Christmas Thoughts II

Well, Christmas is all but upon us now and even the last bits of shopping have been done and what has been forgotten and not bought must now remain forgotten. It's time to get down to the preparations for Christmas Day. The decorations should already be up, Xmas cards should have been sent out days ago, the Xmas tree should already have been erected, where there is one, and presents should already be wrapped up and under the tree or wherever they are to go. Only one thing remains: Xmas fare. Food and drink! That at least makes all the running-around worthwhile... or does it?

As for Santa, he will still be doing his rounds as I write (as per the pic above) and will continue to do so for most of the night. So if you've been good throughout the year, you can expect to find your prezzie waiting for you when you get up in the morning. If there's nothing there, then maybe you have behaved rather badly and forfeited your right to a Xmas present. I suspect there will be a lot of glum faces on Christmas morning and a lot of soul-searching to understand why Father Christmas has not left a prezzie for certain individuals. But he knows, we cannot hide this sort of thing from him. So if you're one of the disappointed ones, then all I can say is "try harder next year!"

In all this of course we mustn't forget why we have Christmas in the first place. It's all about a baby boy born over 2,000 years ago in the Middle East who founded a new faith, who taught about the one true God and who handed down to us a moral code by which to live our lives. If we lose sight of this, then we have forgotten what Christmas is all about, why we celebrate it, what its message is, and what significance it has in our world today. And that's a pity, I think, regardless of whether we are believers or not. If nothing more, the existence of a man called Jesus (Joshua) who spoke about a God in Heaven is a historical fact. What is more, the Christian faith has shaped and moulded our world over the centuries and still does, and that, whatever else one believes, is a historical fact. And a myth, just as much as a historical event, can give rise to factual events through the influence it has on people's minds and consequently on their actions.