The only reason for the season

Happy Christmas... Happy holiday... Time to celebrate, rejoice and have fun. But is Christmas the reason for the season?

Of course, there are many reasons – parties, presents, Christmas markets, drinks, meals, flickering and blinking lights, Christmas trees of all kinds and sizes, fake snow and fake Santas bellowing fake ‘Ho Ho Hos’.

A thousand fake reasons can never make up for a single real reason. In life there can be only one reason for a true, deep and lasting joy and happiness. That reason is always – I repeat always – a living, loving and loved human person.

The one and only lasting present can only be the presence of a loved person in one’s life. Ask an expectant mother who loves her born or still unborn child. Ask a loving father for whom his son or daughter means everything. Ask a couple who are truly and deeply in love. Ask a son or daughter near the deathbed of their loving parent. Ask a family, joyfully gathered at table for a simple Sunday or weekday meal.

If this is not enough to convince you, go further and ask a lonely elderly, retired widow, wearing a coloured paper hat amid colourful decorations in her home, alone on Christmas night.

Ask a recently separated couple whose marriage broke down, ending up in a boisterous party with fake friends and dizzy heads on Christmas night. Ask poor and lonely homeless people drifting around empty streets and anonymous city jungles.

Ask a little child whose parents have just been bitterly separated, ending up buried waist-deep in big, oversized Christmas toys and presents filling the void of an empty, over-decorated bedroom.

A lonely elderly amid colourful decorations in her home, alone on Christmas night. Photo: Shutterstock.com

What is the point of having a crib without a baby, a house without a family, a party without real friends, a drink to drown the sadness inside, a boisterous, over-abundant Christmas dinner that overfills an empty stomach to help forget an empty heart?

What’s the point of a season without a reason? And what’s the point of any reason if it is not a real, flesh and blood, living and loving person who gives real meaning to our lives?

Rather than cancelling Christ out of Christmas, wouldn’t we be better off if we started putting Christ back into Christmas? Wouldn’t we be better off if we started looking straight in the eyes of people we love, heartily embrace them and let them be the reason for the season?

This is not just a question of tradition, custom, religion or belief. This is a question of finding a meaningful existence by opening our hearts to one another. Our God is love itself. Whoever loves, knows who God is, recognises His face, welcomes His presence in an unconditional and tender surrender to the poor, vulnerable child present in every human person.

This is Christmas. If only we rediscovered its real meaning, like the poor shepherds or the rich kings, we will joyfully flock to the humble crib of Bethlehem – literally ‘the house of flesh’.

Isn’t this what Christmas is all about? God, who is infinite love, becomes flesh of our flesh and bones of our bones to reveal the true and meaningful beauty of each human baby, child, adult or elderly person.

A living, loving and loved human person is the only real reason for the season. Let’s bring Christ back to Christmas.

Fr Paul Chetcuti, member of the Society of Jesus – Birkirkara