Christmas is the transcendent holiday of our culture. It is a Christian holiday, reflecting our nation’s history as a refuge for Europeans. But its appeal and celebration reach beyond the holiday’s deep sacred meaning for Christians and it has become something— not greater, certainly — but broader, more encompassing.
The symbols are everywhere. Its celebration seems at times to have been appropriated entirely by commercial interests and pop culture foolishness. This leads to concern that its true meaning is or will be lost.
Do not fear.
The message is alive and shines for all to hear. Peace on earth. Goodwill to all. Caring for, and sharing with, the least among us. Forgiveness. People don’t always live up to ideals. But who does not know that charity — and not buying stuff — is the message, the meaning of Christmas?
And who that hears does not recognize this is goodness itself, simple and pure?
All the tinsel and canned music, the mall Santas and TV specials, cannot diminish the power of Christmas, and its message of goodness. What power the story holds: the star, the shepherds, the angels. No room at the inn, and the child born in the hay — to be presented with gifts by kings and worshiped as a savior, the world’s hope.
And our pervasive celebrations of the holiday — the music, the decorations indoors and out, the parties, the bell-ringing, card-sending, gift-giving, the charitable collections — change our streets, our communities, our lives each December.
It’s all an assertion, a belief in the Christmas story’s promise: that the world, so often disappointing — unjust, painful, or simply mundane — holds the seeds of something finer, better, more generous and forgiving. This world can be transformed, reborn as it should be.
That is the magic of Christmas, echoed and asserted each December by all those yards overfilled with colored lights, all the fake white beards, every tired shopper sporting an incongruous red hat with white fur trim.
The meaning is not lost amid the music and glittering lights. The story and its promise are too powerful.
The real Christmas lives.
And it will live on as long as there are people to tell the tale — a journey, a star-filled night, a birth invested with the sacred, the holy, the world made better — and believe.