Finding Christmas in Your Heart

If you are having a problem finding Christmas in your heart this year, don’t fret – you can find it in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

“Christmas is located in the Upper Peninsula just west of Munising and east of Au Train on the shore of Lake Superior.”  This is what the Munising Visitors Bureau page of the “Pure Michigan” visitors’ guide website says. So Christmas is no longer just an event, it is also a place.

It turns out though, that Christmas is also a place in Florida, Arizona, and Mississippi.  And it goes by the name of Christmas Cove, in Maine, Christmasville, in Tennessee, Christmas City, in Utah, and Christmas Valley, in Oregon.

One might wonder why a community would choose to name itself “Christmas” or “Christmasville,” or some other derivative. Maybe it’s because the folks who named the town found the notion of living in Christmas year ’round, or being able to say “I’m from Christmas” uplifting.  Such a notion could also be why some homeowners in the U.S. start putting up their Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. They want to hurry that good feeling that Christmas brings!

Christmas Day

Christmas, the day of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has been celebrated on December 25 for almost 1,700 years now.  Atheists claim Christians borrowed the date from the Roman holiday Saturnalia, or from the celebration Sol Invictus, the official sun god of the later Roman Empire.  Such claims, however, are nonsense, and are easily refuted (see here and here, for example).

Last year CS writer J.a.c. Man said Catholics can choose between having “A Commercial or a Catholic Christmas.”  In reality, this choice has been offered to us for a quite a few years now.

It is not easy to ignore the gift-giving and merry-making aspects of Christmas, especially if you have children and/or lots of family and friends.  Getting together with friends and loved ones and exchanging gifts is as much a part of Christmas now as lights and Christmas trees.

But we need to strike a balance.  We need to remember why we are celebrating Christmas.

Rather than reinvent the wheel here, I’ll just bring up one of my favorite Christmas movies – the 1947 classic “The Bishop’s Wife.  It stars David Niven as a troubled Episcopalian Bishop and Loretta Young as the bishop’s wife.  Cary Grant plays an angel sent from heaven to help the bishop with his troubles.

A Short and Simple Message

Of course the angel succeeds in his mission.  He also writes the sermon the bishop delivers to his congregation on Christmas Eve.  It goes like this:

“Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking.

“Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries.

“We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts.  But especially with gifts.

“You give me a book, I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer and Uncle Henry can do with a new pipe. For we forget nobody, adult or child.

“All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. It’s His birthday we’re celebrating. Don’t let us ever forget that.”

The bishop then asks his congregation to “ask ourselves what He would wish for most.”

What Would He Wish for Most

In today’s world I suspect the most common answer to this question would be that He would wish for us all to love one another.  After all isn’t this what Jesus told His Apostles in John 13:34-35:

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.  This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

But this is really not a “new” commandment.  As the Bible commentary on this verse notes, “this puts Jesus on a par with Yahweh” and is a reaffirmation of Leviticus 19:18 – “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your own people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

While I don’t claim to know the mind of God, I think this is not an adequate answer to the question of what would Jesus wish for most. I think a better answer might be found in Matthew 22:34-38:

“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.”

That Christmas Feeling

Despite what the social justice warriors would have us believe, we don’t need to be “woke” or practitioners of CRT.  We don’t need to run around spouting the latest secular ideology or –ism.  All we really need to do is follow the teachings of God’s Church.  We need to love God with all our hearts, all our souls, and all our minds.

If we could all learn to put God first in all things we might find that everything else will naturally fall into place.  Imagine what the world would be like with that Christmas feeling permanently etched into our hearts and reflected in our thoughts, words, and actions every day of the year.

Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan’s pow’r
When we were gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy