Are we losing the spirit of Christmas?

The hard economic times made Christmas this year a lot more subdued than many Christmases we have known. Perhaps we have ourselves to blame for this unholiday feeling we have today. Out of habit, we have made Christmas all about gifts, good food and the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures. Many of us have also simply lost hope and faith. We have forgotten that Christmas is all about God becoming man, to save us from an eternity of darkness.

Well, it is difficult to preach spirituality to people who know from first hand experience that money is essential in today’s world. The scarcity of money is a real pain, as Argentina demonstrates. It is more difficult still to preach spirituality to people who go to sleep hungry, and there are many of them. It is difficult to have faith and hope when we are swamped with the reality of greed around us.

Most of us say we believe in Christ, the Son of God who came down to Earth to redeem us, making it possible for us to attain the eternal happiness of Heaven. Nice concept, we all think, but we don’t really understand that or we won’t be feeling this miserable just because the world economy has gone to pot this Christmas and it seems Santa Claus is dead. The man with the white beard is no Santa. He is far from jolly, has an AK-47 hanging on his shoulders and lives in a cold dusty cave in Afghanistan rather than the North Pole.

Who can blame us for being such skeptics? Reminds me of that famous editorial about a child named Virginia who asked the editor of The New York Times, about a century ago, if there is a Santa Claus. We are precisely the kind of people Francis Church, an editorial writer of The New York Sun wrote about when he tried to explain why Santa Claus is real.

People, he wrote, "have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds." We have forgotten how to dream. To our mind, Santa Claus is dead or never was.

But Santa Claus, Mr. Church wrote, "exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!" And look guys, he was only talking of Santa Claus. Let us think of Jesus Christ, whose birth as a human being in order to save us, we celebrate.

Alas! how hopeless, more than we could imagine, would the world be if Jesus was not born in that first Christmas in what is now war torn Bethlehem. Dreary won’t even begin to describe a world not yet redeemed by Christ. But how we have forgotten! The stable’s gone and so are the homes of Palestinians leveled by an Israeli retaliatory attack. You couldn’t see the Star of Bethlehem these days in the smoke of battle. In the din of gunfire, it is impossible to hear the angels sing carols of peace to men of goodwill, much less the carols joyfully singing praises to our Savior. If the angels singing on high showed up today, they would be shot down with anti aircraft fire.

The shepherds are gone too. In their place are soldiers in uniform with Uzis, patrolling the desert. It is hard to think that Jesus was born here, He who is the personification of love, generosity and devotion. Will the Prince of Peace choose to be born in that place today? Or in this world, for that matter?

Virginia, the little girl who asked about Santa Claus lived in better times. Even then, who could blame Virginia’s friends for doubting Santa’s existence? Maybe, Santa Claus was an attempt to make the concept of a Divine Savior understandable to us mortals. Except that through the years, the focus on Santa’s material gifts distracted our attention from the only gift that mattered: the Life He sacrificed on the Cross, to open the gates of Heaven for us. It is a gift we can only appreciate if we have faith.

Our problem, to go back to Mr. Church’s editorial, is our lack of childlike faith. Jesus also told us in the Gospel, that unless we have faith like a child, we would not have eternal life. We need this childlike faith to survive as pilgrims on this earth.

Our lack of faith is at the root of our unhappiness. Mr. Church explains: "There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished."

How should we proceed?

Another editorial, this time in the December 1996 issue of the St. Anthony Messenger (www. americancatholic.org), gives us a simple explanation of what Christmas is (and should be) for Christians. It explains the meaning of Advent, Christmas itself and the Epiphany.

"During Advent we emphasize the joy that some would compare to the months before a child is born: longing, excitement, wonder, joy, even exhilaration of life that is in our midst right now, yet also a hope and yearning for what is to come, and a carefulness to get things into order.

"During Christmas season we celebrate the wonder of the Incarnation. How wondrously we are made that the Word of God would become one of us! God shows us how to live fully: by pouring out our lives for others. That is what the days of Christmas are all about.

"Epiphany and the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord celebrate Christ becoming manifest–that is, present–to all peoples. On Epiphany we focus on the wise men symbolizing the many races for whom Christ was born. The Baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of his public ministry. God’s "Christmas gift" of the Incarnation is a gift for everyone!"

How can we feel the spirituality of Christmas with all the background noise of war, commercialism and political opportunism? I guess we simply must try to sort things out in our moments of silence. We should use this Christmas break to do that. But we shouldn’t forget to enjoy the occasion, as we should.

I imagine in His Infinite Goodness, Christ also designed this holiday break at the end of a year to get our minds off the daily routine, enabling us to recharge spiritually, psychologically, physically. God knows we can take only so much of our daily heartaches. And don’t forget, Dick Gordon also wants you to spend some money on domestic tourism.

There should be time enough to worry about the fall of our export sector, our rising unemployment rate and whether Ping Lacson is really as dangerous as Rosebud says he is. For now, we take time off to assess what is it in our lives that really have meaning. What have we learned from that First Christmas that would make it impossible to extinguish the real spirit of Christmas no matter how bad our GNP figure turns out to be?

Let’s go back, not to the Malls but into our hearts to recapture the spirit of Christmas. Let us remember that the focal point of the Christmas cycle is God becoming one of us in Jesus, the Incarnation. That is the big story of Christmas. And as the Catholic Church preaches, all three phases of the cycle–Advent, Christmas and Epiphany–hinge on and celebrate that point.

A very Merry Christmas to all our readers. May the Peace that Jesus Christ brought to Earth on that first Christmas always be with all of us and with all we love.

NorthPole.com

As a little girl climbed onto Santa’s lap, Santa asked the usual, "And what would you like for Christmas?"

The child stared at him open mouthed and horrified for a minute, then gasped: "Didn’t you get my E-mail?"

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])