"Keeping Christmas"

  I’m sure, for most of the children we know, Friday was a great and wonderful day; a day anticipated for weeks! After all those hopes and visions and dreams, what a shame it was over so quickly! For many children, with a day filled with "little toy horns and little toy drums, rootie toot-toots and rummie tum-tums" or maybe I-pods, DVDs and video games, there must have been a nostalgic sigh at bed time on Friday evening, a remorseful wish that every day could be Christmas, that we could keep Christmas all year long!

  There is an old-fashioned 19^th century phrase "keeping Christmas" which isn’t used much any more. I think it meant to "observe Christmas", in the same sense as we keep the Sabbath.  But today, to me, the phrase "keeping Christmas" means remembering the true spirit of Christmas and trying to maintain that spirit throughout the year.

  Thursday evening, Christmas Eve, from Luke’s Gospel, we read about the shepherds getting the word out on the hillside where they were taking care of their sheep.  They went into town and visited the stable where the young child was lying in the manger. To them, it must have been a marvelous experience! But they couldn’t stay there forever; they had to go back to their familiar pastures and the commonplace tending of their sheep.  Back from a shining moment, they returned to the mundane: back to watching for predators, back to shearing sheep, back to looking for green pastures, back to worrying about the price of lamb chops. We might wonder if they were able to keep that spirit in their lives from that time forward. Maybe their lives would never be quite the same again, but would glow with an added luster. We don’t know; Luke never mentions them again.

  But we do know about Mary, the holy mother. Luke tells us that she didn’t pass off lightly, the happenings of the first Christmas.  She went back to Nazareth and raised her family, preparing meals, shopping for groceries, mending clothes, performing all those household duties, but she held on to what she had experienced, for Luke writes: "And Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart."

  Another character in the Christmas drama is one we don’t think about much, nor talk about much.  He is Simeon, one of Jerusalem’s goldenagers, and I have never seen him featured on a Hallmark greeting card.  He had been a patient believer in God’s promises. He had been looking for the coming of the Messiah for almost a life-time. Finally, at the temple that day, his eyes viewed the Holy Child and he sang his praises to God: "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation…." He would hold on to that joyful and completely satisfying experience for the remainder of his years!

  The western world has been indebted to Charles Dickens for more that a century and a half, for his immortal story, A Christmas Carol, about Ebenezer Scrooge and his amazing dream. Scrooge may have been about the age of Simeon, but he did not have Simeon’s disposition, and he did not have Simeon’s hopeful spirit.  Nevertheless, after those amazing ghostly visitations from Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet-to-come; when Scrooge finally experienced Christmas in his heart; when the spirit of the Christ-child entered his life, he could never be the same! And in conclusion, Dickens wrote of Scrooge: "It was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed that knowledge."

  Most likely, John Grisham is no threat to the literary magnificence of Dickens. Grisham usually writes best-selling legal thrillers such as The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Runaway Jury, but eight or nine years ago he produced an entirely different story. He called it Skipping Christmas. It is a charming tale of an accountant, Luther Krank, and his wife Nora, who decided to buck tradition.  It all started when Luther did the numbers and realized that the Kranks spent an appalling six thousand dollars the previous Christmas. So Luther hatched a plan: since the couple’s only child, a daughter, Blair, had recently departed for a Peace Corps assignment in Peru, he talked Nora into skipping out on Christmas, the whole cooking, shopping, decorating, entertaining thing; no tree, no traditional open house, no Christmas cards, and instead, they would leave Christmas morning for a ten-day cruise in the sunny Caribbean. 

  In the process, he alienated most of his neighbors, who could not believe the Kranks would not be having their traditional Christmas Eve open house, nor going along with the neighborhood outdoor decorating theme, and not even having a Christmas tree.

  All seemed to go fairly well, but even the best-laid plans have a way of changing and as fate would have it, Blair phoned early on the 24^th, saying she was in Atlanta and would be home that evening, bringing along with her a young Peruvian doctor, to whom she had just become engaged, and she wanted him to experience a traditional Krank family Christmas, about which she had told him!  So they didn’t get to skip, but they found themselves the day before Christmas, frantically doing the shopping, the decorating, and the entertaining that Luther did so want to skip.

  I imagine, some of us can sympathize with Luther, for of course, there are appendages of Christmas, we would be happy to skip. We would like to skip the commercialism, the congestion at the post office and the l-o-n-g check-out lines at Kohl’s and Elder-Beerman's, but it would be marvelous if we could keep the Christmas spirit: the spirit of caring, the spirit of generosity, the spirit of concern, the spirit of good will that is so prevalent at Christmastime. It’s a time when multitudes of people are moved by compassion to visit the residents in nursing homes. It’s the time the Salvation Army receives much of its funding, as caring souls ring the bells beside the kettles at Buehler’s and Kmart, and other caring people drop in their dollars, to help feed the hungry and clothe the ill-clad. It’s a time when people greet each other with friendliness and good cheer.

