What really matters at Christmas
Anyone tired of Christmas yet? It’s just about here, and by now there must be many of us who have reached the saturation point. Why shouldn’t we? Commercially speaking, products have been pushed at us since Halloween. Nor are we all immune from such an information overload. Custom does dictate that we gift others around us, especially family. Then there are all the holiday foods and food preps: dinners, snacks, the baked goods from special family recipes, maybe even that inedible gingerbread house or (shudder) fruitcake. Then we can top all of that off with distractions such as new movie releases at the theater or on the TV, or replays of old favorites. Some of us even do the old-fashioned excursion: caroling. Yep, bring on that figgy pudding! It’s easy to get lost in the midst of all that shuffle.
There are three stories that make the rounds on Christmas that remind us that there is something more to Christmas than just the rush and shuffle.
They remind us that life is more than that. They zero in on what is really important, our relationships and the effects they have on us.
The first story is a classic tale from the mid 20th Century, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” George Bailey got so caught up in the awful events that were surrounding him that he wished he had never been born. As his angel Clarence told him, George got to see what would happen if he had never been there to establish the everyday relationships that were the hallmark of his life. His absence left a hole in the lives of everyone who had been around him. Nature abhors a vacuum, so other things moved in to fill the hole. The results weren’t pretty. When George got his life back he found that it was the people around him that mattered, not his circumstances.
The second story is a classic of the 19th Century, “A Christmas Carol.” Is there anyone who doesn’t know the story of that old miser, Ebeneezer Scrooge? He was a man who let money take first place in his life. It cut off every human relationship he had. It even drowned any sense of compassion, empathy, and joy. It took a supernatural intervention to set him straight. He learned that money didn’t matter for its own sake. It was important because it was a way of doing things for the people around him. Like George Bailey, he found out that it was people and relationships that mattered, not some fearful circumstance. And like George, Scrooge was restored to family and people who became friends. He was redeemed.
The third story is from the First Century. A young couple gets caught up in the shuffle. Because he is from another town than the one in which he lives a man named
Joseph has to leave behind his friends and take his pregnant wife on an 80 mile journey on foot. Like George Bailey, he is not well off, and the move uproots his business, causing more problems. Like Scrooge, it appears that the circumstances of his early life are dictating how he will spend his present life.
But unlike Scrooge, Joseph has no control over his circumstances. What’s the saying? It is what it is.
But it is not an iswhat-it-is situation. There is about to be a supernatural intervention, a real one. God takes a step down into time and at a specific place in order to restore a relationship, the most important relationship of all. He restores the relationship between an erring human race and Himself. He does it out of compassion, empathy, and joy. He does it because to Him we are more valuable than any other created thing or being He made. We matter more than money or any other way in which humans keep score. We matter more than any circumstance that surrounds us. So Jesus came in the poorest of circumstances, to rise above them all. In doing so, Christ redeems us, elevating us into the very presence of God. It’s hard to believe we could ever get tired of that!
(Philip Severi, a former Bishop resident, previously wrote a weekly column for The Inyo Register.)