Christmas and what it is all about.

It’s shortly after midnight. Christmas morning.

Visions of sugar plums and all that, right? Yes, there are plenty of children around the world and a few adults all dreaming of what lies in store for them later today. Gifts opened, admired; comfortable breakfast table scenes playing out as planned. Later, perhaps the Christmas dinner.

Sure, the whole thing goes back to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, a cornerstone moment in the Christian religious movement. Scholars debate whether the actual birth took place in winter or if it was in a summer month. Others point to the Roman feasting time of Saturnalia, as a “period of feasting and general merrymaking” as Google puts it. Yes, it is possible that elders in the early church co-opted the holidays to make Christmas appeal to a wider audience. Still others look back and claim the Yuletide as being a celebration surrounding the Winter Solstice.

Any way you want to slice the proverbial fruit cake, it’s a good excuse to party. Get together with family and friends. Look back upon the year, appreciate life as it came to be and then invite a new year into the picture.

Round the world, folks take this time of year to gather their clans and share good fortune with one another. Feuds may be forgotten for a short while as the prodigals are welcomed to the table to break bread, be reminded of who they are and just how they got to be there. All in all, not a bad idea when you think on it. Families and friends all around the table.

But when we look back on the whole birth of Christ, we should give pause and think on some simple facts about the story.

It is the story of travelers – a man and a pregnant wife – who had no one to go to and they found no room at an inn. Instead, their baby was delivered in a stable and placed in a manger. It was nothing special or elegant, just the simple start of one life here on this planet we call Earth.

In today’s world, even with prosperity and technology, there are still too many men, women and children living in similar or worse situations to that stable of long ago. These 21st Century people have no permanent dwellings to call home, no decent water or food, little clothing, no education and no health care of any kind. Yes, in 2000 plus years, the world has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. When we find ourselves at the point where no one lives marginalized in any way, when who they are matters less than how they live, basic decency and comfort all the rights of each person, respected for simply being.

Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” first published in 1843, with its tale of redemption continues to ring true with readers and audiences today. Dickens offered a warning that we still need to pay attention to. For even in this enlightened age, much of what he mentions in this short passage is still true:

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.

“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge.

“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”

“To-night!” cried Scrooge.

“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.”

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

I don’t have answers to give to all of this. But I do agree that if we all took what makes this day special to us and spread it more throughout our year, we may leave this world better than we found it.

In the end, what more can be said of any us?

A happy Christmas to one and all.

May your cup include enough kindness for everyone, every where.