Does Christmas mean any thing besides merry-making, gift-giving, parties, decorations, lights and all related activities that make our internal states hurried and harried? Should Christmas have any effect on us and make us change, or should it be just one of those holidays we use to enjoy more and pursue better our own personal pleasures which in our minds are none of any body’s business including God’s?
May we pause a bit from the hustle and bustle of this season and appreciate the significance of its reason?
Of course, we know: it’s simply the birthday of the one they call Jesus. “What’s up with that, dude?” We all celebrate birthdays… And yet why such a fuss? Why make the celebration so long and why is it such a good excuse for more merchandise and more commerce? Why the temporal and material hullabaloo?
Christian religious leaders would tell us: this date in December and the days before and after it are significant because they herald and mark the coming of the Savior of the world. Materialists would say: what has been saved of the world in all your years of celebrating Christmas? But they would add: please go on; we’re making more money out of your celebration; so we support you!
Is it possible that the materialist prism prevents people from seeing the non-material essence of Christmas as a personal choice of soul and spirit? Could it be that we don’t pay attention to the internal preferences we each have to make in order to be endowed with the blessings of redemption?
Could it be that we simply overlook the spiritual substance of the Word – the beginning and the end – coming into the continuing present in the form of a Body (which has been given up, once and for all time, for our healing and blessings) and through the nourishment of His Blood (which has been shed, also once and for all time, for our eternal salvation)?
In pawn shops, a valuable is placed as collateral for payment of a loan below the true value of the precious thing and it is redeemed by payment of the amount received with some interest; if payment is not made on time, the valuable becomes property of the pawn shop.
Each one of us is a jewel of great value to the Lord God Almighty. He wants us (His Divine sparks) to be one with Him forever. He so values and loves us that He begat His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Virgin Mary, which event we now celebrate. It was such a materially insignificant event with the baby swaddled in wrapping clothes, placed on a cattle feeding trough, and announced by angels only to the shepherds (low class people) albeit Magi from afar were allowed to see His star. Though unheralded to every body else, the interpreted significance of this birth soon led to the massacre of so many innocents because power-mad Herod felt so threatened by the idea that wise men from the east came asking to pay homage to a baby born as ‘King of the Jews’ which man-concocted title he held at that time.
The true significance of that birth is our eternal redemption.
Jesus came to pay the price of our sins, plus interest, with His Body and His Blood. He has done all that was ever needed, and more, for our redemption, salvation and ransom. Consummatum est. But there is a little catch. He does not force upon us His Love, His Sacrifice, His Forgiveness and the Freedom from fear and guilt that are the consequences of our repentance and acceptance of Him as Redeemer. We have to exercise our free will and freely accept, take and receive Him as Lord and Savior and to repent of our sins – all in faith…
The birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ (“The Anointed One”) also known in Hebrew as Joshua or Yeshua, in Greek, Iesous (“Yahweh helps”; “Yahweh saves”) and as Emmanuel (“God is with us” reinforced in His promise after the resurrection “I am with you always until the end of the age”), give us humans the opportunity to change our default or pawn destination which is hell, hocked by Satan-induced pride in Paradise resulting in selfish, egoistic and ungodly choices, which proclivity and weakness we have inherited and carnally manifested for uncounted generations, even as we remain endowed with free will and God’s image as we were made.
By our free and unforced acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior, that default direction or pawn forfeiture in hell gets changed to heaven as well as to guilt-free and fear-free living, because when we repent of our sins and receive Him (get baptized in the name of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit), our sin-inclined carnal souls die with Him (through His ever-present Sacrifice-for-all-Time that, by His Blood, washes off our sins and our fear-guilt complex) and we resurrect with Him (get born again, clean and white as snow) in His Spirit, Who empowers us to learn, live, obey, manifest and share God’s Love. In Jesus, there is no more condemnation! If we sin again and repent anew, Jesus Christ is our Advocate before the Father!
To secure true blessings from His Redemption, we have to choose Him and His Spirit in the Kingdom within. This personal choice is and ought to be our main focus of celebration and sharing at Christmastime, not material gifts, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, bling-blings, occasions to splurge or any other material or physical thing or sensation our passions may lust for.
The foundation of that choice or the center, core and quintessence of Christmas is Jesus Christ.
Let Him, His Grace and His Redemption not be adulterated or denatured by the dictatorship of political correctness. Let those who want to say and use Happy Holidays do so freely. We do not have the right to make them say and use Merry Christmas. Equally, they too do not have the right to make us say and use Happy Holidays. In the full exercise of our freedom of thought and of communication, let us express without hesitation what is in our hearts - Merry Christmas - while respecting and encouraging their right to express what is in theirs.
We the followers of Christ constitute His body. His body is also His temple. And now it seems the slow-creep of consumerism over the years has overgrown and is suffocating us, His temple, preventing us from seeing and appreciating the true meaning of His infinite love and mercy, which obstructive taking up of space and attention seems to parallel the eventual temple occupation by money-lenders (den of thieves) in His time.
Perhaps it is time for us to cleanse our temple of this external material focus of consuming more and more all for show. Perhaps it is time to give our attention to having Him more and more in us, and keeping less and less of our ego and pride. Perhaps it is time to celebrate Christmas with the prayer: “more of You, Lord, less of me; more of You, less of me…until there is no more me, only You…”
