Keeping Christmas Well

Luke 2:1-20
another version

(From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens)
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more, and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for his was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the  Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Scrooge has been through a lot with those three Spirits (Ghosts of Past, Present, and Future). He has felt the world he knew shift beneath his feet and alter his sense of what is right and what is wrong in the world. He has seen how his stinginess and uncaring, unkind spirit has created his own loneliness, his own despair, his own fate in life. But mostly he has seen how it has affected countless others around him, including children such as Tiny Tim. His heart is, to say it as Methodist founder John Wesley might, strangely warmed.  He sees the world a new way.

And so did all those in that beautiful account in Luke 2.  Mary's heart is changed when she gives birth to one who will save the world, even if she can't name yet.  Joseph's heart is changed when he is forced to put his family in an animal's stall or cave and help his wife to deliver this one who has been promised by the angel who came to him and to Mary.  The shepherds abiding in the fields... their hearts are changed when angels come down and shine all around them... they are at first terrified, and then strangely warmed by the message that a Messiah has been born in Bethlehem and they are the first to hear of it.

Christmas does that to us. It changes us. It sneaks in on us in the midst of candy canes and pine needles and makes us confront what we know is right and wrong in the world.  We, too, can see the message clearly proclaimed,  "Peace on earth, good will to all."  And we know, if only for this one night, we know very clearly that Christmas is worth doing right. It is worth keeping 'well,' as Scrooge found out.  May we always know what we must do, how we must change, who we must be to make Christmas 'well' for those around us.

Comments? Thoughts? Email me or comment below.  Merry Christmas, my beloved community!