Toward the end of each year when bills pile up and you start worrying about payments to your car, life insurance, and college tuitions, things always tend to look pretty drab.
Then Christmas sort of sneaks up on you.
Oh, you knew it was coming. That is the greatest thing about it, the fact that year after year, century after century, it comes again, giving mankind another chance to practice Christianity instead of talking about it and doing nothing.
To the cynical, Christmas means a lot of extra work. The unthinking dread it. They see only the sham, the hypocrisy, the commercialism. They look around and see a senseless war in Afghanistan, millions living in poverty here at home, and rattle-brained youths with a chance to attend college throwing away their priceless privileges with sit-ins, sleep-ins, and stand-ins.
These doubters go to church and listen to the old doctrines but without the old faith. They have been to political rallies and heard rabble rousers make promises without any intention of fulfilling them.
They look at Christmas as a brief period of gift-giving and partying. They begrudge the time it takes them away from their usual habits of aggressiveness and envy.
Don’t run these people down too quickly. Look into your own hearts and you may see something of yourself. If that is so, then Christmas is the ideal time to take account of ourselves.
A good many use it as an escape from reality. If you are honest with yourself, you know the world is going to be just as rough, cruel, and competitive when the holidays are over.
The problems are not going to disappear. Scandals will still plague city and state governments. Cowards, fakers, and thieves will still be among us.
Yes, it is just as easy to be cynical at Christmas as it is any other time of year. For you see how much commercialism has taken over the loveliest time there is. You see how this business of giving gifts to relatives and friends has gotten out of hand.
You see neighbors basking in their sense of false pride and smug in their own prosperity and wellbeing.
They’re the ones who have been dreading Christmas and it’s likely they will go through the season of good cheer without having received its blessing.
Make no mistake about it, there is no greater blessing known to man. For this week, if you wish, you can learn as man has for hundreds of years that peace on earth is the promise of God.
And if you will look only a little deeper, you will know that the miracle of miracles can be yours as well. Empires have risen and fallen, tyrants have reigned for their brief periods.
The Christmas story did not begin in victory and it has only survived through one defeat after another. The least a person can do on this Holiday of Love is to praise and take account of the blessings we often take for granted, however small they may be.
In our fondest dreams, we cannot imagine anything better than a world that would have the spirit of Christmas everywhere.
The North Star may have dimmed a little. But always there have been dauntless souls to rekindle it. If you don’t know this at Christmas, you never will.
To be sure, all this hope comes at a time of spiritual bewilderment. Man’s faith has been severely tested this year, as it’s been every year. Assassinations, unrest, riots, crime, and punishment have marred the lives of thousands.
Yet, the skies are brighter at home and abroad than they were a year ago. Almost everywhere you look, there is change for the better. Badly disarranged finances appear to be in better shape.
If you stop and think, you can remember hundreds of acts of kindness and thoughtfulness during the past year. We haven’t yet earned the right to be confident and sure.
Days go by that we do not think to give thanks to the nation’s welfare, for progress in many fields, for the generosity of thousands.
No matter where you might be on Christmas Day, you are surrounded by a sense of wonder and mysticism. There is no other time on earth quite like it.
If only you will pause and look, you just might catch a glimpse of the light that shines in the most dark and remote places. This is what Christmas is all about.
Have a good one Saturday and stay clear of the wassail bowl.
Tom Vartabedian
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