Keeping Christmas is very much about valuing home and hearth, and that is a truth that even your basic, mostly housebroken, pagan understands.
A pox, by the way, on businesses, other than those who truly have no choice, who choose to stay open on Christmas supposedly for the convenience of the consumer. They should think more highly both of their own employees and of their customers. Their employees deserve better of them. And customers idiotic enough to be running about on Christmas Day shouldn’t be encouraged in such idiocy.
One of the many things I love about Christmas Day is that most of us have enough sense to treasure the precious time with our families. Yes, there’s some travel going on even on Christmas morning. But not much. Less than ever, in fact. And what little movement you’ll see happening on the roads on Christmas morning is travel being undertaken specifically so folks can be with family.
It’s rather remarkable. Even as a small child, I remember noticing it. The silence in the neighborhood. The surprising, and lovely, stillness.
If you step out your door on Christmas morning, you’ll probably see hardly anybody at all. Why? Well, again, even the most frenetic and hyperactive of us knows deep down that Christmas morning is a time to be inside with those we hold most dear. Even those who don’t hold Christmas Day holy for the best Reason, know it’s “holy” family time that should be left undisturbed. The phone won’t ring much, hardly at all, on Christmas morning, and when it does, you can bet the call or message will be from folks you love the most.
Oh, we’ll all start to venture out again. By Christmas afternoon, kids will be out on the driveway trying out their new bicycles or tricycles or skateboards or electric cars, playing with all sorts of new toys, and running through scads of batteries, learning how to work the new games and gadgets.
But the morning at least will be remarkably quiet, centered around home and hearth.
G. K. Chesterton once wrote of the paradox in his “Christmas Poem:” It’s when we come to Bethlehem in our hearts, to the stable where Mary and the baby homeless lay, that’s when we come truly “home”: “Only where He was homeless / Are you and I at home.”
Only when we seek Him, find Him, worship Him, do we find that we’ve come truly Home,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Home. It’s the best place to be. The Christ of Christmas points us to our true Home.
Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
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