By Staff
Did you ever stop and think that without Christ, there would be no Christmas?
There's a story about a Christmas card that that depicted a preacher who fell asleep on Christmas morning and dreamed that Christ had not come. In his dream, he looked around his home and found nothing representing Christmas – no tree laden with decorations, no stockings hanging from the mantel, no wreath on the door, no Christmas bells. When he took a walk around his town, there were no steeples towering over the buildings, for there were no churches. Back inside his house, his bookshelves had big gaps, for there were no books about the Christ. Although there were Holy Bibles, they ended with Malachi and therefore included no gospel – no promise of hope or salvation.
Can you imagine no Christmas – no Christ child who came to save us from our sins? No churches in which to worship him? No joyful chimes filling the air? No hymns about Christ, such as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “What Child is This?” No Christmas carolers? No Christmas cantatas? No delightful Christmas plays with tiny shepherd boys wrapped in bathrobes with tennis shoes peeking from underneath and little girls with angel wings? No beautiful and fun secular music, like “Jingle Bells” and “I'll Be Home for Christmas?”
No Christmas parades like the one my husband and I attended last week with hundreds of happy children singing and waving and many floats honoring the birth of the Christ child? No bright, colorful Christmas lights and twinkling silver stars? No Christmas trees topped with angels and with brightly wrapped presents underneath? No Christmas cards?
No Santa Claus? No visits by Santa to homes, hospitals and nursing homes?
No “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman?” No Charlie Brown's Christmas show and other Christmas classic TV dramas?
No Christmas celebrations with family and friends? No aroma of Christmas cooking floating through the house? No tables laden with turkey or ham and all the trimmings? No Christmas shopping? No excursions to the woods or farms or shopping centers to cut or buy a tree? No family gatherings to decorate a tree? No stores decorated to the hilt with gilt and glitter? No Salvation Army bell ringers on the streets? No street decorations? No tree-lighting ceremonies all across the nation?
No Christmas baskets for the needy? No gifts of calling cards to those far away to call home? No candy canes or cookies sprinkled with red and green sugar and shaped like trees and bells? No special Christmas cakes?
No Christmas fudge?
No reading of the Christmas story from the Book of St. Luke before the Christmas feast? No prayers of thanksgiving lifted to heaven, thanking the Father for what He did for the people of earth? No outpouring of love that happens nearly as much as during the Christmas season?
Aren't we thankful that we can sing, “Glory to the newborn king?”
Nina Keenam is a columnist for The Andalusia Star-News.