Happy Thursday

THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

The Christmas season is truly a complex cacophony of intermingling ideologies, all sewn and tied together into the craziest of holiday quilts. Christmas is, and always has been, a kind of lover’s quarrel between truth and fiction, designed to present both arguments in the best possible atmosphere of coexisting celebration and merciful tolerance.

In the worldly sense, Christmastime is like a once-a-year commercial message, splattered on the view screen of man’s consciousness; a mega distraction from the ongoing drama of human evolution and moral decay; a colorfully quadraphonic, high def reminder that even Scrooge types and hopeless hard heads have permission to experience the joy and catharsis of giving.

Year after year, the world dons its gay apparel, gaudily over-accessorizes its otherwise functionally and tastefully appointed abode, and carries on the time-honored practice of lying to its offspring about the existence of Santa Claus.

Meanwhile, children suffer through the excruciating trauma of having to wait for a moment in time when they can dive headlong into the serious business of unwrapping packages and prowling through the mountains of munchies and goodies given them as a reward for having behaved in a civilized manner since the last yuletide ritual of material and sensual overindulgence reoccurred. 

For many, Christmastime is like a too-long, run-on sentence that ends somewhere in the middle of the first week in January, begins the day after Halloween weekend in the form of TV commercialism gone ballistic, and is officially kicked off with a blazing, theatrical parade of fictitious fairy tale characters, marching, dancing, singing, floating and ballooning proudly and loudly down the west side of Manhattan in a grotesque display of spectacular eye candy and seductive, seasonal prophesy. For others though, this two-month-long pain in the pocketbook is the exact opposite.

And riding the crest of this merrymaking tidal wave of mythical, tinsel-tossing nostalgia is an obese actor, playing Santa Claus; a flashily frocked figure of a man who lives in a God forsaken corner of the planet with his wife, several Disney-type beings, and eight tiny reindeer, one of whom has a glowing-red nose. Santa Claus, who can fly over tall buildings with the crack of his whip; bend children’s minds at the mere mention of his name, and who, disguised as the Spirit of Christmas, and imitated by thousands of pillow-packing bell ringers everywhere, launches himself annually into the hearts and minds of all fairy tale fanciers from here to nirvana, and beyond.

And in the middle of this frivolous fantasy of fun and frolic is the humble image of perfect innocence embodied in the Christ child, lying in a manger, accepting gifts from wise men, and amazed adoration from a small group of star struck shepherds.

Year in and year out, the world redesigns this blessedly simple event, making of its message an overproduced vision of opulent commercialism on earth, and more bills to men.

The special effect of this yuletide season upon the collective mind of man is a double-edged issue, confronting each of us with a choice of focus. We all love or hate Christmas, or both, for different reasons. A realized Christian views and celebrates the holidays as our heavenly Father’s Holy mustard seed of faith. We believe that faith seed was planted into the fabric of man’s imperfect calendar to grow through the infant Jesus into the Messiah of all who embrace the risen Christ as Lord, Savior and Redeemer of their physical and spiritual lives and  futures.

“I tell you solemnly,” says Jesus, “unless a wheat grain falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.” Let us not forget to carefully remind our children that Jesus is no longer a newborn child, lying helplessly in a manger, under the guardianship of His earthly parents. Our Lord is no longer dying on His cross, suffering through the final seconds of His divinely human ministry on earth. Through the miraculous power of His Resurrection, Jesus is in heaven with His and our Father, and we, who are His friends, brothers, sisters, mothers and disciples must never lose sight of His and our perfect spiritual maturity, living among us in the love and power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Christmas is not a season or holiday so much as it is an ever-present awareness of peace, love and joy- living and growing within the hearts and minds of all those whose lives are not governed and controlled by calendars and timepieces, but by the perfect clockwork of heaven’s timelessness. The Holy Spirit of Christmas is the one-day-at-a-time, good will discipline of forgiveness and Fatherly correction, manifesting God’s righteous will through all that lives and relives in His universal plan of divine order and natural and spiritual selection.

Christmas is, and should continue to be, a humbling reminder to mankind, and to his children, that the time has come to put aside all else in order to meditate on the miracle of God’s Word made flesh through the virgin birth of Jesus, Who is the Christ, the living and eternal Savior and Master of all mankind and beyond.

Children know a good thing when they see one. Let us pray the Spirit of Christmas will be forever celebrated and revered through the pure, unaffected power of a child’s holy innocence, and the perfect perception of an infant’s wondrous and wisdom-filled smile. “For I tell you solemnly, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Jesus Christ)

May the pure happiness of God’s Holy Spirit be yours this day, and every day to come, and may you and yours celebrate the true Spirit of a blessed and Merry Christmas for all time and eternity in the name and grace of our Lord, Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ.

Amen

John Christopher

DEC 1983

Daily Smile:

The farmer's son was returning from the market with a crate of chickens his father had entrusted to him, when all of a sudden the box fell and broke open.

Chickens scurried off in different directions, but the determined boy walked all over the neighborhood scooping up the wayward birds and returning them to the repaired crate. Hoping he had found them all, the boy reluctantly returned home, expecting the worst.

"Pa, the chickens got loose," the boy confessed sadly, "but I managed to find all twelve of them."

"Well, you done a good job, son," the farmer beamed. "You left with seven."