The great song by John Lennon, entitled So This Is Christmas, strongly promotes the hope that wars will be ended. Thus, there will be no more reason to fear future destruction simply because conflict will be controlled.
However, the phrase “so this is Christmas” propels an indefatigable and urgent search for the meaning of Christmas.
Christmas celebrations are in dire need of being freed from consumerist tendencies that have simply relegated the festival into an outright show of paganism.
A quick glance around us demonstrates that Christmas has merely been tantamount to having big meals, attending concerts and, much worse, drinking excessively. No wonder at Christmastime sentiments of joy and gratitude have rapidly been metamorphosed into anger and frustration!
We falsely think that complications tend to make us happier. Nevertheless, outer paraphernalia can never supersede the spirit that constantly craves for peace of mind and heart. Thus, on the contrary, the Christmas event persuasively informs us that simplicity is the antidote for our lacking fulfillment.
This thought was powerfully accentuated by Pope Benedict XVI in his customary weekly address at the general audience held on December 17.
On that occasion, the Holy Father reflected on the spiritual meaning of Christmas. He boldly advocated a speedy return to the heart and soul of the Christmas season. He said that “it is true that the difficulties, the uncertainties and the financial crisis itself that numerous families have had to come to terms with in recent months and which is affecting all humanity could be an incentive to rediscover the warmth of simplicity, friendship and solidarity: typical values of Christmas. Stripped of its consumerist and materialistic encrustations, Christmas can thus become an opportunity for welcoming, as a personal gift, the message of hope that emanates from the mystery of Christ’s birth”.
In fact, Christmas per se has nothing to do with the senseless celebrations that try to portray it as a sheer secular vacation. Rather, the nature of Christmas is about welcoming the stranger, Christ himself who is mysteriously present in the poor, the lonely, the destitute and the oppressed who live with us side by side.
Two millennia ago, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, visited us as a stranger. Nobody took notice that the baby of Bethlehem was the Messiah, promised long ago by the prophets. He came unnoticed and took us by surprise. At any rate, those who received Him unknowingly received “the true light that enlightens every man” (John 1, 9).
In front of this existential vacuum, the need to “rediscover the warmth of … solidarity” is all the more crucial. In his great encyclical on the subject, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Blessed John Paul II said that “in the light of faith, solidarity seeks to go beyond itself, to take on the specifically Christian dimension of total gratuity, forgiveness and reconciliation.
One’s neighbor is then not only a human being with his or her own rights and a fundamental equality with everyone else but becomes the living image of God the Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit. One’s neighbour must therefore be loved, even if an enemy, with the same love with which the Lord loves him or her; and for that person’s sake one must be ready for sacrifice, even the ultimate one: to lay down one’s life for the brethren (cf. 1 Jn 3:16)” (§ 40).
The infant of Bethlehem gave ample evidence of His unrelenting solidarity towards us, sinful humans. As Jesus of Nazareth He spent three consecutive years healing, teaching, comforting and, when the hour for Him came to return to his Father, gave His life for us in his passion, death and resurrection. He offered his life for us as a gift of love not out of compulsion for He knew that “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9, 7).
By His sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, Jesus revealed the real meaning of His birth. Namely, in Pope Benedict’s words, of “a God who made Himself our neighbour and who is very close to us, who has time for each one of us and who came to stay with us”.
Visiting the elderly and the sick, sheltering the strangers and spending time with the lonely and those who suffer is celebrating Jesus’ birth.
So this is Christmas!