It’s a wonderful time of the year.
It is a time for the mass celebration of "The Christ," also known as Christmas.
During this time, we do not just honor a man who revealed the presence of God some time in the past (who, by the way, was not born on December 25th. But that's a whole other story). Instead, we are celebrating the divine spiritual blueprint, the essence of God, that is within all of us.
Sometimes there is a tendency to limit the eternal by saying "The Christ" is merely a presence that arrived over 2,000 years ago, and perhaps one day it will come again. However, this eternal presence never went anywhere and is always present. It is merely waiting for a consciousness bold enough and courageous for it to express through.
To paraphrase a statement by Angelus Silesius from old traditions, "Even if the Christ presence is born a thousand times in Bethlehem, if this presence is not born in us, our soul is still forlorn."
This statement reminds us that the essence of Christmas must be born within our consciousness to fulfill the message of Christmas.
An event during a war reminds us of what's possible when the Christmas message takes hold in our awareness. It is the truce that took place around Christmas during World War I.
In 1914, through the week leading up to Christmas, many German and British soldiers on the Western Front began to exchange holiday greetings and sing Christmas Carols across the trenches.
Sometime during the truce, tensions decreased to the point that soldiers walked across no man’s land to talk and bring gifts to their so-called enemies. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, soldiers from both sides independently ventured out to mingle with each other to share food and souvenirs. They were friendly enough to engage in pick-up soccer games with each other. There were also burial ceremonies that often ended with carols being sung together by soldiers from both camps.
That truce symbolizes the essence of our true nature and being. This essence is all the qualities of God that show up even in the midst of one of the most violent times in contemporary history.
This is what the mass celebration of "The Christ" is about.
The mass celebration of "The Christ" is not limited to once a year. Nor does it reveal itself only during extraordinary events like the Christmas Truce.
Christmas comes when you:
Believe in the unbelievable
See the invisible
Love the unlovable
Forgive the unforgivable
Pardon the unpardonable
Sing the unsingable
Give the impractical
Receive the improbable
Understand the misunderstood
Bless the cursed
Learn the difficult
Know the unknown
Accept the intolerable
Teach the unteachable
Hear the unheard
Remember the forgotten
Praise and give thanks
And do the impossible
Have a Merry, Merry Christmas,
James