Transcript
Well, Christmas is officially over, and the church has entered into the season of ordinary time. Gone are the Christmas lights that made the neighborhood look like a Christmas wonderland fit for a holiday movie. The Christmas music on the boulevard has been silenced, leaving more room for the noise and bustle that usually crowds our ears. The trees that adorned our homes and then lined our blocks on garbage night that have been picked up and disposed of by our trusty sanitation workers. Everything has gone back to normal, and that’s a problem. I’ll tell you why.
One thing I love about Christmas is it gives me license to listen to my Christmas playlist on Spotify. You’d probably love my Christmas playlist. It spans decades and generations starting with the forties fifties, hits from Bing Crosby and Brenda Lee, going on to the sixties with songs like frosty the snowman by the Ronettes, a song made a little bit more famous by that Christmas party scene in the movie Goodfellas.
It goes down through the decades, especially the eighties. And the last song on that playlist is, oddly enough, a Christmas song by none other than Bon Jovi, where he tells us, I wish every day could be filled with peace and harmony. I wish every day would be like Christmas. Now I don’t think that song would have the same impact if he said, I wish things would just go back to normal. Most of us have something that we especially like about the Christmas season, whether it’s food or the lights or the music, whatever.
But what we all love in common universally about Christmas that is what we call the Christmas spirit. It makes the whole world different during Christmas, and it makes you just feel good. The Christmas spirit is that joyful atmosphere that surrounds us. The feeling of good cheer and benevolence that seems to characterize people a little bit more every Christmas time. That were a little more patient, were a little more kind, a little more generous, were a little more attentive to the poor, the homeless, or the hungry.
I wish every day could be like Christmas. But then again, that’s how it’s supposed to be every day. The Christmas spirit is a Christian spirit. It’s the heart and soul and spirit of Christianity at its core, at its very foundation, and it’s supposed to characterize the lives of those who follow Jesus. You don’t just follow Jesus during Christmas time.
Every day is supposed to be like the thing we love most about Christmas, the goodwill we have toward others, the joy we carry in our hearts and and observe in others, the the generous spirit that we have toward others, even strangers or the less fortunate. Why does this stand out at Christmas? And why does it seem to end once Christmas trees have come down? In the early days of the Catholic church, Christmas was actually a very minor holiday in the church calendar. The major holiday in the church calendar was and that technically still is Easter, not Christmas.
With the Christmas holiday being barely a blip on the Catholic radar, There was no such thing as the Christmas spirit to serve as an inspiration to boost our good cheer or joy or generosity as it tends to do today. And yet, do you know how the Christians in the early church were recognized by their pagan peers and persecutors? By our love for others. By our joy and generosity and compassion. One of the early fathers of the church, Tertullian, wrote,
“…it’s mainly the deeds of such noble love that lead many to identify us. See how they love one another, they say. For they themselves [non-Christians] are animated by mutual hate, not by love. ‘How they are ready to even die for one another!’, they say. For they themselves (again, the non Christians), would sooner put others to death.”
What Tertullian recognized there is in keeping with something our lord tells us in the gospel, “You will know a tree by the fruit it bears.”
By seeing the fruits of our faith, even the godless world knew that we were Christian. Christmas brings out the best of our character. Love, joy, patience, generosity, compassion, goodwill, all of it. But that’s exactly how we’re supposed to live our lives every day. It isn’t supposed to end after New Year’s Day.
I wish every day would be like Christmas. And don’t you Don’t you wish the world around us was so full of joy and peacefulness and generosity all year round? It can happen. It’s how the Christian world used to be. Even our persecutors saw that, and many of them admired and envied us for it.
The world can be that way again by living and spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ whether it’s by our words or by our actions and the way we live our lives. If we live the change that we want to see in the world, we’ll manifest god’s glory and the kingdom of god in the world. That what do you want the world to be like? Now I don’t just mean for you, but for your children. What do you want the world to be like for them?
Do you want the world to be like Christmas every day? Then live the change you want to see. Christianity literally that changed the world more than once in the history of the church. It didn’t change the world by magic or even by force or even by rule of law. Christianity changed the world by how Christians lived the gospel message. The sense of goodwill and cheer and generosity and all of that that we generally only see in the world around Christmas time, used to be, and was always intended to be, the game changer that brought souls, families, the households, communities, and whole countries to God through Jesus Christ. And it starts as it always started, by how individuals choose to live their lives.
Do you wish it could be like Christmas every day? Then make it happen. Live your life like it is Christmas every day. I don’t mean with decorations and consumerism, but with goodwill, good cheer, joy in your hearts, the generosity in your actions, and all those other virtuous personality characteristics that we usually demonstrate every year around Christmas. You literally, literally have the power to change the world. Do you like what you see in the world? Do you wanna see a change? Then brothers and sisters, go out and do it.
God wills it. Merry Christmas all year, and happy new year every day, and may God be with you always.
