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Dec. 23, 2004 If you want to know the true spirit of Christmas, put yourself in the sandals of the people who were around at the first one. The Romans ruled the Jews. They ruled with the same subtlety as Tony Soprano. Things went well as long as you kept quiet, or as long as Tony didn’t have a spat of rage over something that had nothing to do with you. The Romans erupted in rage from time to time, and that was just your tough luck. The local magistrate was Herod, who ruled only by the Romans’ consent. Compared to other despots, Herod wasn’t bad, but despotism is a low standard. After all, Herod’s response to a possible new king was to slaughter every firstborn child. These were dark men, and they brought dark times. Remember, the Jews were proud, but they’d been kicked around for a few centuries. It all went downhill after David; a thousand years of problems followed. First, they fought among themselves, leaving them weak. Prophets kept warning the Jews, but the Jews kept killing them. The Assyrians bullied them, and then the Babylonians. The Babylonians even held them captive for a while. Eventually the Jews wandered back to the Promised Land, only to have Alexander the Great storm through. Then came the Romans, and that’s where things stood. Put yourself in the sandals (grateful to have them) of those Jews at the time. Consider how you would have felt. You would have felt weak, abused, and helpless. You also felt a little guilty. Why? Before David, the Jews considered Yahweh their king. Installing a king, for the Jews, would insult Yahweh. Later, though, the Jews watched as other nations rose up, and those nations had kings. The Jews got afraid, and they wanted political power, so they risked insulting Yahweh and made Saul king. Saul didn’t work out, but his successor David was a huge hit. David was one king, one brief moment of peace, and then it all crashed. By Jesus’ time, the Jews regretted all this. They came to think that their helplessness was payback. The Jews were helpless, and it was their own fault. You can’t understand what a savior means until you need saving yourself. The Spirit of Christmas isn’t about giving presents. It isn’t about warm wishes and sentimental gush. It isn’t about families gathered around a fireplace, spending one day posing as Hallmark people. It isn’t about football, or eating large birds, or winter sugar treats. It isn’t about tolerance. The Spirit of Christmas is about being saved. It’s about feeling guilty and helpless, and reaching up with open arms, pleading for rescue. It’s about hitting rock bottom. It’s about moral exhaustion. It’s about knowing that much stronger people surround you, and they enjoy kicking you where it hurts. The Christmas Spirit is about finally realizing that no matter how clever, how compassionate, how handsome, how educated, how rich, or how well connected, the bad guys are stronger. You can’t win. They’re just too strong. The Romans win because they don’t care about you, and they don’t hesitate if they think they can gain any small advantage. They’ll kill you if they feel like it, and you can't stop it. Like it or not, you can’t win on your own. Once you grasp that spirit, and you hit rock bottom, what can you do? (1) We admitted we were powerless --that our lives had become unmanageable. (2) Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Dickens understood the Christmas Spirit. Think of Scrooge in the graveyard, seeing his own grave, weeping, and begging the dark spirit to give him one more chance. What had Scrooge experienced? (4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (5) Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. (7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. The spirit of Christmas is forgiveness. When we realize how weak we are, we beg for a savior. The savior comes, not to defeat the bullies and rescue us from the strong, but to rescue us from ourselves. God didn’t come as a general; he came as an innocent child. We don’t receive power and strength to make war on our enemies; we simply receive forgiveness. Scrooge immediately went out to all the people he’d harmed. He brought gifts to Bob Cratchett’s house and took care of Tiny Tim, but most importantly, he asked their forgiveness. He returned to his nephew and repented. The Christmas Spirit wasn’t about merely gifts; the gifts had a purpose to them. What, do you suppose, was that purpose? (8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. (9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. The spirit of Christmas isn’t about giving at all. The Christmas spirit is entirely about receiving; not gifts, but forgiveness. Before Christmas, we come to see how weak we are in this world. When Christmas comes, we don’t get any stronger. The Romans don’t go away. Death will still come for Ebenezer Scrooge. We remain as weak after Christmas as we were before it. But strength isn’t the point of Christmas; forgiveness is. That’s why, whatever we do, we need to keep asking for forgiveness. (10) Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. (11) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. (12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Let it be said of us, then, what Dickens said of Scrooge: “it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” ------------ About the author: KC Mulville is a computer programmer, a happy husband and father of four, and holds several degrees in philosophy. Email KC Mulville: kcmulville@hotmail.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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