The World goes back to work; the Christians celebrate New Life

Greetings,

Back to Work Day.

That is for most people.  Some had to go back on Monday, but for the governments and many others, Monday was the official day off.  Today, for everyone, the holiday season, that is the season of celebrating, dinners, parties, presents and folderol has come to a close with New Year’s Day on Sunday and the day off on Monday, and now it is back to work, back to school, back to “normal.”  Actually, the Church is not at all done with the Christmas season; we are still in the Twelve Days of Christmas and January 6^th, Epiphany, is a vital part of our celebration, bringing the festivities to a rousing close.  But the parties are over, and the world has closed out Christmas and moved on.  Indeed, much of the world was done with Christmas on December 26^th. 

The decorations are being put away.  The warm, glowing experiences will become part of our memories of Christmases past.  Many people will also put away their cheerfulness and goodwill, that miraculous spirit of joy and peace which permeates the community when “ever ’gainst that season comes, Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,...The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,...So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.”  Now people will become themselves once more.  But it was good to see what change could be wrought in the minds and hears of people, even for a day!  Yet Christmas need not be limited to only a day.  Christmas can become what the angels announced it to be, a way of life, an attitude that will continue during all the days that follow, a time, a life of true, genuine Godly peace for those who find favor with God.  Even the most cynical in our society can be moved to change by the blessedness of the Christmas experience.  Old Scrooge, after his encounter with the Spirit, “lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”  Dickens adds, and it truly needs to be true for us to lay claim to the Spirit in our lives, “May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”

Yours & His,

DED