Although the Christmas ideas and phrases are a mosaic from the Bible, the practice of Christmas becomes a clatter of Madison Avenue jingles and video vignettes presenting smiling, happy, helpful faces encouraging us to give a Mercedes, a diamond bracelet, a washing machine, a sweater, a toaster, or a magazine subscription. How colorful and entertaining the advertisements are! How amusing the lack of a true message is!
For many instead of being a time of hope and love, Christmas is a time of anxiety, a time of emotional vulnerability compounded by the media promoted messages of a homogenized, pasteurized peaceful Christmas gathering of loved ones who are happy to see each other and respectful of each other.
But the Spiritual elements of Christmas are interwoven with such delicate skill that the religious feeling will find you if you are open to hearing God's voice.
Christmas is a time of divine light, a time of seeking and sharing goodness. Christmas is a time to be humane, to remember and to develop our individual humanity.
Christmas is a time to be humble, to be patient, to wait. When our hearts and souls are clear, our mind can hear the voice of the Lord.
Christmas asks us to be at ease, reposeful. Christmas asks us to encourage others to be mellow, at-peace.
What is your Christmas bonus? Who and what made your Christmas list?
Did you have time to go to Confession? Did you attend Mass? What are the sounds and the looks of your Christmas? Hopefully, your Christmas will be filled with love, compassion, peace.
Is the time for Tom and Jerry, Rusty Nail, Hot Buttered Rum, Fallen Angel, Eggnog, or Bombay Punch?
I sometimes remember different parts of the Christmas meal, the Tabasco, Macaroni and Cheese, Nestle Chocolate Milk, and the Reddi Whip from different childhood Christmas memories.
Each one of us have different ways of seeing and experiencing Christmas. For some Christmas is a Salvador Dali canvas of intentions, ideals, and idolatry. For some Christmas is a Pablo Picasso portrait of being apologetic, applauding, apocalyptic, applicative and apple-polishing. For some Christmas is a Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting of dappled, diffused light encouraging memories delicate, delicious, delighted; encouraging thoughts deliquescent, deliberate, delineated; encouraging reflections, prayer, devotional time.
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