Christmas Starts...Today!

Poor Jesus! For on His birthday we give earrings to Mother and slippers to Dad and a bicycle to Junior, but nothing to Him. We yearn for possessions, and not for Him. We seek out appropriate gifts for all our loved ones except for Him for whom we can shop without money or credit cards or lay-away plan. Some of us no longer even give Him lip service, lest someone think we are too religious. Ken Collins

Christmas, as observed in our secular and commercialized culture, falls far short of the true celebration of Christmas as it is known in the Christian culture from where it originated. For non-Christians this holiday, which in large part drives the economic engine of America, will all be over after the last of family and friends has left and the huge pile of dinner dishes, pots and pans has been cleaned, dried and placed back where they belong. Of course there will be the day after Christmas when you may have to stand in a long line to return that pink flamingo print on black aloha shirt that your Aunt Edna sent from Des Moines, but you may be happily plugged into the iPod that was under the tree, so the wait may be, at least tolerable. And then you will return home to face the somewhat daunting task of taking down the decorations, unstringing the lights, and reboxing it all for storage until next year.

On the other hand, we Christians have a perfectly good reason to procrastinate in putting away all our Christmas decorations because for us, Christmas starts today!

So if eternal salvation and the notion of surfing heaven's most perfect tubular swells isn't enough motivation to consider who Jesus really was, then perhaps the justification that you can leave all your stuff up another two weeks is!

Merry Christmas one and all!