Posted by
Casper on Tuesday, December 09, 2008 11:31:54 AM
You can call it what you want. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Merry X-Mas. It make no difference really, but it is and will always be Merry Christmas. There will never be a successful effort to remove Jesus Christ as the reason for Christmas time. We can market the Christmas season with images of Santa Claus all we want to but it still does not change the true meaning of Christmas. Time and the lack of good history teaching will soften the name of Christ's impact on this time of year but again it will never do away with it entirely.
Every year I read Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol to my two little girls. Dicken's talented use of the English language is lost on them right now but the true meaning of the story is not. Most everyone knows what this book is all about so I will provide a very brief synopisis.
The story features a very old crumudgeon named Ebenezer Scrooge who despises Christmas because he believes mankind is better off continuing the process of enterprise rather than stopping to make merry every 25th of December. "I do not choose to make merry myself at Christmas," he says "and I can't afford to make idle people merry."
Scrooge on Christmas Eve night is then visited by three spirits. (In the story, the visits happen over a period of three nights). The three spirits are the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. The three spirits reveal to him the true meaning of Christmas and explain to him why he should share his fortune with others for the sake of mankind and also for his own sake.
Dickens sets his story in the city of London. This setting is incredibly important because he paints the scene as being very dark and gloomy, cold and crisp with snow on the ground. I believe this setting represents the coldness of life and the cold darkness of Scrooge's soul. Despite the gloominess of the day, the people go around singing carols and prancing about in the streets, everyone is swept up in the true nature of Christmas, because the true spirit of Christmas resides in us all. We can try and extinguish the light of the saviour by putting an "X" through his name or saying Happy Holidays, but those who choose to ignore it are no better off than Ebenezer Scrooge. No matter how hard they might try, the true spirit of Christmas stills lives and breathes within us all.
Merry Christmas and God Bless Us, Everyone.