Video - "Something about Christmas time"
One more Christmas is getting over. Three consecutive year's Christmas away from home brought back some old memories of the celebrations around this time of the year. The coming of December calling out the start of the season, shops with illuminated stars hanging down, bringing these from shops and trying to put it in the proper location at home, cakes of all types/ranges/flavous/qualities filling small and big stores, to be bought by the rich and poor alike, Carol singing in the neighbourhood on days close to Christmas, going to midnight service at church, all people visiting each other with cakes in their hands are all fond memories of Christmas back in Kerala, India.
Last three year's Christmas including this in the United states revealed another way or culture of celebrating it. The more colourful appeal given to it, the way in which the time off during holiday season was used to the most to gain energy for next year were all noticebale. The gathering of relatives in the families reminded of home. The presentation of gifts to kids and loved ones appeared like a nice custom. The snow falling outside and piling up inches was making real the imagination I had built about such a Christmas all along reading stories and watching it in movies.
One thing noticeable in the past few years, no matter wherever I am, was the over-commercialization of Christmas, and for that matter, any festival. Shops and brands use the festivals to the maximum to market their products. In the US, Christmas is the end of a shopping season, which starts on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). I was wondering if the spiritual value of Christmas was ever given the deserved importance here in the US, until I heard my parish priest last weekend. His message was very clear: Christmas is not a season, not the end of a shopping season, not a celebration. Christmas is a single point in history, when God became man. Every year, we remember this single point in time.
The meaning of his words strike us more, when we think more and more about it. Yes, Christmas is a single point in history, when God became man, when "the Word" became flesh, for the goodness of all men, when the most debated and popular human ever came into the world, when the leader with the largest number of followers was born. The same point in history seperated history itself into two, Before Christ (BC) and Anno Domini (AD). Just as in the number system, positive and negative numbers converge into "zero", Christmas is the point in time when God turned himself as "zero", as a man, to whom all men before and after him converge to.
Attached are an image of the Holy family, and also a beautiful video on Christmas someone sent me, which striked me a lot.
Merry Christmas to all.
