“I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”― Charles Dickens
Make Christmas an all-year celebration, not just a one-day event. Don’t let the shops steal your joy or money, and then again from under the tree, it is stolen again and again after you open the gifts. Let Christmas stay beyond the gifts under the tree. Let Christmas stay through the rest of the year. Don’t live life as normal and fine after the 12 days of Christmas. Let it challenge every moment of your life with a longing for the Christ who is not in a store-bought toy or tie or shoe or shaker. He is not in a manger to be found surrounded by the wise men from the East but found among the lost ones on the streets.
There is no God in the manger or the temple, he is out in the field at poet Rabindra Nath Tagore says. God has moved on from the comfort of the gold-plated churches and the romance of the manger where there are angels and shining stars. He is not receiving any more gold or silver, or frankincense as investments for the future days of struggle in Egypt. He is using them all for the people here and now. He is finding angels lost on the streets of our inner cities. What shines at his presence are the hearts that are longing for Him and there Jesus is born again and again.
Let not the stores, as the Grinch says, steal your God from within you! He has escaped the enchantments of the world to be enchanted by the hearts that long for Him.