The magic of Christmas

Posted by admin on Dec 3, 2008 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Now that it’s past American Thanksgiving, the Christmas Season has started. It’s not Serious Christmastime yet, just time to celebrate the little things: tacky sweaters, the guilt-free propagation and exchange of chocolate, and the fact that Sufjan’s Christmas album has come out from its hiding place, having escaped destruction for an entire year.

In fact, people have been talking about Christmas for two weeks (or more) – ever since the egg nog started appearing. Christmas is the holiday that lasts in the minds of everyone for two months a year. And it took me two full weeks this year to realize that people talk about it because they actually like it. That moment was a bit of a shock. But I agree – we all should like it and have that happy expectation of goodness.

Realizing this gaping deficiency in my soul, I set out to make a list and partake of the essential things of Christmas. I started with Handel’s Christmas classic, the Messiah. It is magical. Listening to this, I read the short-story “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry. It too is magical.

And then I stopped. My search came up with true magic: pictures of Jesus and pictures of love. What more can we celebrate?

Without this magic, we are poor. Poor of spirit. Yes, we can procure shiny objects to bedeck trees. We can afford all sorts of revelry. But we, like sheep, have gone astray – have turned to our own ways and are dying in spirit because of it. Our world, ever Rationalistic, will ever be at odds with the vibrancy of faith and hope and love. It denies the magic of Christmas itself, explaining it away as enlightened economic motivation or irrational pagan ritual. To the world, the actually joyful and actually loving are fools.

Poor world. It forgets that the joy of Christmas is the joy of Christ, and only the joy of Christ. It mistakes the reflection for the source. Poor us. So do we, all too often. Yet on Christmas day, the jaded world still bends in dim recognition of something greater.

Christmas is the time to show love – show what Christians really ought to be showing. So there’s something you and I can do: not (just) give of our money – anyway, we’re students – but give of ourselves, follow Christ’s commands, and actually love one another. That’s what Christmas is.

The world is tired and trying to amuse itself, but we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Incarnation of God, the only radically new event in human history. So crack a thaw in our hearts, and it might just catch on. We might just have a real Christmas.

I hope Christmas becomes real some day. Such a day would change the Earth. In such light (in a perfect world?), the outpouring of love would repair our souls of bitterness, cynicism, and every other battle-wound from living in this world. And our tears would be washed away. And the next day the world would be fresher, better and more joyous. And so would we.

Read “The Gift of the Magi”: online-literature.com/o_henry/1014/