CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS UNAWARES

It would be easy to wax eloquent about how our society had made Christmas a Civil holiday rather than a Christian holyday. Many of my clergy colleagues have done so year after year. It would be even easier to moan and groan about the commercialization of this season. But if the truth be told, it would be a waste of breath and an even greater waste of words to do so.

I will grant that many of my neighbors probably, probably, because I have no way of knowing unless I ask them personally -- which I will not do -- do not even think about Jesus on Christmas. Jesus may be the last thought on their minds when they purchase and/or exchange presents. They may even have a crèche somewhere among all the decorations, but that is still no reason to believe that Jesus has any real meaning in whatever it is they do at this time of year.

           

Oh, they are certainly aware, or at least I hope they are, that Jesus is the real reason for the season, but he is not the reason why they are personally celebrating, giving and receiving presents or gathering family around the dinner table or decorating the house with a Christmas tree and lights and all the rest. You should see how hey decorate the outside of their homes! Their reasoning, I suspect, why they do all that and even more is that it is Christmas the Holiday.

           

Yet, the holiday and the holyday are so intertwined that one cannot celebrate the one without celebrating the other. I love holydays. Holydays are always holidays, always, days when we pause to remember and celebrate the holy, the good, the Godly. They are a pause within the ordinary. They are the extra added to the ordinary, the extraordinary, even the out of the ordinary. That is why they are special.

           

And holidays are holydays, but not always. If we do on holidays what we always do every other day, then there is nothing special about the day, at least for us. But when we take the holiday and celebrate it, even if our celebration is not in keeping with the real spirit of the holiday, it is still a holyday. How one keeps holy the holiday of Christmas --   for Christmas is both: it is, again, a civil holiday and a Christian holyday -- is almost beside the point. The point is that when we keep the holiday, we make it holy.

           

Many, many people are celebrating Christmas the Holyday unawares. The temptation may be to blame them for their failure to be aware of what they are doing. But we would be wrong if we did. If there is any failure, it is the failure of those of us who know what is holy in the holiday for not making the unaware aware of the holiness of this day.

           

We who have failed to convey the true and holy meaning of Christmas to those who celebrate the holiday can begin to redress our failure by inviting our neighbors to keep the holyday with us, to make the holiday truly holy. It doesn't take much. But it can mean the beginning of a new awareness, an understanding of what this season is all about.

           

Have a blessed holy/holiday.