Christmas Time

The celebration of Christmas has changed completely during my lifetime (80 years). As a child, Christmas was centered around the white, clapboard church built by my great grandparents on both my mother and father's families in 1874 as they recovered from the Civil War and the destruction of every religious symbol in the community when the Yankees moved through on Sherman's march to the sea.

I personally object to Christmas decorations in a house of worship. Most of the decorations are symbols of the pagan activities of that season of the year which the Christians took over from the worshipers of heathenism. But, in the very isolated, rural communities, the poverty which was there when I was a child (remember there were no radios, television had not been invented, one telephone in the entire community, no electricity) gave the children in Sunday school a reason to look forward to this time of year, because it was a time that they participated in enjoyment not found at any other time.

I still remember there were children in the community, at the church, who had never seen an orange or banana. The only Santa Claus they knew anything about was the one they saw on the pages of the Sears Christmas catalog, which came to every home. They could wish for things but the chances of them getting any thing was slim to none. My mother related so many times about how she and her sister wanted a doll for Christmas. They each received a child's purse in which was a note which read, “Perhaps next year will be better and you will get a doll. Signed, Santa.”

Over my long and exciting life of traveling the world as a blind person, then, as now, having everything described to me by someone else, I was interviewed by a reporter from a large newspaper about my experiences around the world at Christmas time. It is very simple, only in those countries where Christ is known will you find the celebration of Christmas. Certainly not in the 48 Muslim countries. Perhaps the most exciting Christmas was celebrated at the South Pole, Antarctica. Next in excitement would be spending Christmas Eve at Bethlehem in the Holy Land. I fully described this experience in one of my blogs.

How, when I arrived at the hotel in Bethlehem from Jerusalem, the place was full and my driver and I were given rooms on the outside in rooms reserved during tourist season for bus drivers. I described how cold it was in Bethlehem that time of the year, emphasizing, again, the known fact that our blessed Lord was not born in the latter part of December because there were no shepherds in the fields with sheep at such a cold time of year in the Holy Land. But, on that Christmas Eve as all my senses reconciled my metabolism in the physical knowledge of that part of the world at any time of the year, I rejoice just to be there. On Christmas Day, I went into the Church of the Nativity, which is built over the cave where our blessed Lord was born. Even though being in the Holy Land at Christmas, celebrating the birth of the Light of the World, my guide told me he did not see one Christmas decoration, one Christmas light, EXCEPT in a small store just across from Absalom's Tomb (Absalom, son of King David).

I was in Athens, Greece at Christmas one year. The people at the hotel and others told me they had never seen one city so beautifully decorated as Athens. Of course, having been here several times, I knew the Acropolis, on which the Parthenon is located, is always illuminated at night. Crawling up the Acropolis to the Parthenon on Christmas day, reaching Mars Hill (where the Apostle Paul had much to say about the God's of the Athenians) I thrilled in the knowledge that all history, every calendar, every date on any document, all punctuated by the birth and life of one solitary man, God-man. When you move around the Mediterranean, you realize this one solitary figure of history never walked over 50 miles from where he was born, never owned anything except his robe for which His crucifiers gambled as he hung on a tree.

This Christmas, you do not have to travel the world as I have at Christmas time (South Pole, Holy Land, Majorca, Holland, Greece, Rio, Tokyo) to know the real meaning of Christmas. When you look at the Christmas tree, think of the tree on which our blessed Lord was crucified. When you see the thorns on the holly tree, think of the crown of thorns on His head. When you see the red berries, think of the drops of blood he shed for you, when you see the bright lights which the world has distributed up and down every street, a world which has denied Him over and over, think of the Light of the World and the fact that every day, in every way, the world prefers darkness to light.

Over spending, over eating, over activity, is the way pagans celebrate Christmas. To the world, it is not a holy day but a holiday. Keep pagan practices out of your house of worship; there is nothing more beautiful than Christian Church, Christmas music. The gifts of Santa Claus do not compare and should not be mixed with the incomparable gift of the Christian Christmas. Don't get confused, God is not mocked. For the believer, the believer in Christ, Christmas is a time to rejoice in children, even in seeing a pregnant woman. God chose to put a tent of human flesh on a small baby born of a virgin mother, to live among us, to die for us, and has told us only to remember Him at the communion table. Celebrating the Lord's supper is the only way we were instructed to remember him. The rest is just peripheral, to be done with sobriety, thoughtfulness, and an excellent time to show man's humanity to man.