Every year amidst the parties, shopping sprees,
commercialism and material excesses of Christmas-time, we are
encouraged and reminded, sometimes gently, sometimes stridently, “not
to lose sight of the real meaning of Christmas”. I’m
sure you find the phrase familiar. This year I began to find
it a little irritating. Not that I don’t agree with it.
I do. But somehow it has become weak and anaemic. Almost like
a “conscience saver” for the one who used it.
It’s not good enough “not to lose sight of” the
significance of Christmas. We need rather to live with the power
of its message. The popular Carol puts it best of all, I think:
“That man will live forevermore,
because of Christmas Day.”
Is it real for us that God became Man?
That is to say, do we truly believe it? Do we see, as we recall
the Christmas story
of the baby Jesus, the power and depth and reality of God’s
abiding love for us? And so seeing, do we live secure in that
knowledge of God’s true and practical love for us? If we
can say “yes” to these questions, then we don’t
have to fear a conflict in our celebration of Christmas.
It’s not a matter of “playing down” the material
and “paying up” the spiritual. Jesus would have had
no time for that. His coming has underlined the Holiness of the
material. He who came, “that we might have life, and have
it to the full”, would approve of parties, of presents,
of being happy together. For he is always in the midst of people
happy together. For being happy together is an expression of
love. And God is love!
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