At Christmas, by Edgar Guest
A man is at his finest towards the finish of the year;
He is almost what he should be when the Christmas seasons here;
Then he’s thinking more of others than he’s thought the months before,
And the laughter of his children is a joy worth toiling for.
He is less a selfish creature than at any other time;
When the Christmas spirit rules him he comes close to the sublime.
But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. . . And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
– Galatians 6:4 & 9
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
Recently I watched two film versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, back-to-back. The first was the 1984 film starring George C. Scott as Scrooge, and the second was the 2004 production starring Kelsey Grammer. Both films had their strong points, including very fine performances from the men playing Scrooge.
Scrooge receives a great gift in the visitations from the ghost of his former colleague, Marley, and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. He is permitted to see who he once was and all the promise that had stretched before him in his youth. He is shown the world that exists all around him that he has chosen to ignore and withdraw from, and he is shown what the world will have to say of his existence after his death – if he continues to live his life unchanged.
At his potential gravesite, pleading for another chance, Scrooge vows that he will keep Christmas in his heart every day of the year if he is allowed to mend his ways. When he awakens on Christmas morning, wonderfully, he proves to be a man of his word – truly transformed by his ghostly visitations. And he not only fully embraces the Christmas Holiday and all of the warmth and generosity of the season, but the narrator of the story attests that he indeed keeps Christmas in his heart all year.
While I trust that none of us could be fairly described as a Scrooge, I would bet that we can all relate to the poem above by Edgar Guest. When we are honest with ourselves, we can admit that we somehow “turn it up” a bit around Christmas; and are “almost what we should be” every other day of the year. At Christmas we are reminded of who we should be, who we were always meant to be, and what we are meant to be in the lives of others. We are reminded that we have been given the great gift of God’s love and grace through the babe in the manger. And we are invited to give the same gift back to God through our relations with our fellow man.
May we each do the preparatory work of Advent to more fully celebrate the great gift of Christmas. And may we each carry the very best of who we are in this Holiday season forward with us into the rest of the year that will follow.
Peace,
Pastor Layne