post-christmas meditations 1

One balmy December afternoon, Ms. Casela, one of my English teachers in high school, shocked our class when she bluntly announced, "I don't celebrate Christmas." Or something like that. The comment caught us completely unaware, thrilled as we were about the holidays.

After several seconds of silence, one of us piped, "Talaga, Ma'am? Bakit naman?" ("Really, Ma'am? Why is that?")

She said that there are 364 other days when one could give gifts to the needy. "Why not be charitable all year?" she reasoned. Unlike most of my religious classmates then, I honestly agreed with her. After all, I thought, most of Christmas' traditions and customs are merely a hodgepodge of nostalgic legends repacked from various pagan mythologies -- the Christmas tree, for instance, sprung up from the Druids' practice of keeping evergreens to drive away evil spirits.

But I realize now that Miss Casela and I had completely missed the point.

Most church historians agree that Christmas was originally instituted by the early church around 350 AD to celebrate Jesus's birth. Despite the fact that the Romans and the Northern Europeans held orgies on what they called Saturnalia, or Yule, the reason for Christmas's celebration was very clear to the early Christians.

Tragically for us, the world has its lethally effective ways of twisting glorious truths into mundane and irrelevant traditions. As the years passed, Bishop Nicholas, once remembered for his good deeds, which were intended to mirror Jesus' perfect compassion to us sinners, morphed into chubby figure in a red suit, who promised toys and sweets to little children.

I couldn't have put it better in words than Lance, my good friend, did in his post, About Christ and Him Alone:

People have developed a wrong sense of the celebration and have perhaps forgotten the real reason for the rejoicing... Christmas is not about Santa Claus nor the gifts he gives to children. It is not about freezing water or the drowsy air from Siberia nor the existence of red-nosed reindeers in the North Pole. It is not about Ethel Booba making amends with another Gwen Garci in Startalk nor about Kris Aquino crying tears of joy after a 15-year old high school senior won the million in Game Ka Na Ba. It is not about going to mass and making sure that one's attendance is complete for the entire Simbang Gabi. It is not about the sky precipitating cool, white bits of ice. It is not even chiefly about giving, forgiveness, love, happiness, family, friends, and goodness...

My point is simple: Christmas is about Christ and nothing else.

But we need to go further, after realizing that these things are mere masks to the real purpose of Christmas: who exactly is this Christ? Who is Jesus? What is it with Him that is worthy of our rejoicing? Why don't we celebrate Buddha-mas, or Muhammad-mas?