'Tis (Still) the Season

For many of us, the wrapping has been wadded up and thrown out, the food has been feasted on, and the family time has worn a little thin.  Some toys have already broken and gift recipients have braved daunting lines to exchange whatever was the wrong size, color, shape, make, model, brand, title, or sound.  The battle cries of "Happy Holidays!"---"No, it's Merry Christmas! I'm keeping Christ in Christmas!" have settled back into murmurs of quiet and fairly content napping. 

That last part gets me a little.

I don't understand why so many of my fellow Christians get bent about what kind of greeting another person gives them; no one can take Christ from us---it only makes US seem like WE are bound and determined to take away someone else's religious or non-religious observance.  That's not what this country is about.  Indeed...it's not what the Christian faith is founded on.

We need to remember more than the birth of Christ, which we are celebrating at a random time of year in the first place, since no one knows when He was born.  We need to remember the LIFE of the man who is our role model not just at the Christmas season, but at every season.

We must remember that we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves---in every season.  It's easy to be nice with carols in our heads and sparkling lights everywhere.  It's not so easy to love that neighbor in the summertime, when I can sleep in every day, but my neighbor wants to run his compressor to power-wash his boat every living day.  But 'tis the season to love him then, too.

We are reminded that how we treat the least among us is evidence of how we might be treating the Savior, for we never know when we may be entertaining angels among us---in every season.  We give food to charities in the fall, but how often do we remember that those with less need help at other times?  When one brother rises out of need, another is there to take his place.  Should we ignore the second because we gave in October?   'Tis the season to serve others, even when it isn't on the agenda for the rest of the world.

We know that we are told that when we are without sin ourselves, we can cast the stone at another, and we keep that on a pretty even keel in December---but it's true in every season.  When tempers run high, we slip so easily, right over that boundary into casting our words at others, mostly behind their backs.  No matter what she wore or what he said or where they went, it's still incumbent upon us: 'tis always the season to remember our own sins more than anyone else's.

We are told to turn the other cheek, to forgive 70 x 7---in every season.  Oh, yes, Christmas is a wonderful time to forgive and forget, to make amends, to start over fresh.  So is Easter.  So is every single day of the year, when we come to the inevitable realization that our hate and anger only hurt us, or hurt us more than anyone else.  'Tis the season to set ourselves free of that prison and heal our own hearts and those of anyone else we insist on punishing.  'Tis that season at any moment.

While we're at it, let's just make a few other things "in season" all year round.  Let's forget the splinter in our brother's eye and concentrate on the plank we need to remove from our own eyes.  Let's follow Christ's lead and find the good in everyone, be they people of high birth, low morals, questionable veracity, or sketchy backgrounds.  Let's be good stewards of what we have and remember that things do not measure our worth.  For Jesus, it was always the season for these ideas.  If we truly want to "keep Christ," it can't be "in Christmas" only.  Every day 'tis the season.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, brothers and sisters of all kinds. 

Disclaimer:  I will be the first to admit that I am as bad as anyone (and worse than many) about remembering to live this way;  I wrote it as a reminder to myself, not as a sermon for the world.  Hence, the "we" first-person plural point of view.