I relish Christmas but can only properly embrace it if I embrace its meaning and lessons
‘Of course we’ve seen the disappearance of traditional Christian memes and themes, but that’s inevitable in an increasingly diverse society’ At the beginning of December, I received an email marked “Urgent!” It explained that there was “a war on Christmas” and that we had to remind people that “Jesus is the reason for the season.”. I assume that I was on some sort of mailing list because I’m a priest but, sorry, not of the type they were targeting.
Yet paradoxically, there is a war going on, but it’s not on the freedom to celebrate Christmas, attend Midnight Mass, or sing carols, but on the very values that Christmas represents. Even more disturbing, it’s often led by some of the very people who roar the loudest about the alleged war on Christmas: conservative evangelicals, traditionalist Roman Catholics, and their secular friends, who are usually so enthusiastic in their support for right-wing politicians.
His central command was to love God and love others as ourselves, his roughest words were for the wealthy, legalistic, and powerful, he insisted that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for an overly-rich person to enter heaven, he stood with the poor and marginalised, he demanded peace, he owned nothing, rejected earthly ambition, told us to forgive those who hurt us, embrace our enemies, refrain from judging, and turn the world upside down.
The Brazilian archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara once said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
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