Christmas inspires generosity and cheer, even in the non-religious
The holiday season for many of us can be both joyful and challenging, frequently at the same time.
I grew up in a non-religious household, my mother only finding her way back to the Catholic Church after my siblings and I were all grown, and for a long time Christmas was merely a hectic, stressful time of year when everyone spends too much money and indulges in too much food and drink.
A few years working in retail over the holidays only seemed to cement my rather jaded perspective. I might have fond memories of watching “A Muppet’s Christmas Carol” and listening to “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” but generally the season was something to survive and then move on from.
After joining the Catholic Church, I came to love the liturgical celebrations surrounding the Nativity of Christ but was still turned off by our culture’s secular commercialism, which creeps into society earlier and earlier every year. My contrarian nature found it easy to embrace the penitential season of Advent with vigor, though it put me at odds with the majority of my family and friends, but that tendency also made me averse toward a festive spirit in general. I found myself becoming even more of a Scrooge, but under the guise of religious “piety.”
However, when my husband and I got married, I soon realized that I needed, and wanted, a change in my attitude toward the holidays. Not only did I want to help make things joyful for him, but I wanted to fully participate and share in that joy as well.
My husband and his family love the holiday season – the lights and decorations, baking cookies, watching classic Christmas movies. It was with them that I first watched the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which has since become one of my own favorites. I certainly needed to learn a few of the same lessons as George Bailey, the movie’s protagonist. Like George, I had allowed myself to become bitter and hardened against the cheer and wonder of this time of year, caught up in my own perceived hardships and trials. I had become blind to the incarnate love that is truly the foundation of everything.
Sometimes joy can’t be contained
As my husband has slowly and patiently re-educated me on what it means to celebrate Christmas, it has made me ask: If my husband’s joy about the season is so contagious, what must the joy of God do to the world?
If you have ever had something truly momentous in your life to celebrate, such as getting your dream job, marrying the love of your life, or the birth of a child after many prayers, you might know that sometimes joy simply cannot be contained. It bursts from inside of us, it calls out to be shared with others. Spotting someone newly in love is an easy feat, because their love seems to imbue every aspect of their life.
Reading the Nativity narratives in the Gospels, we see all of creation celebrating the birth of Christ: A miraculous star appears in the sky, guiding the magi from the distant corners of the earth, and a multitude of angels appears to the shepherds, singing praises to God. One of my favorite Christmas hymns is “Joy to the World,” for it reminds us that at the birth of Christ “heav’n and nature sing” and “fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the sounding joy.” Even the angels couldn’t contain their joy at the birth of Christ, as they sang the Gloria above the shepherds’ fields that night.
That same joy echoes down through the ages. Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is not a religious work – there is very little mention of God or of the birth of Christ except in passing – but the spirit of charity and kindness, love toward our neighbors and generosity to all are themes worthy of any good Christian seeking to honor our Lord. Even modern movies like “Elf,” starring Will Ferrell, can show us the importance of cheerfulness, family and an innocent delight and wonder about the world. There is something different, something special, about Christmas that causes even the non-religious to celebrate, to be a little kinder, and to move through the world with a little more cheer.
It all comes down to love
This year will be my first Christmas as a mother, and I have been thinking a great deal about what traditions to establish with our young family and the attitude that I want to pass on to my son. It’s not easy to navigate a world of Santa Claus and elves while also maintaining the supremacy of Christ and the importance of His Incarnation and birth.
But when you acknowledge that it all comes down to joy and love for others, then it also becomes easy to relate everything back to the love of God.
Every charitable action, every kind word, every moment spent joyfully with our family and friends, it’s all an echo of God’s great love for each one of us. The gifts we give don’t have to be about material greediness, but about tangible signs that we put thought into the desires and needs of others.
Perhaps Santa is so jolly and so generous because he simply can’t contain his own joy at the birth of Christ, and with the angels he is singing, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will!”
Kathryn Heim is an author, wife and mother living outside Salisbury, where she gardens, raises chickens, experiments with cooking and reads too many books. Find her work at www.kathrynheim.com.