Merry Christmas Everyone! (Update: December 25, 2008)
2008 is one of the most wonderful Christmas ever.
Sure: there are police squad cars at every corner of department stores because with this horrid economy and record unemployment, people are shoplifting to uphold the spirit of Christmas.
But it’s not about that. And I’m hoping the bad times will nudge people towards focusing on the true spirit of Christmas.
Believe it or not, I actually get more excited on every Christmas Eve than New Year’s eve.
What people traditionally treat as the beginning of a New Year, I just shrug it off as a mere numbers game.
But the Birth of Christ. Well that’s a posh affair.
Year after year, I actually run outside at the stroke of midnight turning into December 25 and look into the night, inhaling a big lungful of air. Has humanity change? Is it going to be more wonderful this year between now and next Christmas?
Oh sure, lots of folks have read their agenda into the baby Jesus. If anything is for certain, it’s that history’s greatest error in grammatical inversion was that God made man in his image.
Well, for me then, the birth of Christ has always meant the birth of an idea. That idea is a mix of compassion, tolerance, kindness, and love.
So when I go around town, I say “Merry Christmas” to everyone. For me, it doesn’t denote a selfish desperate hanging on to an old tradition. “Merry Christmas” simply means, “let us all celebrate the day when mankind thought enough to create a concept that promotes compassion, tolerance, kindness, and love.”
So: Merry Christmas to you!!!
