Christmas is not a bad time to consider what really matters.
It almost certainly wasn’t Jesus’s actual birthday. It closely follows Winter Solstice. Romans had held festivals December 17-23 to honor the agriculture god, feasting and exchanging presents; and on December 25th they celebrated the sun god’s birth. So why not Jesus’s “birthday.” (The Bible doesn’t say. A slender textual clue suggests that Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to give her the good news in December, which would put His birth in or around September.) The first official Roman Church mention of December 25 comes nearly 350 years later.
Still, Christmas, with our focus on family feasting and gift-giving and reunions, brings us together in a mostly peaceful and reflective way. That’s so for most of us, not just Christians.
Jesus reportedly said and lived some things worth hearing and emulating.
He told us to treat the poor and downtrodden as we would Him. He urged us to welcome strangers. His whole life and preaching emphasized considering others’ needs before one’s own interest, being generous, avoiding greed and manipulation of others for profit. Fitting a camel, which is a bit bulky, through a needle’s eye is how he estimated the prospect for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates going to Heaven. Like Buddha’s disciples, Jesus’s disposed of their worldly wealth and followed him, living a simpler and harsher life than most folks. He also told us not to judge others, since none of us is without serious faults. And that when someone slaps you, offer him a second shot.
Whatever your religion, code, or philosophy, if several of those principles aren’t central, consider them -- not ‘cause Jesus said so, or to secure a condo in the clouds, but because a substantial body of experience-based opinion says they are the route to a better life here on earth. (How they work later on is beyond my pay grade.)
All that is pretty familiar.
I’d add some.
Be grateful. (To Whom or what, or just grateful, is up to you.) Gratitude is both an appropriate and a healthy attitude toward life. You are incredibly privileged to live at all, to live a human life, to live a relatively free and healthy life. We take all that for granted; but recalling it helps us keep in mind our privilege, or good luck, and the short nature of our lives, and savor life.
There’s medical evidence that gratitude can help improve and even slightly extend our lives. The same is true of laughter. And of contemplation.
Jesus didn’t say, “Meditate as often as you can, and write in your journal,” but solitary contemplation marked the earliest really committed followers of Jesus and Buddha. Thoughtful atheists also recommend it. Most of us fear it. We fear emptying our our time and minds to contemplate, because there’s so much we really don’t care to face. That there is a hell of a good reason to get quiet, walking or sitting or writing, and shake hands with your demons.
Particularly stuck in our cacophonous culture of Internet chaos and vitriolic partisanship, battered by corporate and political lies, it’s tough to hear one’s own inner voice. But that’s the one that could help us find some inner peace.
I don’t suggest ceasing to fight for a better world. This highly imperfect world is the only one we got. Let’s enjoy trying to help it
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[This 22 December, 2024 Sunday column will presently be up on the Las Cruces Sun-News website and also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Xin Nian Kwai Le! Have a warm fire and a warm famly! And Best Wishes in whatever language, religion, or culture, or philosophy suits you. ]
[I was never highly religious. My father was an atheist with Jewish heritage, and my mother an Episcopalian. But we did all love Christmas. It helped that we always lived where photographs of our Christmasses, if I could show ‘em to you, could be Christmas cards, with a tall, well-decorated tree and a lively fire in the fireplace, and usually snow on the ground. I spent most of my first dozen Christmasses in a small cottage in a forest, on a slender, curving road called Memory Lane, without even a house number until I was 6 or 10. Then we moved to an older and larger house, with a larger living room and fireplace, an old-fashioned country home people admired when they saw it. Both places had extra tall ceilings in the living room. And my mother, from northern Maine, knew how to keep Christmas, decorating the tree especially well and leading kids in singing carols. Fortunately, our parents loved us, and had enough love in them to love my sister and me, too. We had our battles, as I grew older, but loved each other as long as they lived. I never forget how fortunate I was. ]
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