How Christmas Works

Cool Scripture Cite

"...when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4 KJV)

Hot Internet Site

One of my favorite sites is HowStuffWorks.Com. It is the place I go when I want to know how something works, obviously. HowStuffWorks.Com fulfills the deep longing for my inquiring mind (fashioned by the pragmatism of Western scientific culture). For example, if I go to www.howstuffworks.com/regrigerator.htm, I can learn the deep mysteries of refrigeration (OK, my Dad had already told me when I was a kid). But, more importantly, I can link my way to the Ultimate Question, "How can I tell if the light in my refrigerator goes off or not when I close the door?" There, I am presented with not one, but four surefire ways to prove that the light is really going off when I close my refrigerator door. So reassuring is this article that I don't even have to follow my compulsion to try one of the methods; I just trust that they know what they are talking about.

Believe it or not, they even have a page on "How Christmas Works."

http://www.howstuffworks.com/christmas.htm

Note: In case your were wondering, my Cite Site articles are NOT sponsored by advertising. They are just what they claim to be: citations from Scripture and a related (more or less) description of a truly cool web site.

Does Christmas Work for You?
Mark Sibley Jones

What makes Christmas work for you? The Christmas spirit? The religious feelings engendered by carols and nativity scenes? Getting the right present (either "getting" in the sense of finding a suitable gift for the person who has everything; or "getting" in the sense of receiving)? Or, is it the special drives to provide food for the homeless or baskets for needy families that does the trick?

It is certainly no news to anyone that Christmas has been co-opted by commercialism. On a whim, I browsed myself over to Christmas.com and even Christmas.org, but both URLs took me to sites that were capitalizing on the financial windfall of the holiday.

What has helped me sort things out, so that Christmas remains meaningful to me, is to separate the hustle-and-bustle Christmas from the religious meaning. This allows me to appreciate the Advent emphasis of the coming of Christ; but not come off like some kind of Scrooge regarding the tinsel and gifts.

Alas, it is so human of us to take a holiday with such a central life-giving meaning and overshadow it with distraction. I can't really set my self above the commercialism of Christmas anymore than I can keep myself from bringing some kind of self-illusion into my prayer life. It is just too easy to hide behind those facades of pietism and religiosity: the very pretensions that Jesus sought to unveil.

Perhaps what makes Christmas work for many of us is precisely this tension between external display and internal reality. It enables me to sit back with a cup of coffee and a piece of my wife's Christmas candy and enjoy the Christmas tree in our living room--and to ponder again the mystery of the incarnation.

Be easy on yourself. Have a Merry Christmas.