  Perhaps the reason caring is so prevalent at Yuletide is that it is the birthday of Jesus, and almost everyone knows that Jesus went about doing good; that he was the ultimate example of caring. When he went back home to Nazareth and to the synagogue on the Sabbath, and was asked to read from the scriptures, he read from Isaiah: "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has anointed me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to free those who are in prison, to comfort those who mourn…." These were his marching orders.  He lived by them. He cared! He had compassion upon those with emotional problems, the anxious people, the depressed people, he cared about lepers and about blind people, and about the welfare of little children.

  In Dickens’s heart-warming story, the Ghost of Christmas present, took Scrooge to the humble home of the Cratchets. Preparations for dinner were well underway. Bob and Tiny Tim arrived home from church and Mrs. Cratchet asked Bob how little Tim behaved in church. "As good as gold," answered Bob, "and better… He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant for them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made the lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

  Fortunately, the world is blessed by millions of people who go quietly through life performing the nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love: the volunteer at the hospital, and the Startzman Clinic, the tutor at the school, the person in the church who always speaks with strangers, the friend who constantly touches bases by phone with others living by themselves.  How blessed our lives will be if that spirit of caring can prevail throughout the year; if our concern for others can be translated into action. Remember how Jesus said: "I was hungry and you gave me bread, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, sick and you visited me…as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my great family, you did it unto me."

  When the writer of Colossians wrote "You must put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…." He was not suggesting a behavior pattern for Christmas, but rather, a way for followers of Christ to live every day of the year.

  We would be happy to skip the hurry, hurry! and the rush, rush!, the obligatory entertaining and the crowded parking lot at Wal-Mart, but it would be wonderful to keep the magnanimous spirit, that spirit of good will that prevails during Christmastide. It may be easy to keep it for a few days in December, but a challenge to maintain it throughout the year.

  In John Grisham’s story, as it turned out, Luther and Nora had to plan a little last minute open house honoring their daughter, Blair, and her Peruvian fiancé, who Blair was bringing home for them to meet.  Frantically, Nora began calling people, inviting them to the open house. By then many of their friends had made other plans. When Luther learned that Nora had invited the Underwoods, he just about went ballistic. "No, you didn’t!" said Luther. "Tell me you didn’t invite Mitch Underwood! You didn’t Nora, please say you didn’t! Mitch is a windbag. A thundering load of hot air. People hide from the Underwoods. He hates everything – the city, the state, democrats, republicans, independents, clean air – you name it. He’s the biggest bore in the world!" Somehow, Luther’s outburst seems so incongruent with the spirit of Christmas, since it is the birthday of one who was so completely forgiving and accepting. Remember how gentle Jesus was with people who didn’t measure up.  Remember how accepting he was of Zaccheus, who was just as disliked as Mitch Underwood.

  At the end of Grisham’s story, Luther found redemption. He confessed to one of his neighbors that he and Nora needed help; that Blair was on the way home, bringing her new fiancé. She was expecting a traditional Krank-family-Christmas. The cruise was off! They needed to put together an open house. They couldn’t do it alone! They needed help! Time was running out! Suddenly, the word got out into the neighborhood. The neighbors came to the rescue!  A police car was sent to the airport to bring Blair and her Peruvian fiancé to the Krank’s home. The neighbors began showing up at the Krank’s front door, not empty handed, but bearing gifts of cheese balls and hors d’oeuvres, ginger ale and fancy sandwiches, fruit cakes and cookies. It turned out to be a wonderful open house, filled with love, kindness and good will.

  Nearly everyone was there, except the Scheels across the street. Mrs. Scheel had been dealing with a malignant condition and everyone knew this could be her last Christmas. Before the evening was ended, Luther bundled up the cruise materials – the brochures, the airline tickets, the cruise documents, and took them across the streets and asked the Scheels to go on the cruise in their place. Of course, there was quite a discussion about the matter.  If the Scheels accepted, of course they would reimburse the Kranks. "No" Luther insisted "It’s a gift!" Finally the Scheels agreed! On the way back to his own house, Luther thought to himself, "Skipping Christmas: what a ridiculous idea!"

Through the years, millions have caught the thrill of the magnanimous spirit of good will. Through the coming year there will be dozens of opportunities for being magnanimous and generous. How do we react to someone with whom we disagree on several issues? How do we relate to someone who got the promotion we were hoping to get? How do I treat the person who pushed me out of first chair in the tuba section of the band?  What is the gracious word to say to someone who made a mess of the committee assignment?  How glorious it is when the followers of Jesus are not bound by the pettiness of self-interest, are not burdened by grudges which will not let go, but who can keep that Christmas spirit which the world cannot give nor take away.

How good it will be if at the beginning of every day of the year we will pray in the spirit of the prayer of St. Francis: "Make us instruments of you peace, and love, and joy."  Do we put our Christmas spirit in the box with the tree ornaments, to be brought out again next December?  Do we close the door on the gladness, the caring, the good will, and go back to business as usual, or might we become Christmas people and continue to be Christmas people all year long?

Let us hold on to the best of the holy season, for it will strengthen family ties, it will enrich relationships with friends, it will help make us one with humanity, for whom Christ came into the world.

May we keep Christmas in our work, in our homes, in our church and in our hearts.

Amen.