Saturday, December 25, 2010

 

Christians on Christmas


Today is Christmas.
To many Christians, it is an important day.

To non-Christians (and many of us, too), it is easy to criticize what Christmas has become. I can't defend the commercialization and rushing around; as someone I respect has explained better than I can, the best I can do is to ignore it.

But, what is Christmas to us, then? How do we explain it to a non-Christian, other than through the most literal recitation of belief?

Like many of my faith brethren, I am deeply flawed. I know some people who truly are the saints among us: Their lives exemplify Christian morality, and their words are consistent with the very word of God. I am not one of them.

But, for us lessers, Christmas can be this-- a moment that is imbued with meaning. It may be the brief epiphany of sitting in church on Christmas Eve and hearing a baby cry and rather than being annoyed, realizing the shocking truth that God took the most vulnerable of human forms imaginable.

It might be the deep sense of love for someone who understands, a love that makes us want to slip down and fall on our knees and wrap our arms around them, thank God that they exist.

It may be an act of kindness we have given or received, fully knowing what that is.

It can even be that moment, in a beautiful descant, that a voice peals over the others, a voice that pierces the heart with words we have heard our whole lives, words of worship and humility and beauty.

Christmas does not have to be a season or a week or even a whole day; for many of us, at its best, it is a moment, but a moment of purity and light and wholeness, and there is good in that. There is good in that, and there is God in that, and that sometimes can be enough.

Comments:
Amen. Merry Christmas.
 
Beautiful.
 
Beautiful.
 
He became us, so that we could be more like him.-
The Council of Nicaea, 325 CE.
 
Hi from Aunt Betsy!
 
This is the season of Yule, when my ancestors lit fires to drive away the long night, and drank and kept close with family because winter turned the world to ice.

No matter how commercial the season, or the importance we place on gifts and things, nothing can detract from the essential Yule-hood of the season. It is the time of family, feasts, and fetes. Fires burn to warm hearth and home; food and drink symbolize our trust and love. The spirit of giving (and, yes, getting) is part of the fun of the time, of making the best of what once was a lean and hard time.

Gut Jul zum alles!
 
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