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EDITORIAL
Op-Ed; Joy to the world, and to each of us
THOMAS M. KEANE, JR.

12/25/2002
Boston Herald
All Editions
025
(Copyright 2002)

It's 6:15 in the morning.

Fifteen minutes ago the kids woke you up and something like a tornado has just swept around the Christmas tree in your living room.

Now all that's left is torn wrapping paper, misplaced assembly instructions and a nagging worry that you've forgotten to put out a present or two.

You sit there wondering: What was it all about?

It's a reasonable question.

Christmas is a puzzle, a four-week-long extravaganza of secret shopping trips and evening cocktail parties that culminates on this morning, leaving one vaguely disappointed and wondering what to do with the rest of the day.

Clean up?

Go to a movie?

Return to bed?

For all of the hoopla that surrounds Christmas, most of us are not really sure what it is.

We don't even know what to call it.

Do we say "Happy Holidays?" "Season's Greetings?"

Neither seems quite right.

For some, of course, today is a religious holiday, a commemoration of the birth of Christ.

It's not historically accurate; no one is certain on what day Jesus was born.

Moreover, even those who argue most strongly for "Keeping Christ in Christmas" participate in a range of traditions that have little to do with the events in Bethlehem.

There weren't any evergreen trees around the manger, but most homes seem to have them or their trappings.

When God made a present of his Son to the world, it's doubtful he sent along a fruitcake: It's inconceivable a Supreme Being would be that cruel.

And the gift of the Magi - which happened many years after Christ's birth - is a pretty thin reed on which to hang Santa Claus, reindeer, Kris Kringle and a binge of consumer purchasing.

And then there are all of the other celebrations and holidays that pop up around the same time: Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and often the end of Ramadan.

Some, looking for a theme to tie all of this together, focus on the solstice. Winter officially began four days ago with the shortest day of the year.

Long ago, the dying of the day was probably a scary thing.

Festivals of light could well have been a human rebuke to the long-dark nights.

But most of us today understand why the seasons occur.

We no longer worry that spring won't return; we all know summer will eventually come.

The solstice may be a piece of the history of Christmas ("the rebirth of the sun; the birth of the Son"), but it hardly explains the meaning of the holiday today.

Yet plainly, it means something to us.

Here's my take on it: Christmas has become one of our three most important secular holidays - the other two being Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

Each has taken on a unique American character; each is complementary to the others.

On July 4, of course, we give thanks for our nation.

On Thanksgiving, we give thanks for our bounty, for the material goods with which we are blessed.

And on Christmas? We give thanks for each other. We take delight, quite simply, in humanity.

For Christians, that is the fundamental religious message of Christmas.

Christians believe that God was born in a manger two millennia ago. But that's not what makes the day special; a miracle such as that should have been quite simple for God to manage. Rather, the real miracle is that God should have chosen to do it at all.

Jesus was born only to be humiliated, tortured and ultimately killed on a cross - all simply to save a ragtag group of bipeds who didn't seem particularly interested in being saved.

The message is, if God were willing to endure all of this suffering, then it must be because humanity was worth it. People have intrinsic worth.

That's what it's really all about, isn't it?

The gift giving, the get-togethers, the caroling, the lights, the calling out to strangers as we pass, wishing them Merry Christmas - all are efforts to reach out to each other, to affirm the worth of each other.

We don't do so merely because we are lovers or family or friends but rather because we acknowledge that each human life has value, that each person is sacred.

And the time to do this is the depths of winter, the days when the nights are long, the trees bare and when we have, in truth, nothing but each other to whom we can cling.

Last night you may have gone to Midnight Mass. Perhaps later on you'll be going to hear a choir sing or maybe you'll be spending the evening with family having dinner in Chinatown.

It doesn't matter. Whatever your traditions, whatever your religion, take joy in the world.

Take joy in each other.

Talk back to Tom Keane at TomKeane@TomKeane.com.