Ah,
Christmas!
Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Dec. 24, 2022
Christmas
is a bundle of contradictions. Or is it? Peace on earth? Where? Yet all around us around the world
there are many people in dire circumstances who truly do experience peace and
anxiety-free lives. They are realists who are well aware of the condition of
the world, yet they not only cope but thrive and are somehow able to keep the
misfortunes of life from getting them down.
Many consider their misfortunes an opportunity to help bring to others
the comfort and joy they themselves experience.
Superficially,
Christmas is all about lights and celebration.
Store owners and home dwellers can do magical things with decorations. The attention that all of the superficiality
garners is evidence that we all seek beauty, joy, and light.
Who but a Grinch could
not find satisfaction in the happy faces of children? Who could seriously argue that the overall
effect of Christmas is not positive?
Buried beneath the commercialism, hope seems always to stir – hope that
things will get better, that soured relationships will be restored, that more
goodwill will prevail in the year ahead, and that darkness of all stripes will
be dispelled.
Christmas is big stuff. In fact it’s too much stuff. I’m persuaded that for those who are sad at
Christmas, their sadness is not caused by seeing and envying others who are
joyful, but by seeing and bemoaning the obvious void that all the stuff
creates. Trinkets, new clothes, money,
and gift cards are all nice, but they typically have a short life span after
which many are back in their slump.
That slump can be more
easily dealt with if one considers how the Christmas story has affected three
continents. Ironically, the land where
Christmas started is not primarily a Christian region. Europe and the Americas are the lands that
have cradled the Christian gospel and given it to the world, not just the babe
in a manger account, but the schools, hospitals, and orphanages that have
followed it. Christmas when rightly
understood and received has always changed hearts, sprouted legs, and sought
out the needs of others.
Yes, Christmas is about
a birth and how that birth affected the world.
One of our most popular Christmas carols contains the words, “Long lay
the world in sin and error pining / ‘Till He appeared and the soul felt its
worth.”
Sin we understand. It’s wrong to murder, to lie, to steal. Error we sometimes miss. It was error for ancient men of nobility to sincerely
believe that certain people had no worth except to serve the nobility. Perhaps the human soul began to feel its
worth because of the humble origins of the One who claimed He was God come
down. It was error (and sin) for modern
man to perpetuate the ancient world’s injustice and political tyranny, error to
think that God indwelt idols, error to think that our five senses are the
highest reality or that matter and energy are the only realities.
Many psychiatrists have
spoken of the loneliness experienced by so many at Christmas. The good news is that, if the Christmas story
is true, nobody is alone. Christmas –
that is, Christmas beneath and beyond the superficialities – says that God put
on an earth suit and dwelt among us. The
title Emmanuel means “God with us.” We
had better hope that the Christmas account is true. The human race is in dire need of it. We’re not controlling our selfishness too
well. We chase the wind. We even let prosperity be our undoing. We need an internal governor of sorts that
sublimates our self-centeredness and shows us how to look out for our fellow
man. The Christmas message purports to
do just that and has done it for millions. In short it saves us from our sins,
our error, and ourselves, but only if we sincerely embrace it.
Reviling the
supernatural, an MDJ letter writer back in 2019 claimed that Thanksgiving was
intended as a day to give thanks not to “some god,” but to “mothers and
fathers, cooks and farmers, and kind relatives.” That’s not exactly what
Lincoln and FDR had in mind. Neither was
such broad application what President Grant had in mind when in1870 he
instituted Christmas Day as a holiday.
Grant rightly believed Christmas Day would help re-unite our torn
nation. It did help.
Those who will have an
empty pantry or an empty chair at their table this year are the ones to whom
Christmas should drive our minds and legs.
And if granted a New Year, we can sing along with Elvis, “Why can’t
every day be like Christmas?”
To millions around the
world every day is. That’s the Ah! of
Christmas.
Roger Hines
12/18/19
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