The following observations about the real spirit of Christmas and how they relate to the Christian life are worth considering. The excerpts are taken from Henry Van Dyke’s “Keeping Christmas” and appeared more than 40 years ago in Methodist Message.

KEEPING CHRISTMAS

Whatever else is changed

Throughout the years

Let us always keep Christmas

Its meaning never ends.

‘ … THERE is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is … keeping …Christmas.

            * Are you willing, for example, to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you?

            Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.

            * To see that your fellowmen are just as real as you are, to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy?

            … If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

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

            …for such belongs the Kingdom of heaven.

            * To remember the weakness and loneliness of people who are growing old?

            So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them …

            * To trim your lamp so it will give men light and less smoke and to carry it in front of you so that your shadow will fall behind you?

            …You are the light of the world…

            Let your light so shine before men…

* Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world – stronger than death – and that the blessed Life which began in Bethlehem years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep Christmas. And if you keep it for a day, why not always? But you can never keep it alone.’ – MM, December 1965, p.9.

Earnest Lau, the Associate Editor of Methodist Message, is also the Archivist of The Methodist Church in Singapore.

                                                                                                                                                                       

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