On my long-neglected blog this post was an annual Christmas tradition.
While Christmas is officially a celebration of the birth of Jesus, for much of the Western world December 25 has come to be a celebration of family and community. No other time of the year is so thoroughly saturated with images pointing to our highest hopes for such relationships – and no other time of the year so effectively highlights the difference between our ideals and the world as it really is. Jesus came to Earth to bridge not only the chasm between humanity and God, but also that rift that separates people from each other. Christmas reminds us that we live in a broken world, and it seeks to encourage us by showing us through religious and even many secular trappings how that brokenness can be fixed.
Best of holiday wishes to all my readers.
AND TO YOU, TOO!
“…for much of the Western world December 25 has come to be a celebration of family and community.”
Not just the West: Japan does Christmas, too. For instance, here is the amazing Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School Band marching through a shopping arcade at Christmastime. Note all the Christmas banners and signage in the background.
They don’t do the religious part, not being Christians, but they do have family dinners.
Rich R: “… here is the amazing Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School Band marching through a shopping arcade …”
Thanks for sharing that link, Mr. Rostrom. That marching band truly is amazing!
Random thought — I am male, so I can’t help it. The video shows a small army of young Japanese women — all musically talented, many pretty, and none with the obese / tattooed / pierced appearance so common among young women in Europe & North America. Yet statistics predict that many of those attractive young Japanese women will never become mothers, and if we believe polls (ha!) many of them will go to their graves without ever having had sexual intercourse.
And yet this is sensible civilized Japan! This is not decadent Europe or North America, where peons are under the thumbs of the Swamp Creatures in our various capitals. Something has gone very wrong on this planet! Were the critics right about the dangers of fluoride in the water?