Christmas Spirit, or Whatever you Call It

 

 

Christmas is my favorite holiday. The season surrounding it is full of great things. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men, love and family. Everyone who celebrates Christmas enjoys these things. But why? The spirit of the season certainly does not come from the commercialization of the holiday and the traffic and the last minute shopping and the cold weather. It is the celebration of the birth of Christ that makes Christmas a holiday worth celebrating. When December rolled around this year, I forgot that. I was merely happy about the happiness of the season, I did not think about the reason to be happy.

  Happiness is good, but in loving it for its own sake, I found happiness to be pretty hollow. It is not that I forgot what Christmas is about, I just did not take the time to ponder the wonder of it, and that is a shame. At Andrew Peterson’s “Behold the Lamb” concert, he refers to the Christmas story as “The True Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ.” As a Christian, I have a great privilege come Christmastime. I get to celebrate the coming of God to earth. God who saw that in my sinful state I needed to be saved and came to this earth to live a perfect life in my place, die the death I deserve to die, and then to rise from the dead and conquer death.

  Admittedly, the coming of Christ to this earth is worth celebrating all year. But if there is a time of year set aside just to remember Christ’s coming to earth, I ought to take advantage of it. It is, after all, the birth of Christ that makes Christmas worth celebrating.  It gives happiness. It brings a spirit that outlasts the season.