COMMENTARY 807.2: Christmas — Christianity’s Gift to the World

As a Jew married to a Catholic, my fondness and reverence for Christmas includes, but goes beyond, recognition of its enormous religious significance.

I view Christmas as the gift of Christians to the world – a day dedicated to transcendent values like love, compassion, and charity, as both moral obligations and a source of joy.

In 1905, Henry Van Dyke wrote a poem called “Keeping Christmas” that captures the essence of Christmas spirit:

Are you willing to forget what you have done for others and remember what others have done for you;

to ignore what the world owes you, and to think about what you owe the world;

to see your fellowmen as real and to look behind their faces to their hearts;

to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness –

 Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of little children;

to remember the weakness and the loneliness of people who are growing old;

to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough;

to try to understand what those who live in the same house with you really want, without you waiting for them to tell you;

to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open;

Are you willing to believe that Love is the strongest thing in the world – stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death?

 Are you willing to do all this even for a day?

Then you can Keep Christmas.

And if you keep it for a day, why not always?

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

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