Hope for Christmas

It’s too close to Christmas to discuss anything but Christmas. There is no need to take up any subjects of a serious nature, no time for politics or lectures or opinionated discussions of any type. It’s not time to analyze or philosophize around the water cooler or at the coffee club. 2024 is running on empty, coasting down to a slow stop. This is the time that is best occupied with matters of the soul and heart, and that’s exactly how it should be. This is a time for weary, well-deserved sighs, for solitary moments reviewing the dwindling year, and for remembrances of earlier days and scenes and stories gone by. Oh, I forgot you are immune to any traces of “soft-hearted sentimentality”. Well, you might try to escape, but Christmas is good at running you down, catching and holding you in a bear hug of nostalgia that can crumble your emotionless, hardened exterior. You never know what might bring it on. It could be a few lines from a certain old song, or that memorable moment when you looked around the family dinner table and the world seemed absolutely, unexplainably perfect, or the exhilaration you felt for just being alive in the clear bright chill of a December morning. Whatever it is, memories can get the best of you especially at Christmas time, and flood through your veins leaving you shaking your head and smiling in spite of yourself. Those moments somehow capture the wonder of it all and etch themselves upon the soul. Simply put, it’s called “being human”.

Christmas reminds us that we are all indeed “human”. We all travel a similar road, and invariably we all struggle with the basic hills and valleys of the human experience. The twists and turns of that journey may differ, and the world may change, but the story of Christmas from year to year is the same. It is the story of hope and the promise of renewal and redemption; a new tomorrow, the opportunity to try again, to start anew. Christmas calls for the best in each of us to step up, and so it is only natural that we find strength in the celebration of Christmas and the memories that surround it. That strength propels us to the next hilltop on the good days and leads us out of the valley on the difficult ones. So, with less than a week until Christmas day, it is a good time to begin to wind down the haste and hurry, and to put aside all the matters of a “serious nature” which have nothing at all to do with Christmas. Slow down, put your feet up and allow yourself a little sentimentality mixed in with a generous portion of hope. It makes for a hearty, satisfying concoction and a fitting precursor to the consideration of the simple principles of man’s relationship with his fellow man and with his God. That seems like a good way to get you prepared for Christmas and give you a head start on getting to the top of that next hill.

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