The essence of Christmas

Christmas has come around once more. It is a season of merry-making and rejoicing – “a celebration of all celebrations” of sorts to commemorate the birth of the most important person in history. But Christmas is not just about the birthday of God's son and that's not also the reason why we celebrate and honor Christmas better than our birthday or any important anniversary in the family. If God really wanted us to celebrate it that way, God would have schemed Jesus' birth in the same fashion we celebrate it today. But He chose a simpler way to do things because He wanted us to celebrate the "essence" not the event.

Almost ordinarily, when a special someone celebrates a birthday, what we do is to well-wish that person, offer a present or celebrate the occasion with revelry and fanfare for it to be remembered by the celebrant as a momentous event of his or her life. Not that it is wrong, it is not right to do it on Christmas. God does not want us to celebrate it that way. Christmas is not how you remember it but rather how you live it. It is not about dates. It is about "dating" it.  

One has to be mindful that remembering and living are two different things. While the other simply knows, the other one acts. The fact that God gave his son to the world, is to show his active presence in human affairs. And that is how we want us to live our lives -- to take an active role to in making this world a little better each day.

But how do we make this world a better place? The First Christmas has all the answers. But we can't find those answers right away in the Christmas story we read in the Bible. The Bible only cites the genealogy and circumstances of Jesus' lowly birth. And I would like to surmise why all four Gospels only described the "whats" in Jesus birth for us to discover the "whys" behind it all.

You see, you don't read the Christmas story like your history books. God wants us to read his story between the lines so it is not about history but rather how God makes a history in our lives which brings us back to the idea of dating rather than the date. Hence, the essence of the Christmas story is to understand its purpose not the history because more often than not, we can't really know why things just happen. History, can be best appreciated if left understood for its lessons -- the same goes for the true meaning of Christmas.  

It is hard to understand why God had to send Jesus only to be nailed to death later. St. Thomas Aquinas wises that since we cannot know God, we can know him by what he is not. Since we know that God cannot be hate, he can therefore only be love. I would like to believe that this is the whole essence of Christmas. Christmas is God's expression of love to mankind we know in John 3:16. It is was a present so we may come to know that God is not always “up there” but “with us” that is why Jesus was called "Immanuel" or God with us. There is no greater present than the gift of God's presence through Jesus.

And if we are to celebrate Christmas, we have to celebrate it with our loving presence instead of feasting. What great joy it would be if we come together as family and share that loving presence with each other even without the partying. What great joy there is if we also celebrate Christmas that same loving presence together with a sick or a hungry neighbor. Or what about spending Christmas with those who are abandoned by their loved ones? In the words of Mother Teresa, “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

God does not expect us to do great things this Christmas. We only need to do things with great love. Finally, this Christmas, may we contemplate God’s humility in Jesus, his divinity hidden beneath the poverty of a the Holy Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; the Master and Creator of the universe reduced to the helplessness of a child. Once we accept this paradox, may we discover the truth behind it and that truth is His Love. The First Noel, the Savior becomes one of us, our companion along the trying times. May we all take his hand which he stretches out to us: a hand which seeks to take nothing from us, but only to give.

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