CHRISTMAS 2014
Somehow, I think it’s getting a little harder for me to
write about Christmas each year. Sometimes I’m not always sure what were
talking about, when we talk about Christmas. I know the true meaning and why--
but I think it’s evolving to a point where the birth of Christ, will just be an
after-thought, lost in the crush of Holiday parties and mad gift giving. It’s
like celebrating your own birthday with a lavish party but no one ever gives
you birthday wishes-- they just say-- “what a party huh?” So you say, “This is
a free country and you’re able to celebrate anyway you want to,” and you know
what? Your right and I have no problem with that. My problem comes when you
call it a Christmas Holiday and yet have no intention of recognizing Christ’s
birth as the reason for the holiday.
But
in the true spirit of Christmas, I must get beyond this and not let others
spoil my Christmas. If I’m to be a scrooge, then I only add to my
dissatisfaction. It seems ironic but the Christmas’s that stir my soul the most
are the ones when I was so poor and not the opulent ones that came later in
life. Maybe it was because those poor Christmas’s came with a huge measure of
sacrifice from my parents and others and sacrifice is so often, synonymous with
love. How easy it would have been for them to say, “Let’s just skip the whole
thing.” However they didn’t do that because they knew if I was to see the real
meaning of Christmas, then it had to happen. They knew as a child, maybe I
wouldn’t understand their sacrifices but they also knew that there would come a
day when I would-- and believe me it is here and now. Meager or not it wasn’t
meant to be about gifts; they were just an afterthought. It was really about
Jesus’ birth and us. Dr Seuss said in ‘How the Grinch stole Christmas.’ “Then the Grinch thought of something he
hadn’t before. What if Christmas he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if
Christmas—perhaps-- means a little bit more.”
Christmas
for me evokes so many memories. I look at pictures from Christmas’s past and
although those sometimes-grainy photos are really just moments frozen in time,
the stories they tell are still so real, so fluid. For me at least they are
truly a hallmark moment. Nostalgia-- at least for me-- brings comfort and hope
from the past and that enriches my present and helps me to make what is
happening in my life today, okay and more bearable. If Christmas still weren’t important to me anymore-- then I
wouldn’t be writing this, would I?
So
its Christmas 2014 and I really hope that it’s one that you will never forget.
That one of the reasons will be because little boys and girls will have a dream
or two come true from under your Christmas tree and you will be the happy
giver. That somewhere in a house of worship, you will sing Silent Night and
remember the reason for the season. That someone you love will blow you a kiss
from across the room or snuggle with you in the corner of the couch in front of
a fire and it will all be so perfect and someday sixty years from now, those
same little kids will look at a picture from that very night and say. “That was
the best Christmas ever.
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