My apologies, but this will have to be quick. We’re getting ready for our office Christmas party and I only have a few minutes.
I don’t think GUIDEPOSTS has ever cancelled a Christmas party but we talked about it this year. The economy being what it is, and our troops fighting difficult wars overseas, it felt like it might be the wrong year to be celebrating. We asked ourselves, Should we really be having a good time while the world seems to be so full of strife and uncertainty?
Yet what are we celebrating at Christmas? Yes, there are the gifts and the food and family get-togethers. But those are just the trappings of Christmas.
When I cut through all the commercial craziness of Christmas I remember that what we are celebrating, with reverence and awe, is the birth of the Christ child in Bethlehem.
Wasn’t that child brought into a world riven with conflict? A world on the brink of political and economic chaos? Were the issues of that day so different from the issues of our own? Joseph and Mary didn’t go to Bethlehem for a vacation. They were ordered to go there by the Roman emperor to be counted in a census.
It must have been a considerable hardship for a young carpenter and his pregnant wife. And all around them the world was in flux. No one could have known that in a humble stable the world was to be reborn.
A savior was born not into a world of peace and prosperity but into a difficult world that needed him. And we still need him and so we celebrate his immaculate presence in our lives.
We’ve scaled back our party but we didn’t cancel it. Joy is at the center of the season, in good times and bad. So if you’ll excuse me, I have a little party to go to.
Edward Grinnan is Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of GUIDEPOSTS Publications.
