Christmas isn’t Over

photo by Joelle Brandt / flickr

I wrote this the day after Christmas. In England they tell me this is Boxing Day. The time, I guess when you gather up all the wrapping and Yuletide boxes and get the house in some kind of before-Christmas -order.  We’re packing our bags in Philadelphia and getting ready to leave in the morning for our plane ride back home. It’s hard hugging your loved ones or standing by the driveway as they slowly drive away.

 But in England and other countries Boxing  Day was the day the well-heeled let their servants off for the day to visit their families, taking with them a box from their employers loaded with a bonus, maybe a present or two and some left-over food from the Master’s table.  In this country Boxing Day is the time you cram back in yesterday’s boxes and rush back to the store to return the stuff you got that you do not want. Those that work in Department stores say this is the biggest nightmare of the year. “I really do appreciate what you got me...” (and then under your breath—God, why did they get me this.)

But it’s the day after Christmas and time, really to get back to abnormal once again. What if we remembered the words from the Christmas Eve service and those that followed. Christmas was really just beginning. Hopefully the Shepherds and the Wise Men returned “praising God for all they had seen or heard.” Mary and Joseph gathered up whatever they brought and bundled up the baby and left for  Egypt hoping their little one would be safe.

And he was safe. So the Christmas story was just beginning—a-to-be-continued saga which would change the world. And most of us know the rest of the story from Bethlehem to Jerusalem and all those dusty miles in-between.

But what about us. You and me and these very dusty roads we are traveling today. Government shut-downs except for his majesty’s staff and his majesty’s congressmen. They still get their checks. Or that poor destitute family that must take their little boy who died in America on Christmas Eve day and say goodbye for a last and final time. Or all their neighbors holed up in tents and lean-tos in Mexico while the rest of us are returning all the stuff we wish we had never got.

But I remember that just before Christmas a man in Greenville South Carolina walked into a Wal Mart store on Christmas Eve and paid off every lay-away for mostly poor people had owed for things they needed or. Christmas gifts. He gave $3,600 to pay the very bill. Also on TV I saw a man giving out hundred dollar bills to people in the streets of a large city to those need. Caring isn't dead. Think about all those who worked in soup kitchens or those others who worked hard across the country to make sure that little children with very little would not be disappointed at Christmastime.

Most of that stream of caring can be traced back to a barn and a manger and a bright, shining star. If Christmas is just beginning then it’s our job to make sure those warm and tender feelings of Christmas flow out into this troubled world.

We may not be able to do much about the cruelty and selfishness of our time (except at election time) but we can, like Mother Teresa said, “I do what I can with what I have where I am.” We aren’t responsible for it all—but each one of us can help in all sorts of ways. And if we let Christmas seep into our souls—who knows—it may not just help someone hanging on with their fingernails but us as well.

The old year is fading pretty fast. It’s time to get out those new calendars with all those fresh white pages stretching out and make sure Christmas isn’t over by a long-shot.


--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com