Christmas Is A Feeling....

I have successfully managed to NOT enter one mall this Christmas. Nor I do I know what the hottest gift is this year. I'm quite proud of this.

Why?

I have decided this year I will be celebrating the REAL meaning of Christmas- family, friends, traditions and the birth of our Lord. I am so disenchanted with the cars ads, the jewelry ads...most of us cannot afford to buy our loved ones ANY of those things, and yet somehow we feel guilty when we don't buy lavish gifts for the ones we love. It makes me angry. When I buy gifts, I think of WHO I'm buying for, and try to find a gift that most represents that person. A gift that shows "I'm paying attention to you!" Perhaps my vision isn't the 'right way' though...I KNOW there are people out there who demand expensive gifts at Christmas; who do everything in their power to keep up with the Jones'. I was once married to a family who had spending limits and whose getting what decided by October.

I wish Christmas was like my image of it in the past could be- caroling, baking cookies, dancing around the living room to Bing Crosby, innocent excitement for 'the coming.' However, I guess that's a world we don't live in anymore. I'm going to embrace it as my world. Christmas is going to continue to be what I've always known it to be...wondrous and full of love and giving.

I'm going leave you with a thought as the birth of our Lord gets near. It comes from a book called 'From Holidays to Holydays.' It's written by a priest in Newark who uses Newark at Christmas as an analogy for Advent and the coming of Christ. He writes for the Friday of the Second Week:

"But the scene on the corner shows no traces of wealth, power, or fame. It portrays instead just a poor couple who had to put their baby to bed on straw and whose visitors were some scruffy shepherds from a nearby hillside. Crossing West Market Street I pray to the infant of Bethlehem that everyone who looks at Father Phil's nativity scene might see the beautiful message it bears: the the kingdom of God will be built not of power, wealth, or fame, but of humble, self-giving love-something that is within the reach of each of us."

What if Jesus was really born of wealth, power or fame? I doubt there'd be a Christmas if He was....