Today is Christmas. And for the next few days or so, all will seem well. The ugliness of the world will recede. Toil and care will be set aside. Farmers will return from the field, planes from distant shores will land, and ships will come back to harbor. Families and friends will gather to exchange presents and share a few brief moments of happiness. All of this highlights the fact that this is a time unlike any other throughout the year.
Different holidays also offer rest to the laborer -- and people exchange gifts for other reasons, too. We all gather for feasts at times of thanksgiving, share moments of unity on days celebrating the founding of nations, and bow our heads on Rembrance Day. Yet Christmas rises above them all. It has a transcendent quality that touches the heart of the believer and the non-believer alike. It is not, just another holiday.
This comes from the spirit of generosity that infuses the season. “It is better to give than to receive” is a cliché, but like most clichés it became one because the sentiment holds Truth. Call it evolutionary psychology or the wise design of a clever God, but few things are so healing to the soul as generosity toward others. If you want to lift your mood, buy something nice, do something nice -- but not for you. There are 364 days for that.
Yet the spirit of the season draws from still deeper roots. The message of Christmas speaks to us all, Christian and non-Christian alike, because it concerns something at once universal and rarely spoken of: the part of us that feels broken and lost.
Few of us, if we are honest, can deny having lived through moments -- or months, or even years -- when everything in the outside world appeared normal, yet everything on the inside was one long howl of fear and despair that seemed to issue from a place of inexplicable, wretched emptiness.
We've all been there. We've all been in a place where we feel like giving up. Everybody truly has their own breaking point. Everybody has that one moment in their lives where they feel like giving up, where they feel like they have truly no way out. So they think about doing crazy things and ways "out." Even when they're alive, when they're breathing, and moving, and just going through the motions...even when they smile...they are truly in pieces inside.
Some try to fill the hole with worldly things: work, or alcohol, or drugs, or gambling, or material goods, or wanton risk-taking -- anything that, if pursued frantically enough, will hold the darkest thoughts at bay. But none of those things offers lasting relief. They are like performing CPR on a person whose heart has stopped: They can forestall death, but they cannot give life. Life needs something more.
Christmas reminds us what “more” entails.
Vast libraries groan with the weight of books dissecting the theological intricacies of Christianity, but at its heart the faith’s message is simplicity itself: You are not broken, you are not lost, and you are not empty. You are just as you were meant to be, and right where you are supposed to be. You have something to give someone else -- even if you do not yet know exactly what that is.
Once upon a time a man came before you, the Christmas story goes. He was born in the humblest of circumstances. He was lost in the desert . He was broken on a cross. And He has the answer to the question that howls inside you: Forget about trying to fill yourself by taking. Live so that you can give.
That is the real gift of Christmas. Take it -- and then boldly go, and give unto to others. Then you can be merry. Then you can be joyful. Then you can be at peace. Because in giving to others you will receive something even greater -- and you will know, deep down, that God is in His Heaven and all is well on Earth.
For the ones that are still fighting...I salute you. I salute that you are capable of moving every single day trying to prove to yourselves that their times will get better. You all are braver than the rest of us. braver than I will ever be.