Celebrate the gift of love

It’s almost Christmas. All the rushing around of the last few weeks will be over by the time we go to bed tomorrow night. Santa and his many elves will take a much-deserved rest until next year. We will be left with weird presents to return and memories that make us smile.
We will make phone calls to relatives that we only talk to a couple of times a year and make promises to get together more often. In a few days the post office will deliver the presents and cards that didn’t get mailed on time, thus prolonging the holiday. Stray wrapping paper and pine needles will turn up in unexpected places.
After all the bad news this year; western wildfires, eastern floods, hurricanes, murders and other assorted mayhem; Christmas is an opportunity to take a time out. We need to take a breath and look around ourselves and see all the good in our lives.
If you are reading this, thank the teachers who taught you to read, for reading is a privilege and a portal to endless possibility. If your car needs repair, give thanks, for there are many who can’t afford a car or the repairs. Is your house drafty? Mine is. But I am so grateful that I have walls to shelter me and a roof that doesn’t leak. Drafts can and will be fixed eventually.
This is the time of year to be grateful. Don’t celebrate Christmas? That’s OK. Be glad you live in a country that allows you to honor your own traditions, your own religion, your own beliefs and not just the state-sanctioned ones.
Just because Santa is in every store and ubiquitous advertising is exhorting you to buy-buy-buy, doesn’t mean you have to. Nobody will come knocking on your door demanding that you put up lights and wreaths and shop ‘til you drop.
There are many problems in this country. Many reasons to be glum and dour but all you have to do is look around and you will see signs of hope and love everywhere.
When you are out shopping for last minutes gifts, take a minute to look around. See that middle aged person pushing a wheelchair? Or the one who slows his steps to keep pace with a small child? That’s the spirit of Christmas. Look at that skinny woman over there. Did you know that she only eats one small meal a day so that what little food she can afford will go to her child?
Think I’m making this up? I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I will venture a guess that many of you have gone without for your children. You have slowed down to keep pace with your parents or toddlers. That caring and consideration is what Christmas is all about.
Christianity teaches us that God loved us so much that he sent us his only begotten son. Wow. God loves us? What a novel idea. On the day we celebrate Christ’s birth, we show that same love to each other in the form of gifts.
But more than that, we show that love by being kind to each other. We share that love with people we meet by offering a smile instead of a frown. We celebrate Christmas by realizing that it truly is better to give than receive.
The sun will come up tomorrow, as the Mayan apocalypse, like so many other predictions of the end of the world, was just another false prophecy. Tomorrow we will have another chance to love each other. We will have another chance to be kind, to be grateful, to experience all the joy this world has to offer.
Santa will have worked his magic once again. Families will come together. We will realize that the birth we celebrate was a gift of love and we will be determined to share that love in our own unique ways. We will have a merry Christmas, if only in our dreams. May your Christmas be all that you have hoped for.[[In-content Ad]]