WHAT IS CHRISTMAS FOR YOU: A HOLIDAY OR A HOLY DAY?

                             

We are in the threshold of Christmas and are busy preparing for the celebration. I wish all my friends a blessed and meaningful Christmas!

What is Christmas for you: a holiday or a holy day? It is a tragedy that humankind are cunning enough to make a holy day a holiday. Christmas is the most corrupt of all holidays!

As someone has said, “Every remembered history must create a new history.” Christians all over the world are in the celebration mood during Christmas season and the people of other faiths also join in the celebrations. But the pertinent question is: “What is the place of the ‘child in the manger’ in the celebrations?”

I don’t like to wish a merry Christmas because I feel that the word ‘merry’ and the ‘spirit’ involved taking away the spirit of Christmas. Hence I feel that the word ‘merry’ is ugly to denote Christmas experience.

Many of the festivals have become carnivals! This thought prompted me to look into the etymology of the words and following is the result: When we try to assess the word ‘carnival’, it is associated with eating drinking and merry making. Originally a carnival was the period before lent, a time of public merrymaking and festivities. The base elements of the Latin are caro, carn – ‘flesh’ and levare ‘to put away’ or ‘remove’. It is from the same root the word ‘carnivores’ comes and we know what it means! Whereas, the origin of the word 'festival' can be traced to the Latin 'festa' meaning ‘a religious holiday’. The adjective connected with 'festa' was 'festivalis', and that word came into English, via French, as the adjective 'festival' (‘relating to a religious feast’). Days that were celebrated as religious feasts were ‘festival days’. Eventually, the adjective became a noun, as people stopped talking about ‘festival days’ and shortened this to ‘festivals’.

To capture the spirit of Christmas, I share with you a legend:

The baby in the manger was visited by the shepherds and Maggie and it is narrated in the Gospel accounts.  It is said that a tiny insect also was watching this.  When it saw many coming and giving gifts and prostrating before a child, he thought this child must be someone special.  Then it thought, “Oh, I do not have anything to give it.” Then it came to its mind that it has kept a grain of rice to survive during the winter season.  It flew to its nest, took the grain and placed it in the tiny hand of the child.  No one else but the divine child noticed it. He, with a smiling face, took the other hand and touched the insect.  Suddenly, the grain it was carrying started to glow and it became part of his body.  The legend says, it is how glow worm got its powers to glow in the dark.
This may be a story.  But it points to a fact which history proves - whoever that has been touched has started to glow. 

I wish you all a Meaningful Christmas and a Purposeful New Year!