House” might be a stretch. I always heard they were called shotgun houses because a single shotgun blast would kill everyone in the house.
In any case, my Mom started life and lived for many childhood years in a two-room shotgun in NE Louisiana. Although the eldest had moved away before the youngest came along so there were never more than about 8 siblings at home at once, she had 10 siblings in all (and two parents) who lived in that house. She and my aunts and uncles grew up to be the finest men and women I have ever known (and I am 68 so I have known a few). Though always with very little money and occasionally not enough food, I don’t think they ever thought of themselves as poor, as they always had neighbors who were worse off than they were. They had two parents who taught them faith, integrity, self-reliance, and the dignity and worth of work. Every home should be “God’s House” – I think their’s was.
Got my info from a New Orleans publication. Thanks for the alternative account. And thanks especially for sharing this story. It’s a great testimony to your folks and helps my readers get a deeper, broader sense of things.
Ligh
The challenge is the deepest of the deepI In order to shine forth the Light,we must stay centered in that Light! Deacon Belle
Amen.
I have been pondering “the light” and how it does not have to be a great light (like stadium lights) to dispel darkness. Every little light counts. Thank you for this lovely Christmas reflection.
Christmastide peace and joy, Madeline!
“I haven’t read your book, and I’m wondering hat your viewpoint is …specifically. Your thoughts on Jesus Christ , our Savior.. If anyone should ask about my ‘religion’ I’d have to say I have none except I believe in Jesus Christ, the One and only Person that can bring us to Heaven” . Perhaps a controversial thought but for me, the truth thought, a fact” – artfromperry ..
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Thanks for reading and for asking a question that needs an expansive answer. In this short space I can’t possibly do justice to your question, so I urge you to read my latest book. There I believe I answer your question in a way that is more than merely superficial.
Lovely, Jake. Thank you. I often drive through sections of town of houses such as you describe. I don’t see the large families as much as I see the elderly and isolated and lonely. And I worry about the despair.
One thing I know, though, it has been the poorest of the people I have known through my life that have needed no more than a candle worth of external ‘light’ to sustain them because their faith tap ran so deep. I am truly blessed to still live so closely with souls of such knowing and inner joy.
You are indeed blessed!