Merry Christmas!

December 22, 2016

When I pass along my greetings to you for a merry Christmas, I am wishing you the blessings, peace, joy and sacrifice that are peculiar to this season. I guess I would be more politically correct if I just said, “Happy Holidays.” Then I might also refer to our holiday gifts that were that were laid out on holiday eve, opened under our holiday tree, on holiday day when we also ate our holiday dinner.

Sure, that all would be politically correct, but somehow it misses the point. Beyond the fact that it sounds just silly, when I hear something like that I find it less warm, more sterile and greatly lacking. Besides, the facts that Jesus lived, died and was resurrected are irrefutable.

So if Jesus actually lived here on earth at one time, why wouldn’t we want to celebrate his birth and his life? We celebrate the lives of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Martin Luther King each year. They all were great men with amazing accomplishments, yet they pale in comparison to the accomplishments of Jesus.

You certainly don’t have to agree with this, but before you get too alarmed, consider what Charles Dickens had to say. He was considered a fairly respectable man, and he captured the spirit of what people are telling you when they pass along their wishes for a merry Christmas.

“Happy, happy Christmas,” said Dickens, “that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home. It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

Some have gone beyond this warm and friendly greeting of Dickens to the point of hopeful criticism or criticism with a challenge to do better. Consider the words of our beloved Benjamin Franklin about Christmas, “How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few, his precepts! O! ‘Tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.” It is a hopeful reminder from which we all could benefit. And knowing a little more about Franklin, tells me that he very well might have been speaking to himself.

Finally, Dr. James Allen Francis noted that Jesus was born of humble means in an obscure village to a peasant woman. He never wrote a book, held an office, went to college, visited a big city or traveled more than 200 miles from where he was born. Consider how Dr. Francis ended his poem about Jesus.

“Nineteen centuries have come and gone

And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race

And the leader of mankind’s progress

All the armies that have ever marched

All the navies that have ever sailed

All the parliaments that have ever sat

All the kings that ever reigned put together

Have not affected the life of mankind on earth

As powerfully as that one solitary life.”

So when I wish you Merry Christmas, whether you are a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim or an atheist, I am not intending to offend you. In fact, it is much to the contrary. I’m wishing you the warmth that Dickens expressed, the hope of a better citizenry that Franklin expressed and the utter amazement that Francis expressed.

And now as I do wish you a Merry Christmas, my intention is that you receive the pure peace and joy I have experienced through Christ and now I express and wish it for you.

Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas!

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