The myth or the miracle?
For most people – regardless of where they live or what they believe – Christmas is a season for celebration. There‘s a kind of nostalgic yearning that starts to resurrect from deep within about the time you hear the first notes of “White Christmas.”
For many today, Christmas is rooted in nostalgia, not in fact or history. “Through most of its history,” says a news publication, “the Christmas season has been a time of racous revelry and bacchanalian indulgence more akin to Mardi Gras or New Year’s Eve than to a silent, holy night.” Most people, so polls tell us, think that Christmas is too commercial, too brassy and certainly too noisy. Many would point out that most of what is associated with Christmas has no biblical basis whatsoever.
Where does all of this leave us, besides confused? Can we internalize the event and say, “It’s what we make of it”? Or should we boycott the whole thing and then try to reconstruct something meaningful?
Why not get back to how things really were, reading the narrative in the Gospel and pondering the great meaning of John 1 as we read the marvelous account of the Word’s becoming flesh and dwelling among us? Trace the key events from Matthew and Luke as the angel appears to a virgin who was engaged to a Nazarene carpenter named Joseph. Read the account of Mary‘s exaltation when she cried out in praise to the Lord for choosing her as the one through whom would come the Messiah.
Don’t waste your time knocking the commercialism, but instead reconstruct the reality: Christ’s coming is the light shone out of darkness, giving us hope and enabling us to live in peace.
Today Counts is available in bookstores nationwide. For more information, write to Guidelines
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