What is the Happiness of Christmas?
by Fr Shay Cullen
The Nativity, El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]
What is it that makes Christmas so beautiful, so cheerful and a happy time especially for children? It has to be the gift-giving, the time when children look forward to gifts and signs of love and caring and sharing. The children of some well-off families receive so many gifts through the years that it has no special impact on them to receive more. There are the children of poor families that a gift at Christmas is a joy they never forget because they have so little in this world. And so that is what Christmas is about: the change of heart and mind when the rich and the well-off reach out to the poor to do something to make this a more just and equal society. It’s about caring and sharing.
It may not be much to ask but with the millions of displaced children in the world today, hundreds of thousands hungry and starving, it will be our duty and honor and a blessing for us to be able to share with them. To give from our abundance and not to keep it all for ourselves is the spirit of Christmas. This is what should be with us all our lives- helping others not just ourselves. It’s a natural virtue to care and share with our own families, but to help the stranger in need is an act of great goodness and virtue. That is being the good neighbor.
A frugal Christmas is in order and we are challenged to have the courage and the love of neighbors and to stop and ask, “Who is my neighbor?” Well in case you have forgotten that important teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, I remind you it is the traveler who was beaten and robbed and left for dead.
Continue here.