"TRUE ESSENCE OF CHRISTMAS"

Everyone wants Christmas to be meaningful. Christmas is definitely the season for gifts and shopping. During Christmas, a lot of people go to malls to buy various gifts to be given to their friends and loved ones. People just need to spend more during Christmas season. The effect? – traffic jam, growing credit card debts, lots of to-do lists, etc. But what is Christmas without Christ ? How can we celebrate Christmas without Christ, the birthday celebrant, at the center of all the festivities and pomp?

Year in and year out I know Christmas is celebrated in most of the countries the world. Even countries which are not Christian celebrate Christmas with festive decorations of “hi-tech” lights and sounds, Christmas trees and Santa Claus. But most often in business establishments and commercial centers, you would hardly find the Nativity Scene. Christmas has become so commercialized that it lost its true meaning. To put up Christmas decorations without the Nativity Scene somehow inculcates to us and to our children today a life of ease and comfort, a life without suffering and pain. But this is far from our reality as human beings, the poor and the rich have their own share of suffering and pain. Our materialistic world makes us suffer all the more by shunning the reality of suffering in our life, we can never escape suffering! Whether we like it or not pain and suffering are part of our life, our consolation in this life is the message the Nativity Scene wants to impart to us that is, Christ came to live with us and among us. By His own suffering, He taught us how to suffer. By His own life He taught us how to live. He does not take away suffering from but He suffers with us! Each Christmas then should remind us of the fact that we can never escape from suffering but Christ gives meaning and value to our suffering and to our life. He took our suffering upon Himself. He was born into this world to save us by dying on the Cross so that we may live. The part we have to play is to carry the little crosses of our everyday life. Now, we know that after all, the yoke is easy and the burden light because Christ has already carried it for us!

Christmas then is not at all in the things we do to celebrate Christmas- parties, decorations nor glittering lights. The essence of Christmas is Christ himself, it is because of Him that we celebrate Christmas. In a way, in celebrating Christmas we celebrate our lives too, because Christmas gives us hope. Yes, life can be difficult and trying but Christ is with us in our suffering. Christ took our very own humanity unto himself to save us from our sins and to show us how to be like Him, In Christ we have found our Way back to the Father.