One of my favorite Christmas stories over the years was O’Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, about a poor couple struggling to maintain themselves in the big city. At Christmas time, neither of them had the money to buy the other a gift. Not telling the other, they each made a great sacrifice and sold what was most dear to them to obtain the money. This seems to be the essence of Christmas: sacrifice as an expression of love and offering a gift to the beloved.
The gift-giving started with the Magi, the three wise men who followed a distant star to Bethlehem. The mysterious star led them to the dwelling of the recently born Christ child. There, they bowed down before Jesus and offered him their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
The original idea by a Christian Council in 567 was to establish the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany as a sacred season to commemorate the birth, baptism, and teachings of Jesus. And in 1659, for a time, Christmas was banned in Boston by the Puritans because of excessive merrymaking during the holidays, and the fact that Christmas was not established in the Bible. The greeting of “Merry Christmas” was popularized in Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol. In 1870 Christmas was declared a legal holiday in the USA. But over the years, Christmas has become increasingly ensnared by materialistic pursuits.
By the early 20th century, a reflective, devotional holy day had turned into a consumeristic, spend-fest event. In Matthew 7.21, Jesus cautions us: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” And he goes on, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock” (7.24).
Again, in Luke 6.46, Jesus asks, “Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do what I say?” An example is given in the Epistle of James 2.14-17, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Read more: https://iskconnews.org/the-supreme-gift/
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