We Need Christmas!

In recent years, immediately after Halloween, at the beginning of November, retailers begin bombarding us with Christmas ads, and Christmas songs fill the airwaves. We cannot escape this assault, unless we remain in our homes for two months, with radios and television sets off. Few, if any, people can do this.

Silence has become a negative concept in our society, something to be avoided, but there is a silence about Christmas, especially Christmas Eve, which is both eloquent and holy. “In silence I hear the voice of God,” wrote St. Augustine. Those who consistently use headphones or Ipods would do well to abstain from using them occasionally.

It has become increasingly difficult in our society and perhaps any society, to remember, much less focus on, “the true meaning of Christmas.”  It has nothing to do with consumerism, “getting and spending,” to use Wordsworth’s phrase. The “true meaning of Christmas” has become a cliché, but the effort to recognize and celebrate this meaning is still worthwhile.

In one of the most moving Christmas sermons I ever heard, more than 20 years ago, the minister described Christmas as “an act of faith” and as “a feast of hope.” He explained the first phrase as “God’s act of faith in the world and in human nature,” and the second phrase as “God’s affirmation of the goodness of creation and the dignity of the human person.”

I remember these words, and several others he spoke that Christmas Eve, because I wrote them down. I developed this habit during my teaching career, so that I could share profound, moving, and poetic words and thoughts with my students.

 The Christmas sermon was so moving because it was so positive, and yet realistic enough to point out the troubles in the world then. Even the most idealistic person cannot deny or ignore the troubles in the world and in our country today. They need not be recounted here. We will not, however, have “peace on earth” without “goodwill toward men;” the two are inextricably linked. Despite everything that is wrong with the world and perhaps in our lives, there is also much that is right and good. Christmas (and its predecessor in the American calendar, Thanksgiving) gives us the opportunity to focus on this fact.

What can we do, however, to change something that is wrong? Can any one person really make a difference? Few of us can do so on a grand scale; that opportunity is available only to those with money and power.

Each of us can make a difference in the lives of a few people, or even one person, however, and the Christmas season is a good time to start. Buy a gift – through your church or a civic organization such as the Salvation Army - for a child who would otherwise not get one at Christmas. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or similar place to feed the hungry. Visit a sick or disabled person, or a person who is alone, in a nursing home, for example. There are countless ways to do something for someone, not only during the month of December but at any time throughout the year. “From those to whom much is given, much is expected in return.”

I suspect that many of us rarely, if ever, have the kind of Christmas we think we should have. Often, for example, someone is missing – a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend. It is impossible not to hear the silence of their absence.

Thus, we need faith and we need hope, and sometimes even divine help, to fulfill our human potential and to create the kind of society and the kind of world in which there is less suffering and in which people desire to live.

We need Christmas!