“I am bringing you
good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of
David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
St. Luke 2:10-11
Perhaps
you’ve noticed that Christmas makes people crazy. About a month ago, my neighbor affixed a two
foot-tall stuffed antler on either side of her SUV and a red pom-pom the size
of a basketball on her front grill.
She’s a very sensible person really, a German, for heaven’s sake,
but—you know, it’s Christmas. Only at
Christmas do we get up on ladders to affix dozens of tiny lights to our down
spouting. It’s our only time for
drinking out of vessels that look like a deer’s head or an elf’s boot. Christmas is the only time quite a few of us
would be caught dead singing in public.
It’s not
just that we become silly at Christmas.
It’s also the season for generosity.
We remember to greet people at Christmas. We set aside a little gift for so many of
those folks that we usually take for granted: the poor fellow who delivers the
newspaper so early in the morning, our children’s longsuffering teachers. I heard a story on the radio last week about an
anonymous man who went into two Walmarts in Cleveland and paid for everything
on layaway. He spent over $100,000
buying items from socks to big screen TVs for people struggling to get by. And of course, he did it at Christmas. The
official Walmart spokesman put it this way: “Christmas is a time of year when
many people go above and beyond to give back to their neighbors and communities. When customers anonymously pay off others’
layaway items we’re reminded of the amazing things people will do to support
each other.”[1]
