This is the second of 4 Christmas-related posts that have little to do with seers, aside from the fact that the Christmas story includes people who saw angels. I hope you enjoy them.
There are lots of memes floating around about Christmas being rooted in paganism or commercialism or whatever, and debates continue whether Christians should celebrate it and how those celebrations should look.
To me, it’s an amazing month where Christ becomes a greeting or blessful benediction and not a powerful curse of profanity; where music about Jesus invades even secular radio stations; where cynical news articles about stolen nativities refocus the reason for the season on God breaking into history to redeem humanity.
A whole month. Almost a tenth of the year is dedicated in most Western societies to something about Jesus. People go to church who don’t normally go to church. People hear songs about Jesus who don’t normally hear songs about Jesus. People give who don’t normally give.
Yes, the highs of life are extra high, and the lows are extra lows, and multiple distraction, fantasies and celebrations miss the point of the Mass to celebrate Christ…
But beneath the veneer, behind the santas, Elf’s and gift giving, between the bargain hunting, the mourning of family recently lost and tense travel to stres
sful reunions, …despite everything society gets wrong, one thing remains: society takes a month to remember a babe resting in a manger…
A manager… a feeding trough where sheep and other unredeemed animals come to receive the gift of life through food… a prophetic picture of communion, when we take and eat the Body of Jesus, in remembrance of his gift of eternal life.
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