Beyond Giving And Getting
Christmas has absolutely destroyed [the real] understanding of the Good News. It’s trained people to believe that Christianity is fundamentally about giving and receiving and that our happiness is in giving and getting what we want. But, in fact, the best Christmases are often the ones in which one doesn’t get what one wants.
—Stanley Hauerwas, interviewed in U.S. Catholic (June 1991)
Inoffensive celebration
To avoid offending anybody, the schools dropped religion altogether and started singing about the weather. At my son’s school, they now hold the winter program in February and sing increasingly nonmemorable songs such as “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty the Snow man” and—this is a real song—“Suzy Snowflake,” all of which is pretty funny because we live in Miami. A visitor from another planet would assume that the children belonged to the Church of Meteorology.
—Dave Barry in his “Notes on Western Civilization” (Chicago Tribune Magazine, July 28, 1991)
Something more
What is supposed to be a time of peace and good will becomes, for some, a time when the reality of human greed and folly and cruelty mocks the lovely sentiments of the season.
But I’m not sure anyone can experience what Christmas really means without confronting that sense of lost innocence and the potential for disillusionment the holiday can bring.
Only after we truly face up to Christmas without Santa can we as adults begin to grapple with what Christmas is all about … God’s gift of ultimate hope that our human destiny is something more than a brief, doomed moment in “the benign indifference of the universe.”
—Jerry Shin in an editorial in the Charlotte Observer (Dec. 22, 1986)
A Christmas Carol
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(o weary, weary is the world,
But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,
His hair was like a star.
(o stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(o weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood at Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown.
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
—G. K. Chesterton in The Wild Knight
Hidden gift
To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.
—E. B. White in The Second Tree from the Corner
A prepared heart
I often think: “A life is like a day; it goes by so fast. If I am so careless with my days, how can I be careful with my life?” I know that somehow I have not fully come to believe that urgent things can wait while I attend to what is truly important. It finally boils down to a question of deep and strong conviction. Once I am truly convinced that preparing the heart is more important than preparing the Christmas tree, I will be a lot less frustrated at the end of a day.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen in the New Oxford Review (Nov. 1986)
